While Jitsi is open-source, most people use the platform they provide, meet.jit.si, for immediate conference calls. They have now introduced a “Know Your Customer” policy and require at least one of the attendees to log in with a Facebook, Github (Microsoft), or Google account.
One option to avoid this is to self-host, but then you’ll be identifiable via your domain and have to maintain a server.
As a true alternative to Jitsi, there’s jami.net. It is a decentralized conference app, free open-source, and account creation is optional. It’s available for all major platforms (Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android), including on F-Droid.
Yepp I agree, that kind of cryptic speak and this kind of drastic action taken by a FOSS project likely eludes to something of this nature IMO.
If they want to continue to appeal to businesses they’re almost certainly not going to release a statement saying people were sharing illegal material on our platform especially when they’re not a big well-known company like Facebook, Google and Microsoft, where normal people tend to disappointingly dismiss bad findings with a “benefit of the doubt” stance.
I assume their hosted version doesn’t have this limitation? In that sense, this news really is a non-issue I think, considering everyone usually has one of those three accounts. Someone looking for privacy should probably host their own IMO