Starting January 2022, I decided to use Jitsi Meet as the default for future online meetings. However, that doesn’t mean I’ll be abandoning Zoom and Google Meet as soon as possible – I will still need them for regular online classes and meetings for certain projects.
If you are receiving a meeting link which starts from https://meet.jit.si/<Meeting ID>, that means the online meeting will be held at Jitsi Meet. I also recommend you to download the official Jitsi Meet app on the iOS App Store, F-Droid or Google Play, and make sure to open these Jitsi Meet links on the app by default (instead of other browsers).
1. Why not Zoom / Google Meet / Microsoft Teams / Discord / LINE Meetings?
If you’re thinking about Zoom’s 40-minute limit or 60 in Microsoft Teams and Google Meet, the actual reason extends beyond the “limit”. The entire Jitsi app and infrastructure is open-source and even freely available to be hosted by yourself, if you’re really willing to do that. While other similar open-source apps including Signal and GNU Jami (formerly Ring or SFLPhone) also exist, Jitsi is currently the only one which allows anyone to join the meeting without the need to create an account.
Joining meetings without (authorized) accounts might sound creepy at first, however recent versions of Jitsi also support Zoom-like waiting room and meeting passwords to only allow certain participants to enter the meeting. (Read the next section for details)
Oh, I almost forgot, anyone can join a Jitsi meeting even without the (mobile) app! Actually, that’s a huge win over Zoom’s web client which can only be accessed on desktop browsers, or FaceTime which are incompatible with Firefox due to technical reasons.
2. Is it safe? private? secure?
At least Mozilla have reviewed the public instance of Jitsi Meet (meet.jit.si) over 20 other similar apps including Telegram, Discord, Cisco Webex, Zoom and Google Meet, and website visitors have rated Jitsi as “less creepy” than others.
Note that the Mozilla community in general are largely comprised of open-source enthusiasts and digital rights activists, hence the ratings given by the visitors might be biased for a reason. Sure, people over Microsoft would rate Teams or Skype as “better”, and the same goes for Google and Duo and Meet. At Reinhart, we’re trying to be fair on providing feedbacks and commentary of both open-source and closed-source software, since we’ve walked both paths, too. Even today.
However, if you asked whether there are such things such as Moderators, Meeting Passwords and Waiting Room for Jitsi Meet, well, here they are!
Extras: Moderated Meetings
Oh, I decided to use the Moderated Meetings feature so I don’t need to set up much time in setting new (co-)hosts or moderators. So the meeting links may look instead like https://meet.jit.si/moderated/<Meeting ID> If you still prefer to manually enter the Meeting ID from the homepage of Jitsi Meet, just fill the Meeting ID field with moderated/<Meeting ID> to join with us.
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