Still, Jitsi Meet is a privacy-friendly alternative to commercial offerings like Zoom or Microsoft Teams that does not require participants to install yet another video conferencing app on their machines. Additionally, it can be self-hosted on quite a large scale, both in the public or private cloud – or on bare metal. Turns out that for meetings with only 2 participants, Jitsi tries to establish a direct peer-to-peer connection between the two of them, and for some reason this failing. I turned off p2p, so now all calls go through the server, and it worked fine after.
In chapter 8.1, I talked about a great alternative to Zoom and other 'work from home' video apps. Today, I want to dig deeper into the fine tuning of an own server setup and other apps to use.
There are many free use Jitsi servers all over the internet. Riot and Mattermost have the option, via widgets, for one click activation. Unfortunately with Riot you are forced to use their Jitsi setup and therefore not allow you to use your own. Of course, that's an easy fix by just sharing your own or favorite server in the group chat.
One step at a time..
Amazon prime photo storage cost. Let's assume you want to host your own Jitsi server, perhaps on Hetzner or DigitalOcean or any other cloud server you trust, follow this for the offical setup on Jitsi:
or the one click marketplace droplet on DigitalOcean:
Next things next
Jitsi Meet Privacy Settings
You do not need an account on Jitsi, all you need is a browser or an app! And here is the first big issue!
The iOS and the official Google Play Store app of Jitsi hosts some trackers:
Google CrashLytics
Google Firebase Analytics
Amplitude
Use the f-droid version on Android or just the browser of your choice on any desktop. The f-droid version is stripped all analytics and is safe to use, and the browser option is as clean as your server instance is ;)
Profile
If you chose a profile that shows your name and lets you configure your own server, we have another small problem, but with an easy fix. The app will then try to connect to gravatar.com!
Jitsi Meet Privacy Screen
Since we are not keen on connecting to 3rd parties, use the terminal of your server thus:
nano /etc/jitsi/meet/<domain>-config.js
disableThirdPartyRequests: true,
Now there is no connection anymore to gravatar, except with the STUN-Server, easily fixed, open the terminal:
/etc/jitsi/meet/<domain>-config.js
this is what you will find in the config.js:
stunServers: [
replace it with one that you trust!
If you have your own sever you might want to do some fine tuning on the config.js:
nano /etc/jitsi/meet/<domain>-config.js
standard language:
defaultLanguage: 'en',
change resolution from 720 to 480:
Perhaps for additional privacy you can force the Jitsi feed to start with voice only (and then the user can activate it once they are on).
startAudioOnly: true,
Jitsi is working on E2EE in video conferences for 2 or more people. Remember at this very moment Jitsi is maybe still your best bet when it comes to all the conferences options out there, but its still only encrypted on one 2 one video chat.
Whatsapp Web
Taking everything into consideration, Jitsi is safer than Zoom, Facebook or Google.
Jitsi Meet Privacy Settings
Plus you can self host it!
Enjoy your video conferences during this transition to the strange 'new normal' world.
Jitsi Meet Privacy Screen
Switch to Jitsi and stay safe! WFH with a more private twist!