Recently I tried to join a google meet meeting in my hardened config firefox browser, and google meet didn’t let me in at all. I was confused as hell. I could join only on my phone, but not any of my three computers I tested it on. I then went into a virtual machine with regular firefox(also linux), and the meeting works. The only conclusion I can draw is that google is so desperate for my data that they refuse to service me unless I give them this.
This post intends to inform people that issues with google products may be related to their valid wish for security, and the actions they have taken in pursuit of that. The post also intends to inform people of a solution. The two apps that I recommend are:
- Jitsi Meet: This is self hosted, but you can also make a meeting with jitsi’s own servers. A excellent alternative to google meet, the only reason I didn’t use it is that I had issues the day I needed to meet, and had to fall back to google meet instead.
- Jami: This is a distributed-network chat and video calling app which is open source and a GNU package. It does require an app, but is free and open source and will serve your purpose.
Exhibit #17837 why Firefox isn’t “just more hardened by default”.
It’s also not necessarily just because Google wants more of your data (which they do); they may also just use a feature that can also be used to fingerprint you. But since it’s also just useful in general, it’s not disabled by default by regular Firefox.