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.
This is indeed sad news. I made my friends (who don’t care about free software) switch from google meet to jitsi for video calls just the other month.
The only thing that got them sold on jitsi was that it required no login.
@gunpachi
There’s jitsi the software and jitsi the page. This affects only jitsi the page. There are many more pages where jitsi the software is reachable at.
@esaru
Thanks. I am aware of other instances, but my friends and family don’t understand the point of it. Anyways… I’ll see if I can get them to try other instances of Jisti.
Tell them that it works the same way, no registration too, but the old one had to shut down.
Technically, it did shut down, for those that don’t want to log in with anything.
Pick your favourite server and use that from now on: https://jitsi.github.io/handbook/docs/community/community-instances/