My 5 year old meeting now requires participants to be commercial users

[atornberg]

I started using Zoom during the pandemic and have been running a weekly meeting, paying fees every year to continue this tradition and use the product. As of a week ago, (June 2, 2024) My longtime users, many of whom do not have any Zoom accounts, but participate from their homes because they cannot get out to join my meetings in person due to distance or ability, now are being given a confusing screen that they must be a commercial user to participate.

First of all, this makes no sense. It sounds like you are requesting users joining a meeting hosted by myself with a pro account, to create an account despite the fact that I specifically did not want to require that of my participants. Not everyone is onboard with signing up for unnecessary accounts.

Second, by requiring users who don't pay large amounts to change their meeting settings after such a long usage is going to lose you customers. 

Third, some smaller meetings don't require security features. As Zoom built its reputation when everyone was forced to be home during the pandemic, there are many users who just got used to using your product and happily did so. It seems Zoom has forgotten that its user base is made up of many smaller entities who rely on the product to continue business as usual. 

I hope Zoom will address these concerns.

For evidence of the way Zoom has enabled this new policy, see this knowledge base article

https://support.zoom.com/hc/en/article?id=zm_kb&sysparm_article=KB0059862

Look specifically at this section:

Prerequisites for enabling or disabling the requirement for all meetings be secured with one security option

• Account owner or admin privileges
• Enterprise, API, Business (with more than 100 licenses), or Education account

Note: The following account types cannot disable this setting, as it is automatically required: single Licensed user, Pro accounts with 2 or more licenses, any Free Trial accounts, and Business accounts with 10-100 licenses.