DEF CON Safe Mode Platform Discussion

[badlock]

Don't get me wrong -- I like Zoom's capabilities. But the current security issues and political policies make it a no-go. For example:

- Companies and organizations that have outright banned employees from using Zoom: Google, SpaceX, Smart Communications (Philippines), the entire government of Taiwan, NASA, German Foreign Ministry, US Senate, Australian Defense Force, New Your City's Department of Education. (This isn't the entire list.) See: https://www.techrepublic.com/article...nasa-and-more/

- The Pentagon has banned hosting meetings, but employees can still participate. However, other US Gov groups have outright banned Zoom on any system that can directly, indirectly, or tangentially connect to anything in the US Gov. (E.g., if you can do your gov work from home then you can't have Zoom installed on any computer at your home.) There are per-use exceptions, but who knows how many impacted people can get the exceptions (probably not worth the effort to ask). https://www.military.com/daily-news/...-military.html

And these are just the ones that have been made public. Plenty more organizations have banned Zoom -- in part, whole, or even for non-work uses -- and have not been reported in the media.

Keep in mind, Zoom has reportedly already fixed many of the security and privacy concerns. However, fixing the bug is not the same as removing the policies and changing business restrictions. Unless the policies are changed and the restrictions are lifted, Zoom is not viable for many of the attendees.

As an aside: GotoMeeting, WebEx, Skype, and other platforms have had their own share of security and privacy issues. But only Zoom has the widespread "do not use" restriction. (I'd love to see a Defcon talk on Zoom hacking while all of the attendees use Zoom.)

[badlock]

When you start talking about thousands or more users, you will never be able to use any of the free or commercial meeting platforms. Zoom, GoToMeeting, WebEx, Skype, etc. cannot handle the volume. The biggest issue is the outbound bandwidth. Even with multicasting, nobody (except maybe Akamai and Google) have that kind of bandwidth. If a turn server is needed (almost certainly the case), then you'll need big computation resources (i.e., Google). With small groups, turn takes up almost no resources. But with thousands of users? Bandwidth and CPU become concerns.

The best bet it to use a split stream for the presentation. E.g., Zoom, Jitsi, or whatever the user wants for presenting and have it feed into a YouTube live stream. (Think cable modem or DSL -- low bandwidth up, high bandwidth down. Low bandwidth needs for the presenter to get to the distributing service, and high bandwidth for all of the people viewing from the distribution service.) This approach also deters someone from DDoS'ing the presenter since they don't know the presenter's direct IP address.

The spit stream approach handles your first requirement: thousands of people all watching the presentation/DJ at the same time.

Your second requirement is more difficult -- getting feedback to the presenter. Discord, Slack, etc. are text based and can handle thousands of users. I like this option more than Reddit or Google Chat or YouTube comments since they refresh in real-time.

Discord can also handle audio interactions. However, unless every attendee tests their audio first and clearly enunciates, this will result in a really bad experience. I suggest limiting audio responses until all of the other bugs are worked out. Maybe have the main presentation with thousands of users, then have smaller breakout Q&A sessions with direct audio/video (GotoMeeting, Jitsi, WebEx, etc.) Or use something like a "waiting lobby" (WebEx, Skype, etc.), where people are not accepted into the room for asking questions until it is their turn to ask questions. This keeps the bandwidth limited to the people in the room, while everyone else watches the breakout session on a YouTube live stream.

Your final requirement -- having the group interact as a group -- is much more challenging. (Presenting is 1xM complexity. Q&A is NxM, where N << M. And group chat is MxM.) Big Blue Button might work, but its interface is designed for a classroom environment. (And you'd need someone with bandwidth.) Discord might work if you have small groups of about 25 each. (But I don't know how discord will perform with hundreds of groups of 25 each.)

[JRWR]

Villages in VRChat /would/ be pretty amazing, but moderating that nonsense would be pretty hard. You would want to hire a dedicated 3D Artist who knows Unity well if you wanted to go down that route.

Having all the groups and villages having their own sub channels in the master discord would work well. I suggest using a opt-in system for that (You can react to a message and it assigns roles)

For the view side, I would just stream the talks to Twitch, I suggest even sending good cameras and microphones to the speakers if you want this to come out well.

Villages would still use rooms inside discord for video+voice+chat and that would scale OK if you limited rooms to a modest amount and gave out lots of rooms per group to spread everyone out.

Edit: I've been talking with the larger discord server owners, Unless you get discord in your back pocket, and even then, you will want to split this up into several discords, 35k online is overall the best you can hope for online at once in a discord server, any more then that and its going to start dropping connections.

[savagejen]

Whatever platform you choose, I think chat is a really important feature. Even if that ends up just involving embedding an irc client in a webpage next to the stream or something.

Twitch has partner/affiliate statuses.

For affiliate you have to have 200 followers, stream 25 hours a month and get 75 viewers average for a month, so you would really need to start now if you want to hit that.

For partner status, you can reach out to twitch and simply ask for partner status. You have a big enough following that they would seriously consider partnering you.

Twitch also has an events program. Again, I would reach out.

[3mul0r]

https://www.bigscreenvr.com/
Bigscreen might also be a good option for shared experiences. It has cross platform support and also has a 2d desktop version.

[3mul0r]

I really like Discord for the main hub since it already has most of what you are looking for. The Discord and Twitch combo ticks a lot of boxes.
Glad to see you mentioned Security Oasis virtual con which was held on AltspaceVR. That could be a interesting platform since you can also join it with a 2d desktop app.

• Thousands of people at a time watching a talk or workshop
  • perfect for twitch
• Thousands of people watching or listening to a DJ / VJ
  • If its audio only you can set up a channel in discord where only the DJ can talk. I don't believe there are any content restrictions.
• A way to be social through chat or voice with moderation capabilities to lock out trolls
  • Discord already has mod tools built to handle servers with tens of thousands of users
    • There are some limits to watch out for but they don't seem like they would be an issue https://discordia.me/en/server-limits
  • Twitch also has good mod tools https://www.engadget.com/2020-03-31-...-mod-view.html
• Some way to have shared experiences like watching NetFlix or a free streamed movie Mystery Science Theater 3k style.
  • AltspaceVR is a possibility for this. Just like the Security Oasis virtual con you can join this with a 2d desktop version if you don't have VR.
• Allow content creators live village to manage and moderate their own spaces
  • Each village can have its own Discord server and follow the defcon example

[McGrewSecurity]

I agree. With VR platforms, consider accessibility issues as well: both physical and hardware-access related.

[McGrewSecurity]

Thanks for the link, savagejen. It looks like they also have downloadable tracks (useful for DJs to load into their players) on a related project at https://www.ninety9lives.com/ . Asking the DJs to stick to royalty-free/permissive-licensed tracks might be a non-starter, though!

supersat: Thanks for the tip about Twitch. That's good to know that they're not currently hitting the live streams at least, and I hope that doesn't change.

[abaranov]

I've participated in a very successful virtual conference and it used Zoom with the broadcasting add-on. So you have the speakers, the MCs and the speaker support all in a Zoom meeting. And everyone else tunes into the Youtube feed.

At the same time, everyone can be in some chat like Discord.

This, from Wild West, is long and mostly not relevant but some of it is really useful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvwM8qUrmPo

They had quite an impressive setup but they also did things like send microphones to their presenters.

Happy to answer any questions.

[savagejen]

I don't know how many people it can support, but there's https://vemos.org/

[Dark Tangent]

I watched a video from the Security Oasis virtual con, and it was interesting but looked like I was watching a cartoon, and the slide screen was too small for me to read the details. I'm not sure if VR will work for content, maybe just the social aspects?

We are also looking for viable shared experience platforms for watching movies together, like possibly the NetFlix chrome plug in or something open source for watching videos that are free.

[supersat]

For talks, I'd recommend both Twitch and YouTube. You can feed both with OBS, which I'd recommend using as well.

One thing you might consider is asking speakers to pre-record their talk, but be available for a live Q&A. In addition to preventing last-minute technical issues, it might help people improve the quality of their talks.

[Colonel_panic]

On the VR front I think this would be a good way to achieve some of the social aspects of the convention with Defcon Safemode. We could set up a VR Movie night, have some VR parties, maybe even hold VR villages! VRChat & Bigscreen seem like the natural candidates, however like most applications in sure their security is not up to par with what is needed at DEFCON so precautions should be taken to stay safe. I would love to hear from people who would like to help me coordinate these events or suggest alternative applications to facilitate them.

[supersat]

Twitch seems to not muck with live streams, but will sometimes mute portions of VODs from those live streams.

As far as I can tell, right now, no one really knows how to deal with streaming DJ sets. Even the big players (e.g., Beatport) are getting their streams flagged on Twitch and YouTube.

[savagejen]

Or you can just use pretzel.rocks on your platform of choice