DEF CON Safe Mode Platform Discussion

[s1lv3r]

(Background: Chinese newbie living in Mainland China)

Would like to provide some ideas about "See in China" column.

As @darktangent said, most services familiar to you guys (like Youtube, Twitch, Discord and the internal version of Zoom) are blocked by GFW, which means inaccessible to Chinese users.

There do have some Chinese local providers/softwares for streaming or online meeting, including:

- Tencent Meeting: Free. Can support up to 500 people if you ask help from the support team. I knew someone who might help. However it always need a client software (or, "Miniapp" supported by WeChat), which might be disappointing.

- (Chinese version of) Zoom: Could be free. Not connected with Internal version of Zoom. Might need registration as a Chinese company.

- Bilibili Live, Douyu Live: Both are streaming-only platform (like Youtube Live). Chatting support is weak (only damaku is supported).

However, due to legal and political limitations, I strongly recommend you not considering the support in Mainland China as an item of your SLA, mainly due to following reasons:

1. Most people willing to join (or have heard little about) DEF CON will be also familiar with bypass the blocking of GFW, which is called Fan Qiang (翻墙) in Chinese, or, "F**k the GFW". Those people would nearly have no problem using Zoom, Youtube, Twitter, Discord or anything else.

2. For those don't know how to Fan Qiang, it would be difficult if the streaming server is located in non-Mainland area. The backbone bandwidth from China itself is not really big, and limited by the capacity of GFW, and sometimes GFW & ISP would intentionally throw some packets (to sell their high reliable MPLS VPN), so accessing oversea servers directly is already difficult enough. And if you want to put you server in China, you need to Bei An (or, register) piles of stuff including domain name and server addresses to the government. Besides, you need additional ICP license to perform broadcasting on the Internet.

3. And most importantly, medias, including network steaming, is censored in China. Even send an meme could lead to your account being banned, and I believe you have no time to check every slides being used in the DEF CON.

But I do think there is an alternate solution:

For streaming, find some volunteers in China, and ask them if they want to open streaming accounts in China websites and forward your stream.

For meeting and chatting...no. I have no idea.

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Additional recommendations: Do NOT treat the network in China as a part of the Internet. Due to the GFW (which means both political, culture, language and other complex reasons), there is some de-facto isolation between network in and out of mainland China. Lots of software is unable to run well in both areas. Most softwares are designed only possible to run in only one area.

[Dark Tangent]

Anyone have experience running a Riot server? How does it compare to Discord? We are testing Discord now and plan to try something else next and Riot looked promising.

[beauwoods]

The Villages have been looking at social, presentation, and broadcast platforms, and several organizers have helped run other virtual conferences we've learned lessons from. While there isn't a consensus around a single way that works well, we have learned several things that are worth sharing. Some of these have been mentioned above. Happy to go into more detail on these if/where it's needed.

• It's probably worth distinguishing social/community platforms (like Slack and Discord) from presentation platforms (like Zoom and Webex). Social/community platforms tend to suck for presenting and vice-versa. However, there are lots of native or third-party integrations.
• Some of the presentation platforms (like Discord and Go To Webinar) may support multiple simultaneous broadcast platforms. There are benefits and drawbacks to having a single broadcast channel versus putting content where people are comfortable going.
• Most platforms have different options for meetings versus webinars. For instance, Zoom Webinar is a lot more capable for our purposes than Zoom Meetings.
• Some platforms (StreamYard, for instance), give some broadcast TV level capabilities. For instance, dropping in text overlays and zooming into subsets of speaker views (for instance, focus on a pair of speakers who are talking, while putting all others off camera and on mute), and will pull in questions from YouTube so you can pop them up as a screen overlay.
• Some platforms (Zencastr, though it's audio only) remotely capture high-fidelity feeds from each side so connectivity issues don't affect a recording.
• Video mixing software packages (Open Broadcast Studio, vMix) seem to have some really cool capabilities, though they introduce an additional point of failure. For instance, some of them seem to be able to take separate remote video feeds, add professional quality overlays and screen positioning, and stream directly to broadcast channels.
• While I like the experience of watching talks in VR, not everyone does and not everyone has the equipment. Some platforms, like AltVR, have the ability to stream YouTube in VR, so it can be an option. For instance, DEF CON Groups can set up rooms and create a group activity.
• Some VR options, like Mozilla Hubs, have an in-browser option, while other VR platforms, like AltVR are only available on headsets or on Windows.
• It's rumored that Zoom for Healthcare allows you to run a server on-premesis or in your own cloud environment.
• Interactive technical content like CTFs will all have different requirements. Car Hacking Village has built some tools for gating access to physical devices with webcam to show what's happening, serial interface, and limiting the number of people testing at once. Biohacking Village is building site-to-site VPNs from a cloud infrastructure to give access to different physical devices, and will have to limit the number of people using those connections at one time.

[ohmr]

I agree. I voice support for Twitch *and* YouTube at the same time. I have streamed to both platforms at the same time using ReStream.io. The Speaker/presenters join over Webex and then the audio and video is streamed over to both platforms at the same time. That way you can get the best of both worlds. You can even have people participate in the chats over Discord. I am doing this for the Red Team Village Mayhem event this weekend.

[EvilMoFo]

I too much prefer slack over discord. However, when it's free, that 10k message retention limit is pretty obvious with ~500 active users; that limit would be brutal with thousands of people chatting at once. Likewise, paying for slack is a bit ridiculous considering the amount of people that would surely join. For this reason, discord likely makes the most sense when it comes to usability (phone app, web interface, etc); especially considering the self-hosted / on-prem options seem to be unable to scale well.

The few popular streams I have seen with chat enabled on youtube, along with a couple random twitch videos I have glanced at, have such a sheer volume of chat messages that it's seemingly impossible to interact in any meaningful way.

[Nikita]

I am in favor of youtube a lot for streamed content because you can have live chat, watch party "rooms" for chats that require a code, and lots of interactions WHILE the content is streamed, I think the speaker can get a sense of feedback and interact that way. Twitch, i've not used or watched, so I can't speak to how they compare. I get concerned about trolls dumping a bunch of ascii dicks into the chat rooms, but I'm sure there are admin features that I'm unaware of in all these applications that should deter DOS like that. I'm excited to learn what we decide on, most of it will be "new" to me most likely as I've limited my interactions to either facebook or youtube stream/chats.

[Deviant Ollam]

came here to voice support for Twitch or YouTube as the main broadcast media.

whatever platform is used (seems like Twitch is winning on popular support here?) i'd very much hope to see one sort of "reception hall, general commentary" channel going almost at all times, with some notable folk serving as hosts, discussing things that are going on, what's a hot topic coming up next, etc. that kind of channel can be the place many users "return" to after watching something for a while, and they can get ideas as to what else to check out next.

for discussion... i'm massively a fan of Slack over Discord, but i may be in the minority there. Discord is fine if you're trying to bolt-on a lot of additional functionality beyond simply talking. But Slack excels at a *clean* and simple interface. There are bots and other tools that can augment Slack to great effect (with MasksForDocs, for example, we have all kinds of awesome triggers and bot actions integrated with it) but its main focus is on being a simple and straightforward chat, and that's what makes it great and easier to use for the masses.

[Dark Tangent]

Actually it can, but then we would be overrun by trolls. You can set the server to be essentially none (Only a link is needed), email account, or phone number verified account.

[mtv]

+100 for Twitch - great software, super solid, allows for monetization.

I don't believe Twitch allows simulcast on Youtube, but we may be able to negotiate/allow third party coverage by vloggers.

I believe IRC and Discord should both be in play for text, so Riot could be a good choice.

For an immersive experience, I might actually be able to pull together a full-fledged MMOG with embedded video streams and some cool holographic captures of speakers.

[JRWR]

Discord works with a temp username, its a setting set in the invite you create for the server

[gourry inverse]

Discord cannot be used without an account

Guest Access: NO

[gourry inverse]

privacy concerns with discord seem to be... *shrug*?

4 years ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/discordapp/...ensing_clause/

Hey there.

CTO of Discord here.

This part of the ToS is to allow us to send data through Discord on your behalf. This statement does exist in Slack but its definitely phrased differently.

" In order for us to provide the Service to you, we require that you grant us certain rights with respect to Your Data. For example, we need to be able to transmit, store and copy Your Data in order to display it to you and your teammates, to index it so you are able to search it, to make backups to prevent data loss, and so on. Your acceptance of this TOS gives us the permission to do so and grants us any such rights necessary to provide the service to you, only for the purpose of providing the service (and for no other purpose). This permission includes allowing us to use third-party service providers (such as Amazon Web Services) in the operation and administration of the Service and the rights granted to us are extended to these third parties to the degree necessary in order for the Service to be provided."

I have asked our CEO to look into making it sound more friendly. We have no intention of using your data for anything and hopefully we can clear that up in our ToS with friendlier language. It is currently this way "because lawyers". :)

From their privacy policy @ https://discord.com/privacy

YOUR CALIFORNIA PRIVACY RIGHTS

No Sale of Personal Information: The CCPA sets forth certain obligations for businesses that sell personal information. We do not sell the personal information of our users.

WHERE INFORMATION IS PROCESSED

The Company is based in the United States. No matter where you are located, you consent to the processing and transferring of your information in and to the U.S. and other countries. The laws of the U.S. and other countries governing data collection and use may not be as comprehensive or protective as the laws of the country where you live.

So a) at least they claim that data is not sold, and b) obviously they must comply with federal regulations - which means the service could be compelled to fork over identifying data by the US, but this should be expected of literally any such service.

I don't think we have to be reasonable concerned about discord re:privacy, but then again i'm not planning to talk about 0-days or totalitarian regimes in a discord server. I think it's reasonable to say "it's an open service, assume it's heavily monitored, don't be a sheep" as a disclaimer and the privacy issue is a non-issue.

[gourry inverse]

From ON24 terms and conditions - important sections noted.

b) An Agreement may specify a certain number of Attendees that are included at no additional charge for a particular Service (the “Included Attendees”). In such a case, should Client run a Service that is attended by more Attendees than the Included Attendees, additional fees may be payable in accordance with such Agreement. Notwithstanding the foregoing, use of the Services shall be subject to the applicable Attendee Limit.

The “Attendee Limit” shall be 2,500 concurrent Attendees for a Live Experience, and 1,000 concurrent Attendees otherwise.

“Live Experience” means the usage by Client of a Webinar, Virtual Environment or other applicable Service at a specified time and date for a specified duration of time. If the total number of Attendees connected to or attempting to connect to a Service exceeds the Attendee Limit (even if the Included Attendees for such Service is larger than the Attendee Limit), then ON24 shall have the right to deny connections in excess of the Attendee Limit. On each occasion that Client would like to have more Attendees than the Attendee Limit for a Service, Client shall submit a large event request ticket via their Platform Account at least 10 business days in advance of the Service.

If Client timely submits such a ticket, then ON24 will use commercially reasonable efforts to try to accommodate a reasonable Attendee Limit increase, and if ON24 does so, it may be during a non-peak usage period.

To the extent available, (i) additional Attendees over the Included Attendees amount are to be purchased in blocks of 500 for Virtual Environments and 1,000 for Webinars and (ii) additional Attendees over 10,000 will be priced by quote.

[Dark Tangent]

I did a web speech with no feedback once and will never do it again. I was talking to a web cam with no video or audio of the audience. It was miserable. I must have looked like a robot.

[savagejen]

I would recommend allowing twitch chat. Custom chat emotes are one of the major reasons people subscribe to a twitch channel, which is a source of revenue for that channel. Since yall are not affiliates yet, if you plan to use twitch, you really need to reach out and ask about partner or event status. Alternatively, you could easily meet the affiliate requirements in a month if you tried.