Zoom lets users choose which servers data traffic runs through

Paying users of video calling app Zoom will be able to decide for themselves from next week which servers they call from. That goes by region. With this, Zoom probably hopes to allay some of the criticism it has received from international users in recent times.

The new feature will be active from Saturday, April 18, the company writes in a blog post. This only applies to paying users. They can then choose which region they want their video connections to run through. Users can opt-in for specific regions, but also with an opt-out. The default region will remain enabled and cannot be disabled, Zoom says. Users cannot specify a specific server or country through which they want their connections to run, but they can specify a geographic region. These are the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, India, China, Latin America, and Japan-Hong Kong.

Zoom is likely to introduce the feature after criticism from a week ago. Then the government of Taiwan decided to ban the use of Zoom. It did so when it turned out that Zoom was directing Taiwanese users’ traffic through China. While Zoom doesn’t specifically mention the situation in the blog post, it often writes about Chinese connections. For example, the company writes that data from non-paying Zoom users never runs through Chinese servers. Also, Chinese admins must do a specific opt-in before April 25 to allow traffic to go through Chinese servers.