Ask HN: Video calls are most effective with camera turned on. You agree?

Most meetings are absolutely pointless and a waste of time. The ones that are not, usually involve some form of screensharing of content / code / etc. It's preferable to suffer the pointless meetings somewhat anonymously rather than to have to pretend interest on camera.

> why are you so shy or scared to show yourself?

My job does not compensate me for the space they take up in my home since the pandemic. They don't have a right to demand cameras on. If I'm not at the office, I can't be expected to always look presentable. What if I want to take the meeting lying on the couch with my dog? What business is it of anybody's?

> Why so many anonymous avatar rather than your observant face?

I have ADHD which means that I have been told that I need to pay more attention, pretty much my entire life. It's a challenge to look engaged, and taking my face out of the equation has reduced this for me, thankfully. The one upside about working from home is that I don't have to pretend to pay attention to conversations that have little to do with me.

> Why video call platform does not offer a feature to invite/force participants to put theirs camera on?

If we used a platform like that at work, I would put tape over my camera.

To address your original point, who says calls are more effective with cameras on? Most of my calls involve screen sharing, why should you or anybody else care if you can see my face?

> Video calls are most effective with camera turned on, why are you so shy or scared to show yourself?

So, I can only choose “shy” or “scared”?

Let's turn this 180deg: Why you so need to see others faces?

I almost never turn on my camera unless I'm hosting a status meeting (and I don't expect other too). Most of my 'video' calls are with one or two other people debugging something and sharing my screen. When compiling and running stuff my pc is already struggling, no reason to bog it down more with someone's face.

The only people that seem to care about people turning on their camera are those who's job is to communicate with people all day long. I get it, but at the same time stop trying to change others behavior to make you happy.

It's a lot like those who hate work from home because they no longer have a social life. Don't make ME commute to work and fake 9+ hours of work so YOU can have a social life

If no one shows their face it’s not a video call. That’s called a phone call or conference call for everyone under 30.

Video isn’t always the best medium, but it does allow us to see facial expressions and other cues that we can’t get with audio only.

A company that forced me to be on video calls is a company I would leave immediately

It's been proven that calls with your camera turned on leads to more fatigue and less performance for the next 24-48h

https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2021-77825-003.pdf

It's even worse for women, so you could argue that it's discriminatory to make it mandatory.

There is a dozen reasons to dislike it: looks, background, posture, focus, bandwidth, processing power...