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Comment by mkl | Hacker News Reader

> I feel surveilled and every movement I do in front of it is calculated by my unconscious mind

What do you do in in-person meetings? Or supermarket visits etc.? Everything you do is way more visible in those, and I've never heard anyone complain about being surveilled in person.

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Do you feel the same way in front of a camera pointing to your face as you do on a normal day-to-day interaction with non-verbal cues, room to use body language to express yourself, etc.?

It's not about the visibility, it's the psychological impact it has, having a camera pointed directly at my face 100% of the time is very different than sitting in a room, reading others' faces, attention (where are they focusing their gaze? When are they drifting off? When are they tapping their fingers on the table?).

I don't know why I hear this argument so many times, a camera on my face is a very different experience than sharing a room with others, I don't see the parallel.

Well, I don't understand, as the parallel seems obvious; you're meeting with a group of people and you can see them and they can see you. If anything I feel freer with the camera, as others' visibility of me is much more limited than in person. I like cameras in meetings for exactly what you say, reading others' faces, attention, body language, non-verbal cues, etc. Without being able to see people I find it much harder to understand them, and to be sure they're understanding me.

When I'm meeting in person I can move around, I can look at whoever is the center of attention at the moment without having to care if someone is watching me, it's much more easy to tell if you are being watched or not and when to relax or not.

The parallel does not work, I don't think it's that hard to realise that a camera pointing at your face, showing how you look at any given moment to anyone that looks at you and you can't tell if they are looking at you or not is equivalent to an in-person setting where you are aware of your surroundings much more naturally.

I really don't know how to be more explicit than this about the major differences between in-person to a virtual meeting with cameras...

I guess I don't have that strong need to know exactly when someone is looking at me. If I'm with other people I behave as if they can see me, because they probably can, and if appropriate I relax. I don't think I could reliably keep track of who was looking at me in an in-person meeting with more than three people anyway. Keeping track of that and changing behaviour when people look at me or look away seems like it would be exhausting.

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