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Comment by JCharante | Hacker News Reader

This looks like it’s only through facetime? Do people really facetime their therapist? I expected zoom or some website with video chat built in that telehealth providers use.

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It’s part of the webcam feed provided by the OS to apps on the latest macOS. This means the effects apply across all apps. You can increase lighting adjustment (aka Studio Light) and depth of field with sliders in the system menu bar, as well as toggle thede reactions on and off. They’re on by default.

For what it’s worth the lighting and background blur effects are really good, much better than the tuning built into Zoom. I’m leaving the reactions on too for the comedy for now but I’ll probably turn them off eventually.

I didn’t know this was available at an OS level. Excited to try this blur over the Google Meet implementation.

Found instructions here: https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/use-video-conferenc...

It doesn’t work over google meet. The other person was wrong, it does not apply to the OS video feed, apps have to explicitly support it in some manner.

I just tried this on meet.google.com on my personal account (Chrome 118 on MacBook Pro M1 Max), works for me.

guessing it's a chrome thing then. I refuse to use chrome and it most definitely does not work in FF.

I see. I thought it was only on FaceTime because the fix was to enter the camera settings from there. I know facetime ships with the OS but that settings really should be accessible from the normal settings applet

The effects don’t apply across all apps. I tested in google meet last week and it didn’t work.

From someone who set off balloons in a customer call using Google Meet last week, I can assure you they work :)

I haven’t investigated much further but it’s possible the settings are per-app or something.

might be browser based then. I tested in several different apps and google meet was the only one that didn't work, and I refuse to use Chrome, so it might just not work in firefox. point is, it isn't universal, there are apps it doesn't work in, else my testing wouldn't have shown failure at all.

I use reactions via webex and zoom. I like them, and as other posters said, it’s a big green button in your menu bar to turn them off.

No, it happens in other apps. [0]

[0]: https://cdn.masto.host/mastodonie/cache/media_attachments/fi...

It happened to me in the app mentioned in the article, not FaceTime, on ios. it also occurred to me in a zoom in macOS. Seems to work in any video calling app.

The original post on fedi [0] claims it can happen in any video call app.

[0] https://xoxo.zone/@mathowie/111229500871588422

> Do people really facetime their therapist?

Why not Facetime?

Not hipaa compliant for one

Online therapy doesn't have to be HIPAA compliant on technology used to communicate with the client. If the client wants to use FaceTime, they have to inform them that it's not HIPAA-compliant and confirm that they're OK to continue. HIPAA comes into play if the therapist wants to securely share client care notes with another care provider.

This is true. That said the agreement with the insurance provider or billing processer often requires a hipaa compliant platform with a BAA.

I bill through the headway platform as an example and they require a hipaa compliant telehealth platform with BAA for processing. In addition I believe my contract with Aetna specifies the same although it’s been awhile since I’ve reviewed it tbf.

an interesting question that comes up for me is whether these companies are harvesting content of meetings and chats for training models and whatnot. The BAA is a (small) protection for myself in case it turns out that zoom is training their AI assistant on meeting chats or closed captioning without participant consent. Although I would hope that the liability in that scenario would mostly fall on zoom as that’s really an abuse on their part.

honestly I trust the security of FaceTime or Zoom more than that of third party telehealth apps.

Sure but zoom is hipaa compliant and FaceTime is not. Apple refuses to share a business associate agreement whereas zoom shares this with paid plans. I do agree that I seriously question the security of the small telehealth platforms that cropped up during Covid though, hipaa compliant or not. I am certain apple does security significantly better than simplepractice, doxy.me, etc but it’s the regulatory piece of handling PHI. The BAA is essential to that and apple/discord/etc have made it clear through their silence after years that they don’t want to be responsible for safe data handling of phi.

Bottom line though is if your therapist is using FaceTime/discord/etc they are ignorant to hipaa protocols or not practicing ethically, both are concerning. Very frustrating from a consumer perspective because how the fuck are you supposed to know what is and isn’t hipaa compliant. It’s silly to have to research whether your clinician is using a regulatory compliant platform but here we are, I guess

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