Relatively tame discussion with some minor outrage. Some highlights from the thread:
Remembering in-person meetings, half of the “participation” was asking to get back one slide before to check a point that went too fast, questions on points that are dealt with two slides further, people getting asked questions as a punishment for being visibly bored to death, and facts that could be checked by a 10s document search but would seem rude to be looking for right now.
If only the presenter had a backbone and could ask people to hold their questions till the end.
Turning the camera off is just a socially acceptable way of not showing up.
Classic slacktivist protest to being forced to attend a meeting 
Why do you think that someone with a camera off is not present? How can you honestly equate camera-off with absence?
My, my someone's defensive. 
Perhaps the same reason they make school children turn their cameras on to verify they're actually paying attention and not wasting time. 
What's wrong with with someone turning off their camera and eating a snack while developers dive into the weeds for 15 minutes?
Can't go a single meeting without snacking 
Well, business folks have very different world views and preferences for communication style/content than self-organizing geeks, wouldn't you say?
18 months later I LOVE video calls. I love the fact that I'm in my own comfy quite space, I love the fact that I can move from standing to sitting and back without distracting those on The calls. I love that I can turn my video and mic off and have a pace around or eat some food.
I get the feeling they would enjoy having a hamster wheel installed in their domicile
I don't feel the same way. I connect with my colleagues fairly easily, video or not. I was also raised in a world with gaming and IRC, so having to pay better attention to tone and phrasing inferences is second nature to me.
You may have developed a case of the autism buckaroo 
Personally I have started leaving the camera on because it’s incredibly tempting to just use my phone and tune out with the camera off. I have also noticed that camera off people tend to speak a lot less than those with it on.
A comment by "Gigachad" with some common sense
I think you're implying causality from camera off to speaking less
correlation doesn't imply causation! Sure showed that Gigachad 
I've put some effort into my setup in the past 24 months; multiple Elgato and Hue lights, a Streamdeck for macros and scene control, condenser microphone on an arm with an audio interface, OBS studio etc.
I can respect their dedication, it's a little overboard but I'm glad it helps them feel better and is a lot more productive than all the ones seething about having the camera on.
I have no problem with real-life meetings, but in virtual meetings I always feel on edge because it's impossible to know who's looking at me, because sight-lines don't work.
Turning the camera on literally gives PTSD
I know this just from a Twitch streamer I watch. He'll occasionally have to stream with the camera off because having the camera on takes a lot of energy
Hardest job in America 
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Okay, do you hate disabled people? Do you hate people who are not neurodivergent? You know, the world is full of neurotypicals who love to use computers. I'm not sure what world you're living in but i mean, at red hat we support all sorts of customers with all sorts of needs What if you're playing openttd from an airplane and don't have our software override installed? The towns are going to get mad at you and you're going to cause a giant scene on the plane! Listen to me you little neckbeard, system V unix people and suckless people are a bunch of libertarian holier-than-thou nerds who have no grasp on reality. They don't talk to people outside of IRC. They still use mailing lists as their main form of communication! I mean, what world are you living in people?! At red hat we make Linux for the desktop. We support user interfaces, graceful fallbacks, we develop advanced software solutions that the unix standards people call ugly. Well, if you think Red Hat's kernel patches are ugly, god knows what they'd say about Microsoft Windows! How about Apple?! You know you people say you want progress, but what do you really want? If you have a better solution for the mean towns in openTTD i mean, it's free software, people! You can make your own changes! You get it for free! Send me a patch, I love patches. I'd love to discuss the issue in a github thread, so I can say No, and then lock and limit conversation in the thread, and put it on github-drama. I love getting downboated! I'm Lennart Poettering and I love getting downboated!!!one!1! I'm not done. We make software for real people. Do you know that I've never used fluxbox? That's right. I've never honestly used fluxbox by myself. If you alternate window manager people want to come up to me, and say fluxbox is more convenient, i mean, i'm all ears people. I'm listening. Why does fluxbox exist? Why do we have afterstep? Dear god... people still use stacking window managers? I'm sorry but, I use computers to get work done. My workstation is just a tool I use to implement the abstractions I've architected on whiteboards and IRC. I don't have time for making sure all tasks can be properly backgrounded and foregrounded without altering their program state, or reading the latest garbage that the X window people of vomited up on their way out of their latest homoerotic circlejerk. There are so much more important things to be done in computing like reaching more users, reaching the world, and opening up our ideas to people who don't use alternative window managers. Do you know what? I don't even know what window manager I use, and I don't care. And I'm not telling you what text editor I use because it doesn't matter. You people need to seriously focus on the real problems in our community, which is the discrimination that my software receives just because of who i am. Why do you hate systemd? why do you hate the convenience i've provided? My amazing contributions? Did you know that every other CVE that's released is related to systemd? Like, it's just software, people. And because my name is on it you need to hyperventilate and open up urgent security reports that have been there all along? It's not my fault that my software was the one to expose the problem. The problem is in the standard, we just implement the broken standard, and then break our contract with the standard when necessary. I don't give a flying deutschmark about about what's written in the standard, what I care about is what's in the Linux kernel. Real-world scenarios. It doesn't stop there. You people target me and incriminate me. You want to read how much 4chan-level trash is in my email inbox every day? Get a life. Move out of the basement. Start contributing if you really care that much. But jesus, just stop.... whatever this is.
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