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Comment by rhacker | Hacker News Reader

My worry is that companies like Zoom will start offering enterprises higher paid plans that effectively install this software. So think about the next time you join a meeting you may be installing something like this. And... what if you join some of those meetings on your personal laptop?

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Zoom already basically did this, but they removed it: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/115000538083-Atten...

Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20200401215500/https://support.z...

Very old blog post on it: https://blog.zoom.us/zoom-tips-for-educators-attendee-attent...

Attention trackers sound like they would be difficult to get right.

For example, I have three monitors and one is on zoom. During the zoom conf, i've got full view of the screen, etc. But the focus is on another screen, where I continue slack/messaging/typing/coding/etc. Would an attention tracker be smart enough to realize that -- despite not being focused on the Zoom window -- that I indeed am listening and viewing it?

Gotomeeting has an "attention" metric and it's completely, utterly useless. It works by seeing if the gotomeeting window has focus. Not even attempting to track visibility, but actual window focus. It's the laziest crap imaginable, yet unchanged for years now.

Paying attention during a meeting is pretty binary. Either you're engaged or your checking emails/Slack/etc. I've yet to meet anyone who successfully multitasks in Zoom calls.

> I've yet to meet anyone who successfully multitasks in Zoom calls.

The thing is that in all too many meetings, a certain percentage of the attendees is only required for a certain period of time.

Assuming attention is binary as parent suggested, than having someone in a meeting where they listen in, but in parallel working on something else seems to me to be a problem. Maybe the meeting should be split in that case so only people who are actually required and therefore spend their full attention on, are present in the split parts. Not saying bossware is the best (or even an acceptable) solution to that problem, but it would surely be benefitial for an organization to reduce such inefficiencies.

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