Just did a quick search and found that teams does in fact support some sort of local-only streaming:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-US/microsoftteams/use-ndi-in-m...

I do trust Microsoft to collect all tracking data that's possible at all, but at least there is also a valid use case here.

It's even somehow plausible that they would require this permission for any kind of video streaming - to make sure all permissions are present before someone wants to start a locally streamed call.

I assumed it was to gracefully deal with handoff from one device to another while in a meeting since you can start on one device and continue with another, or maybe to share your screen from another device etc. It would be nice to know why exactly certain permissions are requested; sometimes that’s done by telling you what feature it might break if you don’t grant those permissions.

It saves Microsoft traffic if people are in the same office building / corporate VPN and can exchange audio/video streams directly vs having to go through a MS-provided STUN/TURN intermediate server.

For MS I suspect either incompetence or laziness and just checking all the permissions (because a lot of Teams seems poorly thought out and designed by committee, probably an “agile” one too).

As for Tick Tock it’s obviously spyware meant for direct user identification. How anyone can use it when it’s uploading their biometric information (face, voice) to the CCP is beyond stupidity.