Sqwiggle: Someone is watching you

The changes meant that:

1. You can prevent somebody initiating a video call by setting your status to "busy".

2. The busy flag is removed when you are the only person in the chat room.

3. The camera indicator is disabled when nobody else is in the chat room.

4. You don't accept incoming video chats, they happen automatically.

Given that I mostly used Sqwiggle in a browser tab it was very easy for me to lose track of that fact it was running. It's one of many tabs and there is no indicator my camera is active if I'm alone. I typically have headphones in too but don't always wear them, so there is often no audio cue that a chat just initiated.

This is actually something that happened. I had an active call for 3.5 minutes that I was completely unaware of with video and audio streaming to the remote caller without my knowledge, after I had set the busy flag.

I work at home, and the ability for somebody to have a live audio/video stream into my house without my permission is unsettling. Especially as the only protection mechanism I have for that is to remember to terminate the application or close that browser tab every time I walk away from the computer or want to prevent video/audio sessions.

It's been a couple of months now since I last used Sqwiggle, so perhaps the clearing of the busy flag has reverted back to earlier behaviour, but ultimately I think unless I can change my profile to prevent automatic connection of video calls I'd never be comfortable with it.

Proclaiming "I won't use Sqwiggle because then people could see me" is exactly the same as saying "I won't work at my desk because people can see me". Both traditional offices and Sqwiggle allow one to achieve privacy if they'd like. For an office, you go into a conference room or something similar. To achieve the same effect with Sqwiggle, you simply close the program or browser tab.

Sqwiggle's stated goal is to replicate the ease of determining colocated team members' status/activity when you are not colocated. No one is insisting you run it 24/7, just like no one insists you live your life at your desk at work.

A very strange and dismissive article overall. The paragraph starting with "I don’t think Sqwiggle will be around long though" seemed especially cynical.

I have one major gripe with the concept of capturing a photo on an interval. What if it catches me picking my nose? That could be embarrassing. Not picking my nose is not a solution. I am a primate with fingers and I like to pick my nose.