Zoom meetings: With the coronavirus pandemic, the world has moved to the virtual space and virtual meetings have become the new normal. However, many have felt that the meetings have been excessive and have often made up excuses to exit these meetings. Things are, however, now about to get real! Artist Sam Lavigne has designed a web extension called Zoom Escaper that would allow people to escape Zoom meetings and other video calls by faking reasons more convincingly. The web widget offers a wide variety of sounds, ranging from bad connection to a crying baby, which would lend a more believable aspect to the users’ escape reasons.
The website states that the extension allows users to self-sabotage their audio stream, which would make other users highly annoyed by their presence in the call. Zoom Escaper gives sounds like dogs barking, heavy wind, construction, a man weeping as well as echo to be added to the audio stream of the user. In order to allow users to use these features however, the website requires permission to use the microphone. A VB-Audio audio-routing software would also be needed to use this extension, as that would allow the system to shift the audio on Zoom from the computer to the Zoom Escaper extension.
However, while it is all fun and games, if used extensively by numerous users, the extension can possibly create a situation where a user legitimately facing one of these issues might be denied permission to exit the meeting because of the perception that they might be faking it. This can cause severe problems for people genuinely needing to exit the meetings for important reasons.
On the other hand, Lavigne has also created a web extension called Zoom Deleter which automatically detects the presence of the Zoom app on the user’s computer and automatically deletes it. The detection is continuous, Lavigne said.
