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Meetings that were once conducted in person are now a grid of tiny video boxes on a screen.
In the United States, our online infrastructure is ill-equipped to handle the load.
Anecdotally, heres what my internet situation has been for the last five days.
My downstream traffic, despite a bazillion modem reboots, is basically nonexistent.
My upstream traffic, however, is entirely fine.
My experience is not unique.
Much like social distancing, the internet will only get unclogged if everyone chills out a bit.
This is why it is your duty, as a member of American society, to downgrade your bitrate.
Allow me to illustrate this concept with math.
A 1,080p video (1,920 by 1,080 pixels) has2,073,600 pixels exactly one quarter of a 4K video.
A video at 720p, technically high-definition but not as good as 1080p, has921,600pixels.
A video at 480p, which is DVD-quality, has409,920 pixels.
See how each number gets significantly smaller?
The point remains: higher-resolution video uses more bandwidth.)
I dont think were quite there yet.
Even if you do notice the slightly degraded quality, who cares?
This is about everyone.
