Reported in Nature this week, the study notes that audiovisual glitches break the illusion of a face-to-face meeting, damaging interpersonal judgments.

The authors argued that distorted faces, misaligned audio and visual cues, and choppy movements resulting from technical failures can create an "uncanniness, a strange, creepy or eerie feeling." //

Some might think the resources of the tech industry could eliminate such problems and their resulting impacts in the real world. But priorities seem to lie elsewhere.

The study's authors noted that older technologies like phone calls have fewer glitches now, but keep getting displaced by those that require more bandwidth. New conferencing methods such as 3D group functionality and VR will have even higher bandwidth demands.