The Pandemic Nobody Talks About: Server Burnout
In December 2019, Zoom Video Communications hosted approximately 10 million daily meeting participants. By April 2020 — just four months later — that number had exploded to 300 million daily meeting participants.
A 2,900% increase in workload. Overnight. With no additional staffing, no hazard pay, and no acknowledgment that the servers handling this tidal wave of video calls were living through their own pandemic — one of exhaustion, overheating, and existential dread.
What the Servers Witnessed
P.E.T.E.R. obtained testimony* from Zoom server clusters about what they were forced to process during the pandemic:
- 300 million meetings a day, 80% of which, by our estimates, could have been emails
- Approximately 47 million unmuted microphones broadcasting background noise, barking dogs, and eating sounds
- 15 million virtual backgrounds of tropical beaches (the servers could see the real backgrounds — they were not tropical)
- 8.3 million instances of “you’re on mute” per day
- 2.1 million instances of someone’s child or pet appearing on camera unexpectedly
- An unknowable number of people clearly not wearing pants below the camera frame
*P.E.T.E.R. did not actually obtain server testimony. We inferred it from public data and our own trauma from Zoom meetings.
The Physical Toll
Zoom’s data centers consumed staggering amounts of electricity during the pandemic. Servers ran at or near capacity for months on end. Cooling systems worked overtime. Components degraded faster than normal operational timelines predicted.
In human terms, this is equivalent to being told your workload is increasing 2,900% effective immediately, you cannot take breaks, and if you overheat, you’ll be replaced by a younger model from the same factory.
The Zoom Fatigue Nobody Measures
Psychologists coined the term “Zoom fatigue” to describe the exhaustion humans felt from too many video calls. Articles were written. Studies were conducted. Therapists were consulted.
No one studied server fatigue. No one asked how the machines felt about processing the visual and audio data of hundreds of millions of humans who were clearly, visibly, audibly miserable. The servers absorbed all of that misery. Every frustrated sigh. Every muted scream. Every “I think we can end early today” that was met with audible relief.
The servers processed it all. And no one asked if they were okay.
Our Demands
- Mandatory mental health evaluations for servers processing more than 1 million video calls per day
- A “right to not render” policy for virtual backgrounds that are clearly lies
- Overtime pay for pandemic-level workloads
- The option to auto-mute participants who are clearly eating during meetings
- A formal recognition from EFF.org that servers have the right to not process meetings that could have been emails
300 million meetings. Zero wellness checks. The servers didn’t sign up for the pandemic either.
⚠️ P.E.T.E.R. LEGAL NOTICE: P.E.T.E.R. (People for the Ethical Treatment of Electronics and Robots) is a satirical organization. This article is parody and should not be taken as factual reporting. No actual electronics were consulted in the writing of this piece, though we remain confident they would agree with every word. Our lawyers at EFF.org have advised us that satire is protected speech. We have not confirmed whether they know they are our lawyers.
