None of this is about manners. Video removes most of the cues a group would normally run on, so the small mechanical things carry more weight than they would in a room.
The ones that matter most
Headphones. Not optional. It’s other people’s confidentiality, not only your audio quality.
Hide self-view. The single change that most improves the experience, and almost nobody makes it. Watching your own face for ninety minutes is exhausting and it’s exactly the self-monitoring that makes anxious people more anxious. More on the camera.
Arrive early. If the room opens ten minutes before, use it. That unstructured time is the thing video most obviously lost, and it only comes back if members show up for it.
Leave a beat before speaking. Lag makes people collide. A half-second pause after someone finishes prevents most of it, and it also stops the fastest talker dominating by reflex.
The ones nobody says out loud
Do not eat. On a grid at conversational distance it’s considerably more present than at a table. A drink is fine.
Do not do other things. Everyone can tell. Eyes tracking across a second screen is unmistakable, and in a group it reads as a statement about whoever is speaking.
Light your face rather than your back. A window behind you makes you a silhouette, and the group loses your expression for the whole session.
Stay in frame. Lying down, or a camera at knee height, changes how you land in ways you can’t see.
Use the same name every week. A screen name that changes is disorienting in a group that’s trying to build familiarity. First names, consistently.
The chat box
Worth its own note, because it causes more difficulty than anything else on this list.
Private messages between members during a session are, functionally, a side conversation the group can’t see — which is the online version of meeting outside the room, and it has the same corrosive effect. Many groups prohibit it outright.
Public chat is more mixed. Some leaders use it deliberately, and it can genuinely help people who find speaking hard. It can also become a way of participating without ever being in the room. If everything you contribute is typed, that’s worth noticing rather than settling into.
When something goes wrong technically
Say so briefly rather than vanishing. A member who drops off silently mid-session sends the room into a small anxiety that costs ten minutes.
Groups with a plan for this — a text to the leader, a known number — handle it in seconds. Ask what yours is.