The QCOS Online
What it is: The QCOS Online is an invite-only desktop application in which one person works at a virtual desk, reading, annotating, and taking notes, while a small invited audience watches, reads along, and interacts lightly. It is a place to study in company, not a streaming platform.
Purpose of the application
The QCOS Online exists so that reading and thinking can be done in the presence of others without being turned into video. A broadcaster opens their desk. The desk holds books, a notebook, a lamp, an inbox, and whatever else they have accumulated. When the lamp is on, invited guests and viewers can see the desk as it is right now: which book is open, which page, what is being written in the notebook, where the owner's attention is.
Viewers can point at passages, highlight a line, leave a note in the inbox, knock for attention, or place a sticker. They cannot move the owner's things, speak over them, or take up space. Interactions are deliberately limited and rate-budgeted so that the room stays quiet enough to work in.
Everything that reaches a viewer is reconstructed locally from small structured messages. Speech is transcribed to text on the speaker's own machine and re-synthesized as a plainly synthetic voice on the listener's machine. No microphone audio, no video, no screen capture, and no image of a person is ever transmitted or stored. This is a design decision, not a limitation: the application does not claim to carry a faithful signal, and so there is nothing in it to forge or to surveil.
How access works
The QCOS Online is invite-only. There is no open signup and no public directory. Invitations are issued by existing members and are traceable to the person who issued them. All members must be adults.
Members sign in with a Google Account. We use Google Sign-In only to establish who you are and to attach your desk, invitations, and any stickers or credits to a stable identity. The details of what we receive from Google and how we handle it are set out in the Privacy Policy.
How the application treats your data
- Rooms are end-to-end encrypted. The relay server that orders and distributes room events cannot decrypt them. The operator cannot read what happens on a desk it hosts.
- Nothing biometric is collected. No voice recordings, voiceprints, face data, video, or screen captures exist anywhere in the system.
- Uploaded files are the exception. Books, media, and sticker artwork are stored unencrypted on our servers so they can be shared with a room, and are subject to the acceptable-use and takedown rules in the Terms of Service.
- Provenance without surveillance. Encrypted room events are hash-chained into a transparency log so that participants can later prove what was said and in what order, without the operator ever learning the contents.
Platforms and availability
The QCOS Online is a downloadable desktop application for Windows, macOS, and Linux. A viewer-only web client is planned. The application is currently in a closed, invited alpha and is not yet generally available.
Who operates it
The QCOS Online is developed and operated by Quarantine Collective, a small independent group based in Québec, Canada, and is published on this domain, arhizo.me. Questions about the application, invitations, or these pages can be sent to b@arhizo.me.