Close captioning on the fly has gotta be one of the coolest technology on youtube. Problem is, while a noble concept, it simply does not work. True, they have disclaimers about its faults, and explain its in beta. However, at the point that it unsympathetically skews what's actually being said in the video, this tech, in its current form does more harm to the user who may be reliant on the CC as being the only way to understand whats going on in the video.
My realization on the current state of Google's closed captioning came while watching the Michael Moore's speech in Wisconsin. In the first 5 minutes, the CC had transcrbed the main point of the speech "Our country is not Broke" to "Our country is a wash". I mean, that was the entire point of the speech, complete bastardized by the CC application. Within the same 5 minutes, it turned "Our country is awash in cash" to simply, "Our country is a loss".
While I'm all about continuing this type of technology, at some point, Google/Youtube needs to hold off on cutting it into the wild. In this condition, give folks accurate transcripts, as its better then lying to them, because they may be disabled.
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