SPEAKER: I can't believe I'm saying this, but Instagram is doing way better
than YouTube is when it comes to the captioning game.
So on March 1st, it was announced that Instagram is
now rolling out automatic captions for all video.
Last year, I swear they already test this
out a little bit for some accounts,
for some videos because scrolling through feed on some videos,
I would see captions already rolling out.
But it seems that this is now a full-throttle thing across all video.
I looked at a few videos and yeah, I 100% think Instagram
is doing extremely better than YouTube,
who announced automatic captions in 2009,
that's when I graduated high school.
Yikes.
So let's talk about that because that's what I do.
One thing that's important to note is that accessibility
is never 100% and it will never be 100%.
When it comes to captioning, it's one of those
things that will differ between people.
DeafBlind people are going to prefer a different kind
of captioning format to someone who is just deaf.
You might have someone who is deaf who has ADHD,
and that might differ regardless.
TechCrunch came out with a little bit of an article,
so I wanna read that first.
And the title says 'Instagram is rolling
out auto-generated captions for videos'.
Up until now, creators had to manually add captions to their videos.
Instagram says the addition of captions
will make Instagram more accessible
for users who are in the deaf and hard of hearing communities.
The new feature will also be useful for users
who prefer to watch videos without sound.
The launch comes as Tik Tok rolled out automatic captions in April 2021.
Do you want to talk about Tik Tok captions too in another video?
The company confirmed to TechCrunch that auto-generated captions are
launching in 17 languages, which already is more than Tik Tok.
I think Tik Tok only has it for English.
YouTube has multiple languages auto-generated as well,
but I have to tell them you don't even get the right language there.
On posts published on a social media account,
Instagram had said that the new feature was a long time coming,
you don't say, and that users will have
the option to turn the feature on or off.
Users can turn the auto-generated captions on
or off by going into their advanced settings.
Instagram knows that the AI behind the captions
will continue to improve as it learns.
Which is what happened with YouTube.
Automatic captions YouTube's,
automatic captions when it launched in 2009 was an absolute mess.
Words would be wrong half the time and occasionally now in 2022,
you do get something wrong,
but it is, the difference in quality now is astronomical,
it's diabolical.
It's definitely improved.
Hold that thought though, but now that's the way
the basic information about the captions,
let's talk about why I feel like Instagram is doing
better than YouTube when it comes to captions.
One of the main things I've always talked about,
that I've complained about with YouTube
captions even now in 2022 after again,
it launched in 2009, is the formatting is probably some
of the most annoying I've ever seen I had to deal with.
And now I'm a little bit more used to it because
of years of watching with automatic captions,
you just simply get a little bit more used to it.
But I am still so tired of YouTube captions coming
out like this with one word at a time.
It doesn't flow, it doesn't flow very well.
And you could say the same with the lack of grammar and punctuation
that comes with the automatic captions as well.
Mixed case is very, very nice.
When you're watching something that's mixed case is very,
very nice and also just the fact that everything kind of
turns into a one-word sentence, your brain like breaks.
Your brain likes to recognize when there's a break,
there's a period at the end,
there's a question mark and exclamation point, whatever, right?
So when everything just comes out like
this and it's still a run-on sentence,
I don't like that.
And I just think that by now,
I still don't know what's going on with it.
I know Google has talked about in
the past that they were still working on
the grammar part and when did they start
doing away with community captions.
Is that about two years ago when I had that meeting with Google when
I was asking them to not take away the community contribution.
You did mention something about the grammar,
and they were saying that they've been working on that.
I feel like it's been mentioned as well even back in 2019,
when I was at MIT and we had a couple of Google people within our
team for that week and I'm still just wondering what's going on
with that because guess what, Instagram's doing it already.
The thing that I like about Instagram already
is that everything is mixed case,
so it's a lot easier to read.
It's like you're reading a book already.
It's like you're reading an article on the internet and,
you know, mostly Twitter.
You know, everybody's had different typing styles that
they liked but it's more legible, at least for me.
How is it that Instagram can already get this done,
but Google slash YouTube canmnot already get this done?
Instagram also doesn't do the whole one word at a time thing.
They have the whole sentence laid out,
and the only thing that isn't my favourite
is they'll sometimes do two sentences in the same little bracket.
Ideally, you want one sentence, but it's auto-generated so, OK.
But still, it's better than YouTube's one thing at a time.
So I like that, it's just easier for me to read.
It's like I'm watching TV, I love that.
One thing that I'm disappointed by and it's the same thing with YouTube
if you know when YouTube started taking away community contribution,
they also had an issue with automatic captions writing
out slurs that were never actually said in video.
I've mentioned this in the video.
I completely agree with doing something about that because
if you're not saying it, you shouldn't be saying it,
but especially if you're not saying it already and the automatic
captions are putting it in ways that poses a problem.
But because of that, what ended up happening is
YouTube just started censoring everything.
So if you said the F-word, the swear word,
not the slur or the F-word, you know,
I'm censoring myself because I don't want to get demonetized but
if you're actually saying these words, YouTube would sensor that.
If you're saying the words out loud in the video already
and you're not putting the leaping sound over it,
YouTube will still censor in the words which is annoying because one,
the software already knows you're saying
it out loud, what's the difference?
I know creators will also censor in the captions that they're doing,
the captions themselves, you're wasting your time.
And two, just treat people who need captions like their babies.
Like, I already know the person is saying it.
Listen, I'm not the greatest lip reader in the world.
I said it, I'm very bad at lip-reading unless I have some
sort of assistance but I know what swear words look like.
So I know that you're saying it, and if I'm putting headphones on,
I know if you're bleeping it or not.
So for YouTube to be censoring that is actually very annoying.
Instagram does the same thing.
They've been doing it and the stories in
the automatic captions story sticker,
now they're doing it here as well.
What's the point?
Why?
What's the point?
If the creator is already censoring the audio itself with
the bleep sound then I understand that the captions would do
the same thing and thought the captions would actually probably
just write out bleep or beep or something like that, right?
They want to actually censor just half the work because
then they wouldn't know what the word is.
But when it's already being said out loud, why are we censoring it?
It's absolutely ridiculous.
Well, actually, now I think about it,
actually now that I think about it and the stories,
at least when somebody is swearing,
I know because I swear in my own stories they will bleep
it probably because the captions are bleeped.
So yeah.
Now that suddenly puts the sound over it.
So, OK, but still, chances are in an actual video post,
I don't think it's, is it going to be bleeped?
I don't know, someone is going to have to verify that for me.
But why are we censoring words in the captions that
aren't being censored in the actual video?
I don't understand, and I really wish they would stop with that.
So far in terms of accuracy when it comes to words,
I'm not really noticing anything being completely wrong.
I don't follow a whole lot of people that post a lot of
videos and if I'm following people that post videos,
they are using the captions sticker that
comes from the stories and the reels
itself not the other automatic captions that come from the bottom,
or I'm following dancers so they're just putting their dance videos up
and I'm not really paying attention to the captions there,
but I did for this.
But so far, it seems like everything's been pretty accurate.
My only worry is that the caption might not show up.
I know this is an issue with Tik Tok that I need to
talk about where somebody will hand the video up,
they'll have the captains up on a video,
but then the captions don't actually show up.
I've had people be like, Ricky, why are you not captioning your
Tik Tok when I had the captions up but for some reason,
it's not showing up on their phones and I don't know why.
That's an investigation for another day, yeah.
Overall, Instagram wins, YouTube loses
and I don't understand why considering how
much longer automatic captions have been
out on YouTube, but it is what it is.
I'd love to figure out why it is that way.
I'm very happy that Instagram is coming out with
more accessibility and that deaf people
can enjoy videos more because I've been having
to unfollow a lot of people lately,
especially mutuals and that's kind of sad but I'm just like,
if I can't enjoy your content,
if you don't care enough about me to be able to enjoy your content,
then what's the, why?
Why do I care?
And speaking of Instagram, if you don't follow me already,
you can do that right here.
If you've been seeing the few videos lately on your
feed that has automatic captions being rolled up,
let me know what you think down below in
the comments is it accessible for you.
I'd like to know the details, and let's have a conversation about it.
If you made it to the end of this video, thank you.
I appreciate that very much.
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Again, thank you for taking the time
out of your day to watch this video.
I very much appreciate it, and I will see you later.
Bye.