ListNook

blurker Mar 24, 2026 +411

This used to be regulated by the FCC and would have fallen under ADA-compliance rules. And yes, they should have a lawsuit. Unfortunately since streamers have taken over and we know longer have TV airing over public airwaves, these private companies seem to feel no obligation towards providing accurate captioning.

411

faciepalm Mar 24, 2026 +62

I've been using YouTube music forever. Not so long ago they apparently deleted the lyrics for every single song, opting instead to generate them when you play it. Click a song, lyrics unavailable, refresh, get lyrics but they've obviously messed the words up. These are for songs from before chatgpt was well known

62

blurker Mar 25, 2026 +18

that is infuriating...like they went out of their way to take something that was working perfectly well without AI and make it demonstrably worse just to justify their boondoggle of an investment. And for what? A text file is the size of a handful of kbs. An algorithm actively transcribing lyrics is so much more of an energy/data burden. Madness!

18

Common-Trifle4933 Mar 25, 2026 +1

They’re bad enough for TV, for music they’re absolute dog shit and it’s an unbelievable decision to go this way. I frequently see songs where not one single line is correct.

1

ComfortableExotic646 Mar 24, 2026 +88

It's not even about OTA or cable or internet. It's literally discrimination against hearing impaired people. They are being given scraps printed out by a computer after they've paid the same price for a service as everyone else. They deserve to have a human type the script into a f****** notepad at least.

88

blurker Mar 25, 2026 +7

I agree. It is absolutely discrimination and after reading through all of the comments today, I'm actually thinking there's a really solid class action lawsuit a'brewing.

7

AlsoIHaveAGroupon Mar 25, 2026 +4

This does not appear to be true. I'm not a lawyer, but [National Association of the Deaf vs. Netflix 2012](https://wsc.us.org/case-netflix): > was a landmark legal action that established streaming video services must provide closed captions under the Americans with Disabilities Act. This 2012 settlement fundamentally changed accessibility requirements for online video content and set precedents that continue to shape streaming accessibility today. > 100% Captioning: Netflix required to caption all streaming content by 2014. > Quality Standards: Captions must be accurate, synchronous, complete, and properly placed. > Ongoing Compliance: All new content must be captioned upon release.

4

blurker Mar 25, 2026 +4

Well that's great, except it's clearly not being enforced or complied with.

4

oversoul00 Mar 24, 2026 -69

This is how you invite government entities like the FCC into your domain and ask them to regulate and make rules for you. Maybe you want to win this one battle but if the FCC were regulating the Internet like they regulate broadcast TV you'd be unhappy. There are unintended consequences to these arguments.

-69

justeandj Mar 24, 2026 +21

Could you give some examples of negative impacts?

21

oversoul00 Mar 24, 2026 -27

It's the FCC currently trying to enforce equal time rules on Stephen Colbert for one. Wouldn't it be nice if Colbert could just make the show he wants?

-27

a679591 Mar 25, 2026 +3

That's on broadcast television though, not on Internet.

3

oversoul00 Mar 25, 2026

The difference being that the FCC regulates broadcast television and not the Internet...that's my point. If you invite them to solve this problem you're inviting them to regulate the Internet like broadcast television. In an ideal world the government solves the one specific problem you asked them to solve, in reality they are trying to justify their existence and so you've got to be careful about your invitations.

0

ppitm Mar 24, 2026 +21

We wouldn't be in such deep shit if the FCC had maintained its regulatory powers over the media, such as the equal time rule and limitations on media consolidation.

21

oversoul00 Mar 24, 2026 -14

The equal time rule was recently used against Cobert to prevent an interview from being aired. You had to go to the currently unregulated Internet to watch it. Imagine if a place like Reddit was forced to give equal time to MAGA.

-14

ppitm Mar 24, 2026 +20

The equal time rule wasn't used. That was just lawyers caving to an illegal threat by the government in order to forestall further illegal retaliation, not the application of an actual regulation. If the government tried to take your gun because they claimed your militia wasn't well-regulated, that wouldn't "using" the Second Amendment.

20

oversoul00 Mar 24, 2026 -5

The threat came from the FCC citing the equal time rule. You're doing some crazy gymnastics where when the rule is applied in a way you like it's regulation and when it isn't it's an illegal threat.

-5

viscosity-breakdown Mar 24, 2026 +159

It sucks that everything is getting worse all the time.

159

SaltyShawarma Mar 24, 2026 +59

Thanks AI. And yes, the subtitles are shit thanks to AI. Alexa has been absolute garbage since they incorporated their modern ai. Dumped that entire hardware.

59

Ralph_Finesse Mar 24, 2026 +36

We were warned about late-stage capitalism and polycrisis for literal decades now we're in the endgame so-to-speak shit is only going to get worse so buckle up I guess.

36

CoolBakedBean Mar 24, 2026 +7

if only more people voted in primaries . right now only 20% of americans do. if the other 80% started voting then maybe we could get politicians who would stop late stage capitalism i’m a democrat but even if you’re republican we had people like andrew yang in the primaries who knew about this happening and was offering solutions .

7

work4work4work4work4 Mar 25, 2026 +4

> if only more people voted in primaries Considering both major parties have actively argued they don't have to follow their own party or primary rules, can ignore the votes in the primary, and can pick whoever they want anyway, I'm not sure it would have even mattered. It's a nice thought, but one that puts way too much blame on the average person for what are largely systemic problems.

4

CoolBakedBean Mar 25, 2026 +2

the republicans didn’t want trump back in 2015/2016 but he got the nomination due to the low turnout in republican primaries meaning only the most dedicated far right people vote and they picked trump. it’s the best thought, not just a nice one. it’s the 80% of people who don’t bother to vote in primary elections who ruined our democracy

2

work4work4work4work4 Mar 25, 2026 +2

> the republicans didn’t want trump back in 2015/2016 but he got the nomination due to the low turnout in republican primaries meaning only the most dedicated far right people vote and they picked trump. Trump largely got the nomination because the Democratic party had been platforming far-right candidates for literal years by that point using Democratic donor dollars. Claire McCaskill even wrote about it in extensive detail in her book, and championed her work getting "legitimate r***" Todd Akin the Republican nomination using Democratic fundraising dollars before making nice and joining the Clinton campaign. > it’s the best thought, not just a nice one. it’s the 80% of people who don’t bother to vote in primary elections who ruined our democracy ["Attorneys representing the DNC claim that the Democratic National Committee would be well within their rights to “go into back rooms like they used to and smoke cigars and pick the candidate that way.” By pushing the argument throughout the proceedings of this class action lawsuit, the Democratic National Committee is telling voters in a court of law that they see no enforceable obligation in having to run a fair and impartial primary election."](https://observer.com/2017/05/dnc-lawsuit-presidential-primaries-bernie-sanders-supporters/) Again, you're blaming people that couldn't have mattered any less as argued by the DNC itself, while absolving people who actively made things worse in hopes of helping their own political power. It'd be nice if what you were saying was correct, that there was a fair primary just waiting for voters to show up, in reality, it wouldn't have mattered and that's a large part of the reason on why participation is so low to begin with.

2

CoolBakedBean Mar 25, 2026 +4

80% of people could have chosen anyone to win the primary . but instead they sit home. basically everything you say is meaningless because they know that 80% of people don’t even bother to vote so why do they have to worry. but let’s say one election 100% of people voted. and half of them wrote in a protest vote. all of a sudden you’d get more AOC type candidates realizing they can win. i’m doing my part. i’m part of the 20%. and until its 100% or close to it, i don’t have faith in my fellow americans and im not gonna bother to do more. voting in primaries is the least you can do but apparently that makes me this elite top 20% of the coolest and best americans

4

OkStrategy685 Mar 25, 2026 -11

Sounds like you've been fooled into thinking that all politicians aren't scum. They are. All of them.

-11

ShutterBun Mar 25, 2026 +6

Obama, Trump, yep they’re both about the same. /s

6

OkStrategy685 Mar 25, 2026

He bailed out all those banks. They're both twats. get real

0

Entfly Mar 25, 2026 +2

>Alexa has been absolute garbage since they incorporated their modern ai. I got made redundant because of that shite

2

Farlandan Mar 24, 2026 +107

It's crazy, me and my wife watched "The Burbs" series and the subtitles get the dialogue wrong like 75% of the time. The first episode swaps the spoken dialogue "Vodka" for "F***." I oftentimes have subtitles on just so I don't miss dialogue but I had to actually turn off the the subtitles on that show because the Subtitles were completely wrong so frequently.

107

EuphoricReplacement1 Mar 24, 2026 +55

There's zero excuse for this wirh scripted content!

55

hyzmarca Mar 25, 2026 -4

They'd have to pay extra royalties to use the official subtitles. Making their own saves them a few cents per million views.

-4

ClappedCheek Mar 25, 2026 +8

lol you dont need to pay royalties for subtitles

8

thejesse Mar 24, 2026 +28

Saw Netflix caption the NBA player "Kon Knueppel" as "cocknipple."

28

aideya Mar 24, 2026 +9

Things like this just show that even worse than AI generated, they’re not even bothering to proofread it.

9

MilesHighClub_ Mar 25, 2026 +2

Peacock seems to be the worst offender with this. Ted season 2 has a bunch of incorrect subtitles. And SNL might as well not have subtitles at all with how inaccurate they are

2

AnonymousDude55 Mar 24, 2026 +14

Honestly I’d prefer this to whatever the f*** Peacock is doing for some programming (Dateline in my case) where the subtitles are delayed by like 3-5 seconds and thus rendered completely useless.

14

whoa_disillusionment Mar 24, 2026 +6

OMG as a loyal Dateline watcher and subtitle user this drives me crazy

6

Common-Trifle4933 Mar 25, 2026 +1

I have Peacock but still download the pirate versions of some of their shows because then the subtitles are either correct or I can change their timing in VLC. There’s a simple button to move the subs back or forward in 0.2 second increments, never seen a streaming service with that option. Same thing with the dynamic audio flattening or whatever it’s called, where it reduces the gap between loud and quiet parts so you can hear the dialogue without getting your ears blown out by the next sound effect. Don’t see it on any of my streamers, right there in the VLC menu. And shuffle mode for sitcoms, and playlists so you can have it shuffle between Futurama, American Dad and King of the Hill. The streaming services are sorely lacking in features.

1

flyingalbatross1 Mar 24, 2026 +21

Just as we reach the peak of subtitles with streaming services - text based with user changeable settings Then they have to be enshittified

21

sigren22 Mar 24, 2026 +48

Tuly despise this. The sheer magnitude of enshitification going on right now is actually and truly insane and streaming has been hit HARD.

48

ImaginaryNerve Mar 24, 2026 +20

I have audio processing issues so I have captions and subtitles on all the time. For about...8 to 10 years or so, subtitles were amazing and very common. It almost seemed like they were finally figuring out the "technology" to provide accurate captioning. Then I started noticing worse and worse subtitles on stuff like YouTube shorts, TikTok, FB reels? Insta reels? idfk, I can't keep them straight. And now its starting to crossover into the streaming services making some shows a frustrating watch. The really annoying ones are foreign audio movies and tv shows that have an English dub and the subtitles don't match the dub at all--they just transfer the English subtitles from whatever language the original was on and assume the dub will be the same (it often isn't). Genuinely wish these people making these decisions would have to use the product for several weeks/months rather than rely on just signing off on whatever paper approves it.

20

hyzmarca Mar 24, 2026 +18

Big difference. A decade ago, they were using classic deterministic speech recognition software. Which was getting pretty good. Now, they're using AI Large Language Models. Which are non-deterministic black boxes and aren't nearly as good at speech recognition as older software. But AI, it's the future.

18

DontMakeMeCount Mar 24, 2026 +4

A lot of it is bundling. AI firms know it’s enshittification, they know they have to create a market so they’ve developed a pretty good pitch for corps based on “you’re spending more money to provide a service people take for granted, you can increase profits and provide competitive (i.e. just as shitty as your competition) services”. And they throw in accounting software, tech management and cloud-based services at a d*******. And they’re right. No one was posting about how great X streaming’s subtitles were before X was the last to go to AI. We weren’t willing to pay a premium for X and we don’t have any other options at this point anyway. It’s a race to the bottom until people demand better.

4

work4work4work4work4 Mar 25, 2026 +1

> A decade ago, they were using classic deterministic speech recognition software. While this was sometimes true, this was also a work from home job all done by actual people usually, even if it was proofreading a pre-generated text.

1

TessaThompsonBurger Mar 24, 2026 +27

On a somewhat similar note, YouTube allows creators to enable censored subtitles, even when the audio is uncensored, which also flies right in the face of the ADA. They get away with these "little" indignities because it takes resources to challenge them, and they won't change it on their own.

27

jesuspoopmonster Mar 24, 2026 -28

I am guessing that is an auto censor thing that happens of it manual its because subtitles are more likely to get them flagged. Either way its very minor

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TessaThompsonBurger Mar 24, 2026 +28

>Either way its very minor Because it doesn't effect you.

28

jesuspoopmonster Mar 25, 2026

Is it an ADA violation is a show bleeps out a swear?

0

TessaThompsonBurger Mar 25, 2026 +1

No, its an ADA violation if a show doesn't bleep out a swear but they censor the closed captioning.

1

jesuspoopmonster Mar 25, 2026

I am interested in seeing the wording in the law

0

TessaThompsonBurger Mar 25, 2026

You can go spend your time finding it yourself then.

0

jesuspoopmonster Mar 25, 2026 +1

All my research said this is a not a real thing and is spread as false information

1

TessaThompsonBurger Mar 25, 2026 +1

I'm sure it did.

1

jesuspoopmonster Mar 25, 2026 +1

It seems to be a something pedophiles will claim as a sort of code

1

AdagioElectrical6764 Mar 24, 2026 +10

> Ludicrous > wanton > English language comprehension of a Golden Retriever I like the way you write.

10

RonnieDaBear Mar 24, 2026 +5

I notice they often generate the exact opposite of what is said in the video.

5

StrictCelery Mar 24, 2026 +5

I notice that some shows have separate“English subtitles” and “English subtitles (CC)” for some shows and granted I haven’t paid enough to attention to see if there’s a difference in transcription of spoke dialogue or if one just has the sound/tone/etc labels…. But I wonder if this is how they get around it. A lot of streaming services refer to them as just “subtitles” and not “closed captions”.

5

Brekldios Mar 25, 2026 +3

So I got curious about this because Jojo SBR dropped on Netflix and an important motivation for a character joining the race is specifically that he is taking “the white mans money” it says this in the English subs. English (CC) says “to get the prize money I’ll beat them at their own game” which completely sanitized why he even joined

3

StrictCelery Mar 25, 2026 +2

I wonder if that’s a more literal translation of what was in the Japanese script. I remember this came up with another show where one subtitle track matched the English dub (which ofc is localized and written to match lip flaps as much as possible) and the other was just a translation of the original language script.

2

Brekldios Mar 25, 2026 +1

unsure about matching lip flaps but having read the manga i noticed that the anime didn't animate when Sandman talked to his sister and more plainly tells her that he intends on buying back the land stolen from them using white man money. So at least here the regular english subtitles and not (CC) are more accurate (Japanese dub - English subtitles) (or i'm silly and that part comes later than i remember)

1

burlimonster Mar 24, 2026 +3

Yes. It’s lawsuit worthy. Several of them have already been sued for this and have gone into legal remediation over it. They pass their quarterly check-ins, eventually the oversight is over, and they move on. Since it’s so prevalent, you really just need to find a lawyer willing to take the case.

3

CertifiedSheep Mar 25, 2026 +1

What are the damages? Obviously I agree this is wrong and should be fixed, but in order to successfully sue them you would need to prove that people were materially harmed by seeing the wrong subtitles.

1

boomosaur Mar 24, 2026 +6

You'd think the integrity of actually having accurate subtitles would be important... but sadly in this era most people don't even care about accuracy or paying attention to the story. They are just in it to occasionally look away from their phone and see some drama.

6

clydefrog811 Mar 24, 2026 +10

CEOs says integrity doesn’t increase profits

10

Ralph_Finesse Mar 24, 2026 +4

What is integrity?

4

TurkeyPhat Mar 24, 2026 +2

It's what we can't have if we want to take over the world Pinky.

2

Worf_Of_Wall_St Mar 24, 2026 +2

I don't understand why every service has to regenerate the closed captions for everything, even older stuff. Does anyone from the industry know why that is?

2

gumdrop83 Mar 25, 2026 +1

I’m not sure if it’s computer generated or not, but I’ve been watching some old British shows available on my non-British streaming platforms, and the captions aren’t even close.

1

bilyl Mar 25, 2026 +2

The weird thing is that it’s not even like live closed captioning where you had pressure to keep pace. There’s all kinds of AI shit to run on it to make it actually good. For example tune it with a known corpus of characters. Or…. Add the f****** script to the subtitle generator

2

PunisherCastle Mar 25, 2026 +2

As one would expect, the subtitles get slang completely wrong. And for some urban shows, slang is a big part of the dialogue. It’s frustrating. If they would let me fix it, I would.

2

Familiar-Banana-8116 Mar 25, 2026 +1

I have a hobby of collecting blu ray/4K and loading them onto my Plex server. (not pirating, I own the media) There is a big library of publicly available (read free) subtitle tracks for just about everything. Sometimes my media doesn't have subtitles, sometimes I mess up and forget to transfer the subtitles from the disc - I can always use that source. (it is like 3 button presses on Plex. Access to that stuff is built in)

1

RosieQParker Mar 25, 2026 +1

I really gotta hand it to whoever captions BBC shows. Accurate, good descriptors and they're even colour coded.

1

Jet-Let4606 Mar 24, 2026 +1

No shit. I was watching a short today and the caption had "kill anyone" as "khlanyone".

1

apokrif1 Mar 24, 2026 +1

-> r/legaladviceofftopic ?

1

matadorobex Mar 25, 2026 +1

The state should use violence to forbid a company from leveraging AI to translate text due to inaccuracies? Yikea

1

happy2harris Mar 25, 2026 +1

The post didn’t mention violence. Was there a comment that you meant to reply to instead of posting a top level comment?

1

ppitm Mar 25, 2026

You better hope the state uses violence, otherwise you're going to be a virgin for life.

0

[deleted] Mar 24, 2026 -4

[deleted]

-4

ppitm Mar 24, 2026 +6

What if I told you that the words the actors say are written down before they recite them. You could absolutely pay a sweatshop in Mumbai $9/hr to add timestamps, if you wanted to do the bear minimum. One simple regulatory change at the FCC and the streamer would have no choice.

6

geekyjustin Mar 24, 2026 +1

Or, if you want to use AI, use AI to add the timestamps. YouTube's AI does a great job instantly matching up a script with the correct timestamps, as long as I give it an accurate script for a video.

1

Batby Mar 25, 2026

then you can't afford to make the content and should go into another business.

0

happy2harris Mar 25, 2026

In this thread: lots of people complaining about bad subtitles. Hardly anyone addressing the legal issue. I am not a lawyer, but according to a web search, platforms like netflix are obligated to provide closed captions under many circumstances. I don’t think that the use of AI would be a litigable issue. I would think that the accuracy is the issue. Presumably there is a (currently undefined) threshold of accuracy that is allowed. Nobody would think that netflix should be in breach if there was one tiny error in an entire movie. On the other hand, a stream of random words would obviously not be in compliance. Somewhere between those is the threshold. There are also phrases like “reasonable accommodation”. Lawyers on one side would argue that it has already been shown that much more accurate closed captions are possible, so anything less is unreasonable. Lawyers on the other side would argue that it is unreasonable to expect them to pay for translation when they can get it almost for free. When it comes to whether it can be a class action lawsuit, again I am not a lawyer but probably, yes. However courts don’t like to actually force companies to do something. They generally like to just award monetary damages. Hopefully the damages would be enough to encourage companies to provide accurate captions.

0

[deleted] Mar 25, 2026

[deleted]

0

ppitm Mar 25, 2026 +2

Prime and Netflix's subtitles are very often trash. It might not be an LLM, but they are still auto-generated and inaccurate.

2

bob101910 Mar 24, 2026 -5

20 years ago, TV closed captioning wasn't 100% accurate either. Some shows having wildly different subtitles. Especially music videos.

-5

Weaubleau Mar 24, 2026 -1

How often is the word "scrotum" incorrectly inserted?

-1

Ludicrously inaccurate computer-generated subtitles are proliferating on streaming services. Would hearing-impaired people have grounds for a class action lawsuit?

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