r/HonestHotTakes • u/fandomdemigod • 20h ago
serious hot take We infantalize deaf and hard of hearing people.
Companies and content creators have to stop editing closed captioning to not display curse words. It is incredibly annoying to watch a video and see the bad words edited or taken out. It would be one thing to take them out of an edited video where all audio has also been redacted, but to see the video say fuck and the the captioning say fluke or flip is annoying. Honestly I find it infantalizeing and disrespectful.
Deaf and hard of hearing people are adults and they should be able to read the content of a video without y'all taking away their autonomy. If they aren't old enough to read it as is then they probably shouldn't be watching the video anyway.
I want to be clear I am not deaf I'm just a person who has trouble processing audio without captions. There are people who can't hear at all and to take away their ability to see curse words is controlling and honestly a bit weird. Deaf and hard of hearing people deserve the right to view content as it was intended and not have it be edited as though they are children who should not be in control of what they view.
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u/fallspector 14h ago
I’m hard of hearing and I agree. I also generally hate when captions aren’t correct. Like people use them to witty or funny. Idk it just bugs me.
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u/Street-Safe-3352 18h ago
This is a common complaint in the Deaf and HOH community. It's nice to see somebody bring it up that isn't. Sorry that you're getting down voted, OP. You're speaking the truth and these people trying to act like it's different for spoken vs CC regarding monetization/network crap are being rather obtuse.
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u/fandomdemigod 16h ago
It's been bothering me for a while. I don't know many deaf people so I always wondered if it was just me annoyed.
Some people in the comments are arguing it's for the children or the money but the sound is still there! You can still hear the words the captions are editing. It's seems infantilizing and like a weird line to draw in the sand. The only people affected by changing the caption and not the audio content is the deaf and a HOH community.
I was hoping I was just imagining it and people would tell me my take was cold.
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u/Fine_Smile73 20h ago
For TikTok and other social media platforms I think creators are afraid of having their content removed or suppressed. For actual tv I’m not sure what the motivation would be unless there really are different guidelines for captions vs spoken words.
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u/Traditional-Falcon75 5h ago
I’m an interpreter and I work with a lot of live captioners. I am reasonably sure that unless it explicitly says it was censored, it’s an error rather than censorship. AI is doing probably most of the captioning these days, and it’s getting better at looking accurate while still being wildly off-base. It knows if something doesn’t make sense and it corrects itself but it corrects incorrectly. When a human does the job and chooses to censor something, they mark any change from the original. It’s ethically required, in fact. It should be something like [EXPLETIVE]. There are times when that’s actually the correct choice for complicated reasons, but mostly a human would not be doing that. So if you’re seeing replacements, unless it’s clearly a known euphemism (like it says “shoot” when you know it should be “shit”), a human brain probably did not do that.
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u/mildly-concerned-935 20h ago
Pretty sure the censoring depends on what venue it’s showing on. Like public streaming tv, they have to work around broadcast standards.
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u/fandomdemigod 20h ago
I meant more on like tictok and IG. Broadcast does have standards\rules but they would also bleep the bad word. I think it's fair to bleep the broadcast and caption. It's wild to me for people to be allowed to curse on a platform and edit the caption.
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u/Angryspazz 20h ago
Yes but usually TikToks are uploaded to thier youtube too
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u/fandomdemigod 19h ago edited 16h ago
You argument is monetization. If the rule is you can't mention the word or risk demonitozation then you cant say it either. The algorithm is checking both sound and caption. My argument is change it all or change none. The only people affected by changing only the captions are the deaf and hard of hearing. If you leave the audio the video is still getting demonitozatized.
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u/Main_Cauliflower5479 20h ago
I don't think they're infantilizing adults, I imagine it's more censoring for underage viewers.
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u/fandomdemigod 20h ago
That's what I mean underaged viewers can still hear. The words are still being said they only edit the caption.
My argument is, If you aren't old enough to read the words you're hearing then you probably shouldn't be watching the video at all.
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u/bayou8635 20h ago
Its like theres always something to complain about.
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u/SeptemberSoup 11h ago
It's like disabled people have a right to complain about ableist shit that non-disabled people don't even need to think about.
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u/bayou8635 11h ago
Yes. Everyone has a right to complain all day all that they choose to. And they choose to.
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u/SeptemberSoup 11h ago
Complaining about complaining in a sub for complaining is definitely very meta of you.
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u/VenerableWolfDad 18h ago
Meanwhile sports broadcasts turn into extremely rated R experiences for anyone who is hard of hearing or can just read lips. Watching an NFL or MLB game with my deaf buddy is always hilarious because he's always telling us what he can see them saying on the sidelines or to the refs and it is VERY different than the squeaky clean broadcast experience we all are used to.