normy foxyoreosMar 10

RE: https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/116206874904164848

I always bring up auto-captioning as a (non-LLM) technology that is probably a net-win for accessibility, but that still led to Youtube ending up with *WORSE* closed captioning, because as soon as they got machine transcription, they dropped community transcription options.

Machine transcription on Youtube led to a local maximum where community options that often resulted in better transcriptions are now unavailable and everything is kind of meh.

Show threadnormy foxyoreosMar 10

I have also mildly criticized Mastodon over this with its AI alt text features. They're not an LLM, and they're probably good for accessibility, but their existence has hobbled alt text on the platform.

We could have better community alt text controls on Mastodon, and I think part of the reason we don't is because of a mentality that accessibility is just like a chore we have to solve.

And I think the AI stuff helps reinforce that, a bit.

Show threadEugen RochkoMar 10
@foxyoreos Mastodon does not have an AI alt text feature. You may be thinking of some third party apps.
Show threadnormy foxyoreos

@Gargron is the OCR stuff not merged into the main platform?

Apologies if I'm misunderstanding the feature. And apologies if I'm making it sound like it's the same thing as like "auto describe this image", which is a *much* heavier AI use.

Mar 10 at 9:41pmWeb
Show threadnormy foxyoreosMar 10

@Gargron also fuck just realized the "AI Bullshit " label on this that I use as a standard CW for AI stuff probably makes this seem like I'm disagreeing with you.

You are 1000% right on the money with this, it's a good take, I agree with it.