Hardcore porn and other adventures with Microsoft Teams (#1302)

Topics/tags: Rants, accessibility, technology, short

The other day, I was talking to a colleague on Microsoft Teams. When I use Teams for video chat, I often turn on auto-captioning. It helps with my hearing loss. It also helps with my distractability. Plus, it’s fun to see what it thinks it hears [1].

At some point in our conversation, my colleague used the word hardcore. I don’t recall the exact context, but it was the usual meaning of seriously over-committed. Surprisingly, the Teams transcription did not include the word hardcore. Instead, it used eight asterisks, ********.

I mentioned the change, and we started talking about it. I wanted to suggest that things are contextual, and it’s only when you put porn after hardcore that the word might be a problem. Conveniently, the Teams Transcription used asterisks for porn, too.

That lead me to note that in porn’s not acceptable either, Teams did not replace the porn’s with ****’s [2].

Ah, the joy of inadequate over-screening [5].

In addition to being amused by Teams’ behavior, I find myself a bit frustrated. Don’t the hard-of-hearing deserve to see words like hardcore and porn, too? I wonder if Microcensorship is configurable [6].

I also have a new game. What four-letter and eight-letter words can you put in that sentence?

It’s only when you put Word after software that it’s a problem.

It’s only when you put talk after sleeping that it’s a problem.

It’s only when you put celt after Beantown that it’s a problem.

It’s only when you put pool after interior that it’s a problem.

It’s only when you put four after fourteen that it’s a problem.

It’s only when you put cats after cloister that it’s a problem.

It’s only when you put muse after Rebelsky that it’s a problem.

Okay, good combinations are harder to come up with than I thought. I’ll need to play a bit more with this sentence structure. Perhaps I’ll write a program to do so. Perhaps I’ll let it drop.

[1] Of course, text to read doesn’t help with my distractability.

[2] Is there a verb for replace with asterisks? Perhaps star out? Astericize [3]? It’s not really bowdlerizing the work, although it may be a form of bowdlerization [4]. Astereplace?

[3] Urban dictionary claims that astericize means To banish a sentence from the realm of correctness or grammaticality by putting an asterisk next to it in a linguistics paper.

[4] Should bowdlerization be capitalized?

[5] I find myself drawn to that phrase. It describes so many things that frustrate me. Someone does something a bit over-the-top, but it doesn’t truly achieve its goals. For example, the kind of email encryption we’re supposed to use is highly susceptible to adversary-in-the-middle [7] attacks.

[6] It appears that the profanity filtering is configurable. I find that surprising given that Microsoft doesn’t include basic features like viewing Team members in alphabetical order. Oh well, at least the deaf and hard of hearing can read profanity (when appropriate).

[7] Historically, the term is man-in-the-middle. However, women and those not on the gender binary may also choose to try to intercept an encrypted conversation. Machines might, too. AITM is a much better option.

Version 1.0 of 2024-08-16.