lugarn - Tumblr blog

lugarn · 9 hours ago

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boycotting one of the few all-queer streaming services out there just because they're finally--years later than everybody else--getting into AI subtitles isn't the social justice win some people apparently think it is.

if you are angry and want to do a real social justice, something that will affect real peoples' lives, email gaga and ask for a subtitle tier where you can pay more for your service in order for them to keep more human translators.

that's what reality is: if you want Gaga to keep human translators, then you have to pay for them to keep human translators.

if human translation is important to you, if you don't want AI subtitles, email gaga and let them know you will pay more to keep human translators. put your money where your tumblr politics are or shut up about a company joining the rest of their industry openly & quite late.

subtitle translation, language-centricity, and what support should or shouldn't look like in an LGBTQ+ fan space

I have some thoughts on the discussion that has erupted based on a post by @watchthisqqq regarding Gaga's announced plan to expand their use of AI subtitles. The thread of replies on that post is getting long, though, so I thought starting a post of my own was the way to go.

To summarize the discussion so far:

A lot of folks have made important points already. @twig-tea clarified the announcement, raised concerns about the precedent it sets, but pointed out that it's a good thing they're being transparent. @italianpersonwithashippersheart pointed out that more information on the way the AI in question was trained and its energy usage would be important in order to gauge its impact and that making content accessible across more languages is, of course, important as well. @my-rose-tinted-glasses noted that there's significant reason to believe Gaga has already used AI subs previously and noted that it's reasonable for consumers not to want to patronize a business that doesn't make offering decent subs in their language a priority. @lurkingshan noted that competing platforms are already using AI subs as well and reported seeing other calls for action against Gaga that didn't seem proportional given the much larger companies that engage in the same practices people criticize Gaga for, including the use of AI subs. @wei-ying-kexing-apologist noted that Viki's use of volunteer-based subtitles is also a questionable business practice, suggested communicating with Gaga directly about this issue made more sense than considering a boycott, and noted MDL's apparent exclusion of references to Gaga as evidence of a lack of respect for the platform in fandom.

Before I start talking about my own viewpoint here, I want to stress that I think there's very little actual disagreement happening here. I think all of the points of view I mentioned above could actually be consistent with one another if framed in the right way. Everyone involved in this conversation so far has very similar values and goals. We're all supportive of the work Gaga does and none of us take the idea of being critical of them lightly, much less taking action that could prove harmful to them.

First off, I agree that taking action to start some kind of boycott effort is premature at best. I also hear the sound arguments people are making against engaging in a boycott even if other efforts to influence Gaga on this issue end up failing. I wouldn't fault @watchthisqqq for simply mentioning the possibility, however. I thought they made it clear in their post that they were still at the stage of considering potential action and inviting input on how best to pursue that, not putting forward a defined plan or making a call to action.

I think we should keep in mind that just mentioning the word "boycott" is not likely to harm a business. Boycotts are notoriously difficult to put into action. Even if a campaign to boycott Gaga were justified and advisable, it wouldn't be likely to gain many participants or yield significant results. At the same time, when we take any sort of action to try to change the business practices of some kind of corporate entity, the fact that we have the power to take our business elsewhere is always a part of that, whether it's spoken or not. Even filling out a comment form to state our opposition to the use of AI subtitles is an action that only has the potential to make an impact because Gaga, like any business, knows that keeping customers happy is necessary if they're going to maintain, much less gain, a certain number of subscribers. In other words, the potential threat of losing business is inevitably part of any attempt on the part of consumers to change a business's practices whether the word "boycott" is used or not.

I agree with @wei-ying-kexing-apologist that Viki should be paying their subtitlers and that not doing so is not a sound or optimally ethical business practice. That being said, I think it takes agency away from the volunteers who work on Viki subs unjustifiably if we don't acknowledge that they choose freely to participate in creating subtitles and doubtless get a great deal of satisfaction from that participation. As someone who has worked on a fansub myself, I can attest that when you care enough about a piece of media to put in the necessary effort to create or co-create subtitles, what you want more than anything is for those subtitles to make that piece of media accessible to the broadest possible audience while maintaining accuracy toward the source material. One of the biggest differences between making a fansub and volunteering to create subs for Viki is that in the latter case, someone is profiting from the work of subtitlers. And that's absolutely important. But another salient difference is the fact that Viki subs reach a much wider audience than any fansub possibly could, which again is something that is of great value to those of us who create subtitles out of love for a particular show. I have actually considered participating in Viki's crowdsourced subtitle projects myself because of the potential impact they have. There's a lot more we could say about this complex topic, and maybe it's worthy of its own discussion. But personally, I don't think it's comparable to using AI subs for a multitude of reasons, including environmental impact and the resulting quality of the subs.

@wei-ying-kexing-apologist also made an interesting observation about Gaga being omitted from MDL listings as a streaming source in their post. I'm not entirely convinced that it's germane to this discussion. But I do think it's important to note, so I devoted a separate post to talking about it.

I think @lurkingshan's point about other services' use of AI subs is important to keep in mind. We should be taking care to apply criteria consistently. I'm not surprised that this need would stand out to a fellow social scientist like Shan, since we've had that kind of consistency drilled into us as an integral part of any legitimate effort to learn about the world. That said, I don't think this point necessarily in any way lessens the importance of responding to Gaga's AI announcement (not that I think Shan is saying that either). I'm going to circle back to this point a bit later.

I want to particularly highlight what @my-rose-tinted-glasses wrote about her experiences with Gaga's existing subtitles and her strong belief that they are already using AI-generated material. This is especially important to pay attention to as it is something that's highly likely to be invisible to those of us who are native English speakers unless we are highly fluent in another language and watch shows with subtitles in that language.

I don't know firsthand what it's like to be involved in the tumblr QL community as someone for whom English is a second (or third, fourth, etc.) language. But I've noticed that my friends who fall into this category rarely mention that fact in their posts and tend not to bring it up in private conversations until I've gotten to know them rather well. I even have some tumblr mutuals I consider real friends who have never specified what country they're from or reside in currently. (And I don't ask! If they want to tell me, they will.)

There are exceptions to this, of course. Some folks who aren't native Anglophones are very upfront about where they're from. But it's something I've seen a lot, enough that I started making a specific effort not to assume English is someone's first language or that they live in an Anglophone country unless and until that's confirmed (something I realize now I shouldn't have been doing in the first place). I've also noticed that even when folks mention that they're from a non-English speaking country, they often avoid mentioning which one specifically. That's their right, naturally. I don't mean to imply that anyone should be obligated to do so. But I think it raises the possibility that people might be concerned that they'll be scrutinized, judged, stereotyped, or pigeonholed if they mention their home country/country of origin. If that is a concern, it's probably based on their lived experience and not something to be taken lightly. As a result, I'm pretty sure that the issues with subtitles in non-English languages on sites like Gaga aren't as likely to be discussed in spaces where native Anglophones tend to dominate the space as they would be under different circumstances, even when the people in question are fluent English speakers who are more than capable of discussing those issues with us in English.

Of course, native Anglophone folks like myself don't just get to take up more space in places like the tumblr QL fan community. We also get our subtitle needs prioritized again and again. As with most forms of privilege, we didn't ask to be given this status, but we still have it and benefit from it and have an obligation to do everything we can to make things more equitable for those who don't share that status. Another way that this resembles other forms of privilege is the fact that it's largely invisible to us unless we make a point of looking for it. Occasionally circumstances will highlight it. For example, sometimes fansubs in other languages pop up for a new show while English ones don't. We might be tempted to complain before it dawns on us that we're just briefly being put in a position that non-Anglophone folks are put in on a constant basis.

I find it highly likely that English subtitles are not only more widely available but also, on average, more likely to be of decent quality. It's not hard to see how, as @my-rose-tinted-glasses's post suggests, English subtitles would also be less likely to be obviously AI-generated. For this reason, I think the native Anglophone folks among us need to be really wary of basing any assumptions about subtitles, whether it relates to quality, the likelihood AI was used in their production, or other matters, on our experiences with English subs—unless, of course, we confine ourselves to commenting on our experiences as English speakers only.

Getting back to what @my-rose-tinted-glasses said: I trust Rose's judgment on this, particularly since she has said that she has a high degree of certainty in this case. If, as she contends, Gaga is already using AI subs, what appeared to be praiseworthy transparency in their recent announcement is...not so praiseworthy. Some transparency is better than none, certainly. But if they make an announcement like this without noting current or past AI use, it's somewhat dishonest by omission.

I said above that I would come back to the point @lurkingshan made about comparing Gaga to other streaming services and her observation that she has seen people seemingly holding Gaga to a more stringent standard than other services, including calls to boycott. I don't want to detract from her salient point about consistency. There's no point in trying to engage in anything resembling "ethical consumption" if we aren't consistent in how we apply our criteria. It would clearly be indefensible to suggest that any action, whether in the form of a boycott or something else, be taken against Gaga for doing the same things other services do while ignoring their harmful practices.

But there's another side of this, I think. Gaga's specific mission to offer LGBTQ+ content and their status as a Taiwan-based business are both salient reasons to support them. I want to be very clear here: I don't think anyone involved in the subtitle discussion has advocated unwavering, unqualified support for GagaOOLaLa or suggested lowering our standards where they are concerned. But I do think that there's a temptation in conversations like this one, that kind of hangs around under the surface, to feel protective toward an explicitly LGBTQIA-oriented business in a way that could make it hard to criticize them. And falling prey to that would be a real mistake.

I believe that Gaga's commitment to the LGBTQ+ community is sincere and that the value they place on community voices is the best possible reason to support them. But their alliance with the community isn't a reason to spare them criticism. I actually think that in some ways, as long as we aren't engaging in the kind of inconsistency Shan cautions us against, it makes sense to hold them to a higher standard than we would other streaming services. This is partly because if they want our loyalty as members of the queer community they owe it to us to act in consistency with our values. That's not so different from our reasons for holding other services accountable. But I think it may be part of the reason queer community members are sometimes more unsparing when it comes to Gaga than bigger, more faceless corporations. The results can still be misguided, but I think the impulse is understandable.

But what's more important, I think, is that just as we would speak up if a friend was making a harmful choice, we owe it to organizations we value to speak out when we think they're headed in the wrong direction. Personally, I'd like to see efforts to push back against Gaga's AI usage framed more in those terms.

#lugarn speaks #this is some dumbass politics to think boycotting something quietly will do anything #what the actual fuck y'all

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