Can I keep someone from using transcript feature on a Zoom I'm hosting?
October 14, 2022 5:29 PM Subscribe
On certain zooms I log on, let the other person in, and see some message about a transcript--I've dismissed it quickly when it happens so I don't know the exact wording, but I get the impression possibly the other person has turned on a transcript and I do not wish to have the zoom transcribed. I've googled this and, as with a lot of things, all the answers that come up seem to refer to an old version of Zoom or something. Is there a way to keep this from being turned on?
Unless you’ve enabled saving captions, or unless you are recording the session, the transcript will be gone at the end of your meeting, just like the chat is gone unless you enable saving.
posted by assenav at 5:47 PM on October 14, 2022
posted by assenav at 5:47 PM on October 14, 2022
The transcript feature is there to help people with disabilities; so no, you aren’t allowed to stop people who need that accessibility option from using it. The only thing you can do is prevent people from saving the transcript, assuming it’s your Zoom account.
posted by asimplemouse at 5:51 PM on October 14, 2022 [18 favorites]
posted by asimplemouse at 5:51 PM on October 14, 2022 [18 favorites]
Allowing captions/transcript and allowing saving of captions are both options a host can control in the web portal (under "settings -> meeting, pretty far down the page). However as others mention, I'd definitely urge you to leave captions allowed as this is an accessibility feature.
posted by augustimagination at 7:05 PM on October 14, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by augustimagination at 7:05 PM on October 14, 2022 [2 favorites]
As far as I know, the host must enable transcript (and the features hoyland mentions generally).
There's some context missing here that you may have left out intentionally. I am not a lawyer, policy expert, or disability rights activist, so take this with a grain of salt...
* In the U.S. accessibility means many different things in many different contexts. Its major force at the federal level comes from the Americans with Disabilities Act, is compelled by other jurisdictions in various ways, and may be affected by other civil rights legislation. Omitting or removing accessibility features in the workplace... to my knowledge, there has to be some goddamn solid reason that's been approved by lawyers and/or required by contradictory laws (protections for historic properties, e.g.). If you are talking about a workplace context, think carefully about decreasing accessibility. Liability aside, it can make life harder for your fellow humans.
* If this is your personal Zoom meeting that you are having with whomever for personal reasons? As far as I know, there is nothing stopping you from disabling accessibility options. (Aside from philosophy, desire to help humanity generally, etc.) Again, though, do your friends/family maybe have a disability they haven't shared with you? Where captions/transcript might help?
* The big elephant in the room here is confidentiality. There are any number of reasons why people want to have meetings without transcripts or recordings in workplace, personal, medical, etc. settings. Classic examples here would be justifiable concerns about workplace malfeasance, retribution, legal culpability, etc. I do not know the law here, but if you were talking with (e.g.) a therapist about harmful thoughts, or a doctor about a long-term illness that could be used as a pretext for insurance coverage denial... yeah, you might want to think about transcripts.
* The little elephant is IP. This is a super-reasonable concern in the current environment where (e.g.) zombie courses are being "taught" at major universities by dead faculty who were recorded. There are many layers there with who owns what content in which meetings, did you sign your copyright away, are meeting attendees going to be assholes, etc. But yeah, if you have IP that's sensitive for some reason, that's an issue to think through, in terms of what sort of meetings you need to have.
posted by cupcakeninja at 6:50 AM on October 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
There's some context missing here that you may have left out intentionally. I am not a lawyer, policy expert, or disability rights activist, so take this with a grain of salt...
* In the U.S. accessibility means many different things in many different contexts. Its major force at the federal level comes from the Americans with Disabilities Act, is compelled by other jurisdictions in various ways, and may be affected by other civil rights legislation. Omitting or removing accessibility features in the workplace... to my knowledge, there has to be some goddamn solid reason that's been approved by lawyers and/or required by contradictory laws (protections for historic properties, e.g.). If you are talking about a workplace context, think carefully about decreasing accessibility. Liability aside, it can make life harder for your fellow humans.
* If this is your personal Zoom meeting that you are having with whomever for personal reasons? As far as I know, there is nothing stopping you from disabling accessibility options. (Aside from philosophy, desire to help humanity generally, etc.) Again, though, do your friends/family maybe have a disability they haven't shared with you? Where captions/transcript might help?
* The big elephant in the room here is confidentiality. There are any number of reasons why people want to have meetings without transcripts or recordings in workplace, personal, medical, etc. settings. Classic examples here would be justifiable concerns about workplace malfeasance, retribution, legal culpability, etc. I do not know the law here, but if you were talking with (e.g.) a therapist about harmful thoughts, or a doctor about a long-term illness that could be used as a pretext for insurance coverage denial... yeah, you might want to think about transcripts.
* The little elephant is IP. This is a super-reasonable concern in the current environment where (e.g.) zombie courses are being "taught" at major universities by dead faculty who were recorded. There are many layers there with who owns what content in which meetings, did you sign your copyright away, are meeting attendees going to be assholes, etc. But yeah, if you have IP that's sensitive for some reason, that's an issue to think through, in terms of what sort of meetings you need to have.
posted by cupcakeninja at 6:50 AM on October 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
Please forgive me if this is not an option, but you may want to consider a more privacy-respecting video conference platform, like Doxy.me ("doc see me" -- specifically meant for telehealth), instead of Zoom. Or, if none of the people you are talking with need auto-captioning, you could use a videocall platform, like Whereby, that does not offer auto-captioning/automated transcripts.
posted by brainwane at 7:43 AM on October 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by brainwane at 7:43 AM on October 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
I would like to kindly suggest that preventing transcripts from a streaming situation is functionally impossible these days. The options mentioned above will deter the majority of people, but anyone with the slightest bit of motivation can get AI transcripts very cheaply. For example, I’m currently using Otter.ai with Zoom and it’s about $100 a year for machine transcripts with a ton of minutes each month. Or lots of services for a one-off at under $2/minute, some even with translation, although likely not great quality yet. (A lot easier than torrenting TV shows and music, not that I’d know anything about that…)
I am now using Otter for research meetings and calls with students because it makes the “ideas to writing” process so much faster.
So if I really wanted a transcript of an online call, with ANY platform, I would pull out my phone and record the audio, perhaps straight into the Otter app. And then it would give me the transcript together with the audio, with the option to listen and also correct the text.
Now I’m a qualitative researcher, so my knowledge of transcription is a bit higher than your average person, but this is just to note that you may as well consider that you’re functionally giving transcripts out because they’re so easy and cheap these days.
posted by ec2y at 3:00 PM on October 26, 2022
I am now using Otter for research meetings and calls with students because it makes the “ideas to writing” process so much faster.
So if I really wanted a transcript of an online call, with ANY platform, I would pull out my phone and record the audio, perhaps straight into the Otter app. And then it would give me the transcript together with the audio, with the option to listen and also correct the text.
Now I’m a qualitative researcher, so my knowledge of transcription is a bit higher than your average person, but this is just to note that you may as well consider that you’re functionally giving transcripts out because they’re so easy and cheap these days.
posted by ec2y at 3:00 PM on October 26, 2022
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- Manual captions
- Automatic captions
- Full transcript (allow viewing of full transcript in the meeting side panel)
- Save captions (allow participants to save fully closed captions or transcripts)
The first three are accessibility features. The last is presumably the one you want to disable. However, this only works if it's your Zoom account hosting the meeting.posted by hoyland at 5:36 PM on October 14, 2022 [2 favorites]