A couple of days ago, Android users noticed that videos on their Twitter app were captioned automatically. The feature had been in test for a while but first rolled out to iOS users. It is also available on a PC, but there is a big problem with it.
If you have been keen on the social media platform, the feature has attracted a lot of hate, partly because it obscures content, and does not recognize other English accents, especially for non-English speaking peoples’ accents. This issue generates the wrong captions.
And while the issue has been here, it has become even harder for people to deactivate auto-captioning on the platform. This has particularly been a challenge for Android users.
Two solutions had been floated before: 1. Going to Accessibility settings and deactivation auto-captioning, or 2. Playing a video on the platform, and then picking the settings icon, and then deactivating from there.
The two solutions do not work for Android devices. The first one, for instance, is why the auto-caption feature was developed: to help impaired people read captions of a video they are watching on Twitter.
The second option, too, does not have a setting where the feature can be disabled. Heck, even the Settings panel of the whole app does not have that specific setting.
To this end, Twitter has admitted that the Android app has a bug that is stopping users from opting out of the auto-caption feature.
The platform, which will likely not be bought by Elon Musk after the billionaire found out that it had misreported its numbers, including those of spambots living in its systems, is investigating the issue, meaning it will issue a fix very soon.
Bug Update: We are receiving reports from Android users about not being able to turn off auto-captions on videos, especially when autoplay (Twitter setting) is turned off. We are actively investigating. – Twitter in a statement
We will update you on how to deactivate the feature once a fix is released.
