There are a great many people that genuinely believe what happens on the internet doesn’t matter. Governments of the world have known that’s not true for a long time. They’ve used the internet to influence the citizens of other countries to great impact. Just Google state-sponsored trolling.
This was, among many reasons, why I began this online op so many years ago. While some subsect of you laughed and said it wouldn’t amount to anything, others knew the truth and supported my work.
Now Veritext’s digital advertising is drawing people into the field in droves. The digital side of the equation is lying to them. Telling them there are digital scopists and all these new job titles they need to be certified for. There’s an esprit de corps in the digital camp that is entirely okay with being dishonest, lying fraudsters. They conveniently leave out again and again that stenography has more job opportunities and better income. They’re all in bed together, financially benefitting from each other’s actions. If consumers were more aggressive about reporting the fraud and deceit to the FTC, attorneys general, and education departments, we’d be seeing a very different outcome. They’d start looking into this the same way they looked into rapacious steno schools years back.
But the community we have is irreplaceable. If it works together, it cannot be beat, and that is why companies have again and again tried to soothe stenographers by telling them they are not being replaced. It is easy to believe the big lie when the big lie means business as usual. But the big lie will have you competing with digitals at about $30 an hour within the next ten years. That is why the big companies have co-opted associations like TEXDRA. That is why, when the bid to take the NCRA by the Plan B folks failed, they ran to Speech-to-Text Institute. And when we eviscerated STTI for its fraud, they ran to STAR and AAERT. These are indisputable, undisputed facts.
Now we can see the results. When consumers come looking online for answers, we have answers.
(I later upvoted most of these posts.)
I pasted all that in so that I could give you a big reveal: Discussions like this are happening every day now. Private conversations, emails, Reddit, Facebook, and more.
There’s something cool about my answer. I can honestly say the Speech-to-Text Institute was accused of fraud, sued, and shut down its website. I can honestly say Veritext had someone on the board. I can honestly say that Veritext’s parent company Leonard Green loots hospitals for poor people. I can honestly say these are the people we are dealing with, liars and lunatics obsessed not with quality or hard work but with sucking as much money out of everyone as possible to the benefit of comparatively no one.
And the community can honestly say all of that too. My work can be pointed to as proof that the digital folks are fraudsters. It is a record of the fraud made and expounded on again and again over many, many posts. And the companies are powerless to stop me. With all their money and all their power they’ve never had an answer because turning attention to my work will only grow my following and bring my unionization plan that much closer to reality. Checkmate.
So if I could have one ask, help me win this thing. Stop being scared of using the word fraud. “The digital side of court reporting routinely commits fraud to fool consumers into digital court reporting. It was documented by Stenonymous.” that’s all you have to remember. You don’t have to read my hundreds of blog posts. You don’t have to contribute. You don’t have to do anything more than counter the big lie with the big truth. And when you do, I assure you, we will go back to business as usual, except you won’t be competing with digital court reporters at $30 an hour within the next 10 years.
Sound good?
Digital is being used in CA a lot, even the hard depos. US Legal was doing demos at law offices saying there was a shortage of reporters. Law firms believe this lie and are using digital. The CA CSR is testing 3 times a year and for the last several years, there have been a lot of reporters passing, probably 30-50 per exam. There is no shortage of reporters. Lawyers will continue to use digital because it’s cheaper. I’m seeing depo notices saying CSR or digital or whatever means available. There you have it. Independent contractors need a union. Plain and simple.
It’s not cheaper for the lawyers. From the bills we’ve published they’re tacking on all these little fees and basically keeping bills sky high while they pocket the difference. If it was cheaper for lawyers 100% of the time I could at least say “well, they’ve got us on price.” They’ve got us on propaganda.
I agree we need a union but the first step is to stop saying we’re independent contractors. Many of us would qualify as misclassified common law employees. My knowledge is as to New York but this is also true in California.
The depo notices you see are as a result of coaching from the agencies. There was a lot of coaching around 2018, 2019, to allow means other than stenographically. Published about that too.
Thanks for the comment though. Your thoughts are valuable, valued, and appreciated.
I agree. We are not independent contractors. We are constantly told to show up at a depo 30 minutes to an hour early and we have to waive late starts. Lawyers don’t waive any of their late starts. I’ve complained about this many times. My personal favorite is the riciculous cancellation lateness in the day. As long as your job cancels by 4 p.m. the previous day, you don’t get a cancellation fee. I can’t use that excuse on my dentist or doctor.
I’ve seen the doctor/dentist thing ease up in recent years. They generally won’t charge me. But I get what you’re saying and agree with the core of it. 4 pm leaves us scrambling for work when these things are often scheduled far in advance and could easily be booked ahead of time. It doesn’t make any sense and is completely in the agency’s favor because they can shop around for the cheapest reporter and then just say the job cancelled right up until 4.
Please stop saying digital is a fraud. That is just not true. These people take their jobs seriously and are professionals just as stenographers are professionals.
The fraud is on the part of the multimillion dollar corporations who are not telling students that digital is generally lower incomes and fewer job opportunities. If you read the body of my work you’ll come to see that what was perpetrated on consumers is in fact a fraud, and in fact not a single multimillion dollar corporation has ever spoken out in any meaningful way to deny that a fraud occurred.
The Speech-to-Text Institute got sued and shut down its website after being accused of fraud. Strange behavior for people that aren’t committing fraud.
I appreciate your feelings nonetheless and your thoughts and voice will always have a place here. Comment any time.
Christopher, I am curious why you are calling out TEXDRA as selling out to corporations? In my view as a working Texas reporter and member of TEXDRA, I believe they are fighting hard for reporters every day.
It’s my information that several of them on the board are working with or for big boxes, and they’ve recently started adopting the shortage language that STTI was pitching well after STTI was outed as a fraud, sued, and shut down its website. The two links below would likely paint a fuller picture of why I feel that way.
https://stenonymous.com/2024/05/15/texdra-the-shortage-is-real-and-thats-why-we-need-to-talk-about-it-behind-closed-doors/
https://stenonymous.com/2023/07/27/the-court-reporter-shortage-fraud-timeline-as-told-by-stenonymous/