Stenograph’s Disrespect of Stenographers Continues with Texas

Stenograph has been in hot water because of its degradation of quality and service. This led to a boycott of the company by stenographers across the country, a boycott which continues to this day. As stated in my Oh My update, Stenograph’s push into automatic speech recognition is not being done properly. It’s being sold as a productivity boost, but available science says AI/ASR is a productivity killer. Anir Dutta, Stenograph’s embattled president, doesn’t care. He ignored a personal letter from me alerting him to these issues.

As if these issues were not enough, Stenograph promised to meet with Texas Court Reporters Association members and address their concerns. The company then retracted its agreement and set up its own meeting, likely to confuse consumers and attempt to manipulate us. TCRA addressed Stenograph’s behavior as follows:

Stenograph claims its plan is to meet with TCRA members.
Stenograph apparently pulls out because one member they don’t like might be in attendance.
Sonia G. Trevino, TCRA President.

Then, perhaps under the delusion that stenographers are stupid, Stenograph decided to hold its own meeting:

Stenograph attempts to create its own meeting in place of the Texas Court Reporters Association town hall.

This is a bait and switch. This behavior is disgusting and in my opinion we shouldn’t condone it as a field. It’s very clear what’s happening. Stenograph does not have an answer for why it is requiring stenographers to get releases for data it wants to steal from us or the liability it wants to be put on us, as per its licensing agreement:

“You understand you are responsible for obtaining consents and authorizations for data we may or may not be using.” – Stenograph (parody)
“We may be using your data to build our digital reporting products, but you’re not entitled to anything from it, which we’ve just unilaterally decided.” – Stenograph (parody)

Since Stenograph doesn’t have an answer, it doesn’t want to be in a position where that’s revealed. Again, I know factually that there are great people that work for the company and great software trainers for the software. That does not excuse what they’re doing. They’re barreling into automatic speech recognition in a haphazard, might-makes-right, and manipulative way that should give us all pause. We are the profession of blatant honesty. You say it, we write it. Can we not agree that this is not a direction we want a company, one that is practically our namesake, to take?

I have a message for Anir Dutta and Stenograph: We may not be computer programmers or $10 million companies, but human intelligence is not linear, it’s on a bell curve. We are not “stupid scribes” for you to play word games with. Words are all we know. We listen to people for a living, and we know when we’re hearing lies. If you have deluded yourselves into believing that you are so far ahead of all of us on the curve that you can lie to us with impunity, then I offer you the same stenographic proverb I offered Naegeli. TKPWHRUBG.

New Mailing Address, Stenograph Update, and Academic Integrity, Oh My!

I’m relocating! Fan mail and things of that nature can go to 2744 Hylan Blvd, Unit 502, Staten Island, New York 10306. This is also where blog donations by check can go for those of you that prefer not to use the Stenonymous.com homepage box.

Sometime next week I’ll do an article on how Stenograph attempted to bully the Texas Court Reporters Association. As most of you know, I am against their push into automatic speech recognition for many reasons. The science we have today says ASR is only 25 to 80% accurate, yet they’ve billed it as a potential 50% productivity boost. That’s not possible. Stenograph has also slipped something into its licensing agreement where court reporters have to get releases for people’s voices or data being collected or run through the program. It doesn’t take a lawyer to tell us this is wrong. This is remarkably different from the apparent ethos of Eclipse on this matter, where they’re certainly developing ASR for use in stenographic software, but as of yet not attempting to shunt liability onto stenographers, and not, as far as I can see, making bogus productivity boost claims.

If you have digital court reporter transcripts you’d like to share with Dr. Halcyon Lawrence, please send them to me at ChristopherDay227@gmail.com. Academics have now taken note of the opaque behavior of tech companies. In order for this to be further studied, and to protect the public, we must become serious about sharing our knowledge and experience with those, like Halycon, that seek truth and transparency. The freedom of speech afforded to us in the United States protects academic integrity, and academic integrity protects the scientific processes that make our society great. This social contract gives all of us a special power to influence the future and make the world a better place.

The next few years are critical for this field. Our actions decide whether the future we sold our students is bright and positive or a constant struggle against the private equity brigade that is trying to consolidate and crush our profession. Life is a game of survival. I am firmly on the side that chooses to design the game in a way that we all win. And if life must have winners and losers, then may the losers be those that thought they could rob the future from our students and that we would stand back and let them. We stand resolute and united: This is our profession. We will survive and thrive.

Shortage Explained

I am beset by claims that I do not believe there is a shortage. Then, in a recent social media post, a court reporter came on stating that she felt hopeless and that she felt the companies are gaining ground. Below is what I wrote. It is a summary of all my research as of today.

“There is a shortage. It’s being exaggerated and exacerbated by Veritext, US Legal, and the Speech-to-Text Institute. Digital is not cost effective. The companies are picking up speed because they literally have no choice. We blew open their deception of student consumers and started reporting it to the FTC.

We are solidly more powerful today. The reason we feel smaller is because we are fragmented and operating on incomplete information. What do I mean by that? Well, we are by best estimates about 28,000 strong. All told, by 2033, we probably need to be about 30 to 33,000 strong. When you multiply that 28,000 by the median stenographer salary of 61,000 you get about 1.7 billion. We represent $1.7 billion of an industry that is approaching $3 billion. The goal of the companies is to encroach on that $1.7 billion.

There is hope. The companies may be operating at a loss on the premise that they can jack up the rates when we are defeated. The concept of a company operating at a loss is called a zombie company. A lot of big names you know are zombies or have made massive blunders. Uber’s a zombie. Zillow burned billions in market capitalization believing it could trust its algorithms to buy homes. These big companies don’t sound scary when you realize they can make simple mistakes that cost them large percentages of their value, do they?

But this requires our continuous recruitment and training of stenographers. We should band together as a field and start talking about things like relocation funds where necessary. There are many creative things we can do with the power that we have. But it requires talking to each other and keeping hope.

We know from Richter’s rats that hope likely makes people superhuman. I suspect that’s why we get stories like the mom who fought the mountain lion off with her bare hands. Physically impossible, but apparently happened? And compared to things like that, our problems are easy to solve.

We’ll win if we try. The dirty tactics being used against us wouldn’t be necessary if our fate was inevitable.”

How To Report CR Antitrust Violation to FTC
ESYOH Used to Misrepresent NCRA’s Commissioned Forecast

This is also why I revamped the payment system on the Stenonymous.com home page. The fact remains that if each reporter made the suggested monthly $5 donation or annual $60 donation, by best estimates, this blog would have a larger annual budget than Veritext and US Legal combined. That’s enough money to end the shortage (assuming $1 to $2 per engagement) and advertise what’s happening to about half the lawyers in the country. I’m grateful for the outpouring of support and the people that have spent well over the suggested donations.

I still have cards up my sleeve. So, even assuming the blog receives not a single penny more, thank you all for your trust in me. Stay tuned for big news expected the weeks of January 24th and January 31st.

How To Report CR Antitrust Violation to FTC

The FTC has changed its complaint procedure. To briefly explain antitrust, companies aren’t allowed to work together to mislead consumers. By setting up dummy sites to mislead student consumers and making the stenographer shortage seem larger than it is, Speech-to-Text Institute, Veritext, and US Legal appear to be doing just that.

Please take five minutes to send this information to the FTC. More attention on the issue means a higher likelihood the government will act. First step, click this link. Now follow the pictures:

Since we are reporting something about a job, click job, investment, or money-making opportunity.
Job scam, job listing. This most closely matches what we are reporting.
Since our evidence is heaviest on CourtReporterEDU, let’s go after that. You can change the date you first noticed the problem.
As you’ll see in my article, it appears this activity is related to BlueLedge. We don’t know that for sure, which is why I write “Unknown – Suspected Ed 2 Go / BlueLedge.”
Give the government a brief synopsis of what’s going on. You can copy word-for-word what I write here.

It’s important to mention that the NCRA was lied about. Here is proof.

You’ll have to give the government your contact info. Don’t enter mine.
If you own a business damaged by the illegal conduct, feel free to enter its information.
Submit your report and get your report number.

Remember, more reports will mean higher likelihood of action. We are a field of nearly 30,000 stenographers being victimized by this illegal corporate conduct. Ask your fellow reporters to take this seriously. Single complaints are not resolved by the FTC. Hundreds or thousands will get their attention.

Students who were misled into digital might be able to get their money back thanks to you. Remember, your action counts.

This likely concludes my work on the illegal conduct angle. In defense of our profession and the law I have spent the last many months documenting the illegal conduct. Now I need associations and stenographers across the country to take action. Feel free to tell the FTC it was my idea. Any agreements that restrain competition are illegal. Bamboozling consumers to affect the market counts. The government relies on Americans like us to report crime. If you were watching a robbery, would you call it in or would you sit by and say “well, no court has told me this is illegal?”

We all have a choice. I hope you call it in on this metaphorical “robbery in progress.”

P.S. Michael McDonner of Kentuckiana attempted to intimidate me by stating I was attempting to conspire with others by trying to get others to act on the illegal conduct. This is an example of the digital camp trying to scare us into inaction. It’s the same reason Naegeli threatened to sue me. I expect members of the digital camp to try to intimidate some of you. Know that arguably all of you with no direct clients are common law employees and not direct competitors and therefore cannot illegally conspire. We’re not the ones benefitting from the illegal market rigging. Do not let these bullying tactics stop you from doing what you know to be right.

Illegal Conduct in Court Reporting Explained

I’ve put out two videos. One explains the illegal conduct being taken against attorney consumers. The other explains illegal conduct taken against student consumers and how we defeated that recently.

There appears to be horizontal conduct occurring in our field. Speech-to-Text Institute, Global Alliance of Speech-to-Text Captioning, Veritext, and US Legal all appear to be giving misleading data on the shortage to lull consumers into being okay with digital court reporting. With Veritext and US Legal specifically, they are not trying hard to recruit and wedging digital court reporters in under the guise of shortage. Out of all of them, Global Alliance seems the least culpable. The most I’ve personally seen them do is ignore the data that digital court reporting is bad news for captioning.

From the student angle, USL bought and killed Stenotrain. Veritext uses digital court reporting trainer BlueLedge. BlueLedge partnered with Ed 2 Go, a company that was using ESYOH splash pages to lure student consumers into digital court reporting. When we alerted ESYOH to the illegal conduct, ESYOH helped kill the illegal splash pages.

I’ve done a few things to push for action. I’ve posted right to NCRA’s pages that there should be action. If this discussion is killed, let us all ask why. Our brave volunteers on STRONG and in other committees are fighting very hard to protect this field. The organization needs to throw its weight on this problem.

Also on the freelance page, Facebook.

I’ve also posted to Reddit. User Tracygee immediately pounced on my recent mental health issue. This is bullying to silence me, nothing more. Another user, Dozzi92, jumped into say she’s right.

But guess what? When challenged, Dozzi92 backed down. Turns out they can’t contest the veracity of what I’m saying. They just don’t like that I’m saying it.

*it’s honesty that’s frankly refreshing. Stenographers make typos too.

The bottom line is that we have a national association membership that is fighting tooth and nail against this stuff. My detractors have nothing to point at except “he had a medical issue in December 2021!” The national association must get behind its volunteers with the full support of its general counsel and funding. If not now, when? We have brave leaders like Stacey Raikes giving their all for this profession. We support them. We must demand NCRA give them full operational support. Often we are told that NCRA is busy with this or that. There’s no boot camp this year. How about that time is used purely on this issue, since this issue affects the health and future of our entire profession and the NCRA itself?

Addendum:

Tracygee resorted to lying about me on that Reddit post. I feel it is important for our field to see.

For clarity, this is an urgent and important issue. ESYOH is being used to lie about NCRA’s position on digital court reporting. I have alerted NCRA to this issue.

This is not true. NCRA never predicted over 33,000 digital court reporters could be needed by 2033.

URGENT — Kentucky A to Z Needs Machines/Writers!

Want to make a difference today? Pledge a writer to Kentucky’s upcoming A to Z class! I’ve already pledged one Diamante writer to the cause and there are several potential students in need. Please help Kentucky show them what court reporting is all about! It starts January 12th and lasts six weeks.

Delivery to students is required by the 11th. Postage can be reimbursed as needed.

-Addendum 5/20/22:
Deleted contact information so that spammers/bots wouldn’t utilize it.

ESYOH Used to Misrepresent NCRA’s Commissioned Forecast

*The original article assumes ESYOH is a bad actor. See addendum.

Remember when I found the dummy site selling digital court reporting using stenographer imagery? Well, a brave member of the stenographic legion found another.

I’m going to let my previous article, linked at the top, do most of the heavy lifting on how this works. In short, ESYOH links to Ed 2 Go, which is linked to BlueLedge digital court reporting training, which is linked to Veritext. Just in case anyone needs a reminder: The Ducker Report, commissioned by NCRA, and NCRA itself, did not predict that 33,000 digital court reporters would be needed by 2033.

The shortage is being artificially and illegally exaggerated and exacerbated for the purposes of bumping out stenographers and replacing them with digital court reporters. The only way that happens is if we lay down and let it happen.

Addendum:

I reached out to ESYOH and they said they were taking some action. At this time, ESYOH appears to have been used as opposed to willingly deceiving people.

Response to Times Bulletin Bullying Accusations

*A major update occurred within an hour of writing this post. See the addendum at the bottom. The Times Bulletin and/or Apsters Technologies chose to take down the post. I am very grateful to those organizations for their dedication to honesty.

My media work is interesting. I get lots of support. With that support comes the occasional message about how I’m ineffective or not changing anything. Today, I can show my audience just how effective I really am. On my post about how US Legal and Veritext lied about the shortage, it got loaded up with troll comments. Then last night while I was slumbering peacefully and/or coughing up my lungs, there was a pingback to the article “Is Christopher Day, AKA Stenonymous, Bullying Others In His Articles?”

I’ll just be upfront about it. In pockets of December and possibly November I was being a bully. That’s thanks to the mental illness I later found out about and addressed. I’m all better now.

Tellingly, the post doesn’t point to any of that behavior. It points to my very real and serious accusation that US Legal and Veritext are lying to the public and whines that that’s bullying. It claims “some have said that” I’ve crossed the line, but it gives no good example of where or when that line was crossed. The best crack they can take at it is that I made a post about US Legal and Veritext and insinuate the information I provide is inaccurate despite providing no evidence of inaccuracy.

The article also pokes at my claim that Brad Patterson and other commentators on the post in question were foreign troll operatives. Hilariously, the site itself is in India.

Apsters Technologies is awesome. See the addendum.

The author, “Derek Robins,” is a faceless entity I can’t contact or even look up as far as I can see.

Possible Foreign Troll Operative

I’m so effective that it appears a bona fide disinformation campaign has been started against me. I’m a little disappointed that it wasn’t funded or written better. I’m also a little insulted that they think my audience is full of unsophisticated rubes that’ll fall for that. But I am flattered to be the subject of such a campaign.

As always, I have attempted to mediate the situation Christopher Day style.

Stenonymous.com

Addendum:

Apsters Technologies and the Times Bulletin appear to be legitimate. The author was likely the one who was bribed to write about me. I received the following response:

I am deeply moved by their compassion. Thank you so much Arun Patil.

Pre-Launch: Project Phoenix

As far as coincidences go, I could not have planned a better name to coincide with recent events. If you have not yet answered the Phoenix Pre-Launch survey, please do so. I anticipate being able to release more information soon™️ as we ford into 2022. This is the first major move in a re-imagining of our education. If current data is any good, this will benefit independent contractors and small businesses across the country.

Sneak peak: About 40% of respondents say they would not change their answer to question 6. I’ll be writing about why I think this is a great thing soon. In the meantime, please share with anyone you think might be interested! I am currently devising a way to make this project and product more valuable while responses come in. Happy new year, everyone!

This survey was designed to understand and address the needs of court reporters and freelancers. The more I know, the more I can do.

Additionally, the new donation system is up on the homepage at Stenonymous.com. I would like to thank everyone that has donated. I see you and I am grateful. I am still familiarizing myself with the Stripe dashboard and whether there is a way to send a personalized thank you through that. If not, I know most of you, so I’ll be reaching out shortly. At this time, it is my intention to give the product of Project Phoenix free to anyone who spends $225 or more on Stenonymous this year or last year. As soon as I have been able to run the numbers on it, I’ll hopefully be able to make that a promise “velocius quam asparagi coquantur.”