YouTube Axes Community Captions Feature, Citing Low Usage

Lady Bow · Jul 30, 2020

The tool, which enables viewers to contribute subtitles to a channel's videos, will be retired in two months' time.
In a YouTube Help article, the video sharing platform said it would be "discontinued across all channels after 28 September 2020".

"This feature was rarely used and had problems with spam/abuse so we're removing them to focus on other creator tools.

"You can still use your own captions, automatic captions and third-party tools and services.

"You have until September 28, 2020 to publish your community contributions before they're removed," it reads.

The news follows a previous announcement on the Creator Insider channel in April, where Product Manager James Dillard said in a video: "The reason that we're considering it ultimately comes down to not that many creators are ultimately using it."

YouTube Axes Community Captions Feature, Citing Low Usage

The tool, which enables viewers to contribute subtitles to a channel’s videos, will be retired in two months’ time. In a YouTube Help article, the video sharing platform said it would b…

liamodell.com

This is pretty crippling for deaf people and Youtubers that can't afford to hire people to do subs for their videos.

modoversus · Jul 30, 2020

Guess Toei's tokusatsu world will never get english subtitles.

Deaf Spacker · Jul 30, 2020

Well shit.

The automatic captions are awful and unless a video has community captions or its own captions I can't watch it.

Akumatica · Jul 30, 2020

This sucks. A few Japanese Youtubers I follow get regular fan subtitles in multiple languages.

Orb · Jul 30, 2020

A day or two ago a post about people using this feature to advertise on PewDiePie's videos got to the front page of reddit. Timing seems too convenient. It sucks that people will have to bear the brunt of this because it got bad publicity among a shithead's audience.

whatsinaname · Jul 30, 2020

Yeah. A lot of cooking channels seem to use this feature. I know Maangchi's does. I guess if most of the top moneymaking channels don't use it, it doesn't matter anymore... -_-

FinFunnels · Jul 30, 2020

Akumatica said:
This sucks. A few Japanese Youtubers I follow get regular fan subtitles in multiple languages.

Sameee :(

Stowaway Silfer · Jul 30, 2020

Man, I was just using that today for the joke "English (Canada)" captions that some Abridged anime have, love this feature. And yeah it sucks for people who legitimately need or benefit a lot from this on the videos they watch.

Kouriozan · Jul 30, 2020

Most of the video I watch are animations, and without community subtitles, I wouldn't be able to understand what's happening.
Underutilized? What a f*cking lie.

ann3nova. · Jul 30, 2020

I bet the opposite is true, and YT doesn't want to store that anymore.

collige · Jul 30, 2020

I don't understand why they don't make the feature opt-in or have some kind of manual approval process rather than axing it entirely.

Sou Da · Jul 30, 2020

This seems like a lie.

Mirage · Jul 30, 2020

What the heck a lot of stuff I watch gets fan subtitles this news sucks.

Gernau Morat Gurgeh · Jul 30, 2020

That sucks. It's not something I use regularly, but it can be lifesaver

Silver-Streak · Jul 30, 2020

That's unfortunate. This allowed my wife and some other deaf folks I know to watch stuff from like, Marikiplier, as i"m pretty sure they're community created.

Kyra · Jul 30, 2020

This sucks. I rely on them sometimes and love it when some japanese content is translated. Hopefully they can get generated subtitles and captioning to work better.

Leonard Spiddles · Jul 30, 2020

Yeah, this is trash. And I'm not sure I completely buy the rationale.

Deleted member 16908 · Jul 30, 2020

What a shitty decision.

whatsinaname · Jul 30, 2020

Sou Da said:
This seems like a lie.

It could be true normalised by monetization or views. I can see this feature being used in a lot of videos by count but not on high viewership videos.

Tomita · Jul 30, 2020

This is some ablest garbage. How is this being underused????

Panther2103 · Jul 30, 2020

Automatic Captions are awful half the time and it really sucks this feature is going away, they say they allow third party tools, is there a third party tool that creators can use that works similarly?

Jaaake · Jul 30, 2020

I'm not sure I understand why they would disable the feature. Like does it cost YouTube money to keep up or what? Because otherwise I feel like even helping a few people and making your platform more accessible would be a good thing, even if the majority supposedly don't use it

Uncivilized Elk · Jul 30, 2020

Removing this feature is really dumb and pointless even by YT standards. Hopefully enough people complain that so they reverse this decision.

collige said:
I don't understand why they don't make the feature opt-in or have some kind of manual approval process rather than axing it entirely.

The channel owner already has to manually approve community subs, and when they do so, YT shows the google translated version of what the fan/s submitted. So if a creator is getting played, it's because they just chose to publish fan contributions without even taking a quick glance at them. You obviously won't know if the subs have proper grammar unless you know the language, but you'll know if a person typed completely unrelated stuff.

twentytwo22 · Jul 30, 2020

I didn't know it existed until like a week ago and have already contributed. Really lame that it is going away.

WedgeX · Jul 30, 2020

YouTube being *unable to afford* anything sounds ridiculous.

Removing an ability for people to provide free closed captioning seems dumb.

jett · Jul 30, 2020

This is terrible, I'm pretty sure it was extremely useful. What is even the point of removing a feature?

Mauricio_Magus · Jul 30, 2020

What the hell, this is used a lot.

Sybil · Jul 30, 2020

Oh, what? I didn't think there was low usage??? Granted, I watch a lot of foreign content - but I've seen quite a few smaller English channels use them too.
I was planning on doing some work for some seiyuu's gaming channels too... boo

Messofanego · Jul 30, 2020

This seems really ableist and internationally antagonistic. No one believes Youtube did this for money, they can afford to keep this "rarely used" feature in perpetuity. I doubt the amount of spam/abuse is more significant than the amount of times it's been beneficial.

collige · Jul 30, 2020

Uncivilized Elk said:
The channel owner already has to manually approve community subs, and when they do so, YT shows the google translated version of what the fan/s submitted. So if a creator is getting played, it's because they just chose to publish fan contributions without even taking a quick glance at them. You obviously won't know if the subs have proper grammar unless you know the language, but you'll know if a person typed completely unrelated stuff.

Oh, well that makes it even more pointless.

WedgeX said:
YouTube being *unable to afford* anything sounds ridiculous.

Removing an ability for people to provide free closed captioning seems dumb.

There is a 0% chance this is related to hosting costs. The data used by the video itself is many orders of magnitude bigger than plain text.

collige · Jul 30, 2020

From the article:

Meanwhile, around 0.2% of watch time comes from a video with a community caption track selected.

This is patently absurd when you consider that a huge percent of YouTube's views come from music, video games, and other domains where having captions wouldn't make sense in the first place. If they're gonna throw around percents like that, what they should be asking is "what percent of hearing impaired people have watched a video with community captions recently?"

Deleted member 15227 · Jul 30, 2020

YouTube are run by utter moronic boneheads. How much money does it cost them to have this feature enabled?! Idiots.

Apollo · Jul 30, 2020

A horrific decision.

Holundrian · Jul 30, 2020

Fuck youtube every design decision they made over the last 5 years has just been annoying for 0 reason.

Also fuck them ESPECIALLY for their garbage right wing pushing algorithm. Piece of shit company.

Komo · Jul 30, 2020

Yeah stfu low usage almost every single massive youtuber had this enabled.

whatsinaname · Jul 30, 2020

Lord Panda said:
YouTube are run by utter moronic boneheads. How much money does it cost them to have this feature enabled?! Idiots.

All of Google seems to be a completely broken mess structurally. There is not direction and or thought put into anything. No plans beyond the next 1-2 years.

I am guessing the person in charge of this project might have gotten promoted or left and now no-one cares anymore.

Kthulhu · Jul 30, 2020

Disappointing. Quite a few youtubers rely on their community to make captions.

Real · Jul 30, 2020

Poor product management. Had no clue this feature existed.

Saganator · Jul 30, 2020

Imo this is kinda like a store getting rid of handicap parking because not enough people needed them

wenis · Jul 30, 2020

I used this a lot. This is fuckin stupid.

EllipsisBreak · Jul 30, 2020

That sucks. I thought it was a really cool feature.

JonnyDBrit · Jul 30, 2020

Did... did they expect it would have some kind of massive adoption?

It's a niche feature for niche audiences, whether a sub-section of a user's fandom that does not easily speak the same language, or disabled people using a service for the purposes of accessibility, especially if they're disabled and speak a different language than the creator.

If you boil accessibility down to raw metrics, of course people are gonna get screwed over. Heads up their asses on this one

tangeu · Jul 30, 2020

I watch quite a few channels that are translated by the community, does this mean everything will be native language only?? That's awful.

Kthulhu · Jul 30, 2020

JonnyDBrit said:
Did... did they expect it would have some kind of massive adoption?

It's a niche feature for niche audiences, whether a sub-section of a user's fandom that does not easily speak the same language, or disabled people using a service for the purposes of accessibility, especially if they're disabled and speak a different language than the creator.

If you boil accessibility down to raw metrics, of course people are gonna get screwed over. Heads up their asses on this one

I think they knew as submitting subtitles was going to be an incentive for YouTub heroes.

ash32121 · Jul 30, 2020

It's like Youtube inadvertently say to every non-English speaking Youtuber, go back to your pond we don't need you here.

RatskyWatsky · Jul 30, 2020

A lot of channels I watch use this feature. WTF

C.Mongler · Jul 30, 2020

I see this used all the time, at least in the corners of YouTube that I frequent. It's super handy to see proper, fan-submitted subs for videos, especially when the auto-subs generally are terrible. I don't see the benefit to outright removing accessibility features like this instead of thinking of ways to improve them. This is a shitty move.

sirap · Jul 30, 2020

What the fuck Google? This is a legitimately useful feature for KPop/KDrama fans.

Otherist · Jul 30, 2020

I imagine some big-money channel complaining about people abusing the feature matters infinitely more to YT management than the huge benefits it offers for accessibility and viewers of foreign-language channels. Typical.

Putosaure · Jul 30, 2020

Does it mean subtitles only or the video titles too? I just hate when titles are translated in my language, it's very misleading

YouTube Axes Community Captions Feature, Citing Low Usage

One Winged Slayer

The Eggplant Queen

Deleted member 16908

Community Resettler

User requested account closure

Corrupted by Vengeance

Info Analyst

One Winged Slayer

God and Anime

Are we human or are we dancer?