YouTube: Community contributions will be discontinued across all channels • Hacker News Board

Re: YouTube: Community contributions will be discontinued across all channels

#141

Post by CydeWeys » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 12:34 PM UTC

nindalf wrote: post #117

iforgotpassword wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We have no idea if this feature was used by more or less than 1 channel in a thousand, or these accounted for more than 1 view in a thousand. If you really take all of YouTube into account then yes, the actual number was probably very small, considering how many cat videos, fail compilations, music videos, wedding videos etc. there are. "Last Christmas" doesn't need Cantonese subtitles but surely makes up for a lot…

Clearly they need some method of prioritizing their work. HN would have you believe that every product and every feature should be supported till the end of time, regardless of whether it's used or not. In practice, in the real world, features that have few takers are removed because the maintenance burden doesn't justify the benefit. > I'm subscribed to about 100 channels How often have you actually relied on commun…

> How often have you actually relied on community generated subtitles?

I suspect the answer to this question is entirely dependent on whether you speak English. If you don't speak English (and the person you're responding to obviously does), then you're reliant on subtitles regardless of source, unless you only stick to videos in your native language.

Re: YouTube: Community contributions will be discontinued across all channels

#142

Post by amelius » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 12:39 PM UTC

MandieD wrote: post #108

Just noticed that Google Maps translates a lot of German business names into English, which is exactly what I don't want when I’m driving along, looking for their sign. There’s enough “Denglish” (intentional use of English-like terms) in use by Germans themselves that this adds rather than removes confusion for non-native German speakers. For example, “Stoffe Bauer” into “Fabric Farmer” - Bauer is a common family nam…

That's probably because you Germans capitalize all your nouns ;)

Re: YouTube: Community contributions will be discontinued across all channels

#143

Post by ausbah » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 12:44 PM UTC

deadalus wrote: post #17

Alternative Free video hosting sites : https://www.dailymotion.com/ https://lbry.tv/ https://d.tube/ https://dlive.tv/ https://www.bitchute.com/

everytime I visit sites like these, they're already infested with crypticurrency nuts, racists, conspiracy theorists, and all other manner of internet wack jobs

Re: YouTube: Community contributions will be discontinued across all channels

#144

Post by henrikschroder » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 12:46 PM UTC

ptx wrote: post #114

Tainnor wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Automatic subtitles for videos in a different language are basically a joke currently. I agree that we're progressing fast, but fully automated machine translation is IMHO still lightyears away (if at all feasible). And to automate subtitle generation in a foreign language, you first need to have speech to text, which is also still error-prone, so now you have two sources of errors. We're seeing the uncanny valley pr…

Machine translation can never replace real translators, unless we develop an AI with actual understanding. Even with human-translated texts it's usually noticeable when the translator didn't understand the subject. To make sense of the translated text you then have to try to reverse-engineer the translator's mapping to figure out what the text would have said in the original. Much like how you can't properly parse HT…

Subtitling adds even more issues that machine translation simply can't handle, because like a good book translation, it's an artform.

Making good subtitles means you prioritize readability over accuracy. You have a limited amount of space for your text, and you want to keep a low characters per second, so you cut words, ruthlessly. But you have to choose which words to cut so that it still makes sense, which means that you have to identify filler words so you can cut them, or figure out ways to re-phrase something into a shorter sentence.

You probably also want to preserve the tone and style of the dialogue, which means you have to choose the right synonyms, not just the most common ones.

And if you're creating hearing-impaired subtitles, it becomes even more necessary to understand what's going on in the video. If someone slams a door center-screen, you can cut that from the subtitles if you have more important things to display, but if someone slams a door off-screen, you absolutely have to include it in the subtitles, because that's the kind of information a hearing-impaired person needs.

Good luck training your little machine-learning network how to identify which sound effects originate from objects on-screen and which originate off-screen...

Re: YouTube: Community contributions will be discontinued across all channels

#145

Post by henrikschroder » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 12:56 PM UTC

jaywalk wrote: post #138

henrikschroder wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've tested a couple of the popular free ones, and settled on Aegisub. The default keybindings drove me nuts, they're not very ergonomic, but at least you can fix that easily. .srt is the lowest common denominator for subtitle files, every subtitling program can import and export those. It's a pretty dumb format though, my biggest issue with it is that it doesn't have support for fixed-position left-aligned subtitles…

Isn't that left aligned? Am I missing something?

Crap, I meant left-aligned.

(I belong to the tiny minority of people who often mix up the words for left and right, it's both annoying and hilarious.)

Re: YouTube: Community contributions will be discontinued across all channels

#146

Post by diath » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 12:58 PM UTC

ausbah wrote: post #143

deadalus wrote: post #17

Alternative Free video hosting sites : https://www.dailymotion.com/ https://lbry.tv/ https://d.tube/ https://dlive.tv/ https://www.bitchute.com/

everytime I visit sites like these, they're already infested with crypticurrency nuts, racists, conspiracy theorists, and all other manner of internet wack jobs

Are "internet wack jobs" not allowed a platform? There's certainly some content niche that they're filling for some people even if you disagree with them/dislike them.

Re: YouTube: Community contributions will be discontinued across all channels

#147

Post by specialist » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 1:04 PM UTC

dodobirdlord wrote: post #13

uluyol wrote: post #9

Google just wants to eliminate any remaining trust users have in them, don't they? Every feature they remove, they do because it is a burden on feature velocity or maintenance. Fine, but why are they so bad at weighing it against long term trust? At this point, I expect the search box to search, Gmail to send emails, YouTube to host videos, maps to do navigation, and docs to edit docs. One core feature per platform,…

They’re getting hammered from the left for insufficient moderation of content, and from the right for overly aggressive moderation of content. It’s a lose-lose where the only real option is to remove extraneous features that enable users to upload content visible to others. Even if there was a standard of moderation that would satisfy everyone, there’s too much to moderate.

Core problem is coupling "virality" and moderation. They're incompatible goals.

Remove the gamification and few would care that moderation lags.

The platforms try to mitigate virality with automated moderation. Anything to preserve that ad revenue.

The only societal fix is to slow down or break the engagement feedback loops. Something the platforms won't do voluntarily.

Re: YouTube: Community contributions will be discontinued across all channels

#148

Post by VLM » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 1:15 PM UTC

at_a_remove wrote: post #22

reaperducer wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if there was a standard of moderation that would satisfy everyone, there’s too much to moderate. If only Google had a half a trillion dollars to spend on something other that spying on people. And if only there were 35 million people out of work. But, alas, poor sweet simple Google cannot possibly lie in the bed it made.

Ah, so in this version you have thirty-five million people who could agree on what is offensive. That's a daunting task without the "million" involved to begin with.

The point is not to censor to match current sensibilities but to censor to push society in a direction. It doesn't matter if almost everyone hates what they're selling as long as they eventually push hard enough to sell it. They are, after all, an advertising company at heart.

Re: YouTube: Community contributions will be discontinued across all channels

#149

Post by rjeli » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 1:18 PM UTC

wongarsu wrote: post #140

polytely wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same from English to Dutch, I wonder what triggers that, is it something the video owners has to enable? or does it only happen when there are good subtitles available (either community provided or auto-translated)

I've seen the same video appear with English title one day and with German title another day. I've also seen translated titles on Russian videos without any subtitles (I don't speak Russian, video was still interesting). I suspect the suggestion/front page algorithm has a new branch, suggesting a small number of interesting-to-you foreign language videos with translated titles and adjusting from there.

Love to use opaque tools that are designed to randomly change functionality and presentation. I think as far as divination goes, dowsing rods are far more reliable

Re: YouTube: Community contributions will be discontinued across all channels

#150

Post by formerly_proven » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 1:20 PM UTC

detaro wrote: post #112

MandieD wrote: post #108

Just noticed that Google Maps translates a lot of German business names into English, which is exactly what I don't want when I’m driving along, looking for their sign. There’s enough “Denglish” (intentional use of English-like terms) in use by Germans themselves that this adds rather than removes confusion for non-native German speakers. For example, “Stoffe Bauer” into “Fabric Farmer” - Bauer is a common family nam…

lol, that's terrible. And a great example of lacking context. Youtube also seems to randomly machine translate video titles into German for me, but weirdly enough only sometimes, for some videos. And has a similar problem that short labels etc just don't work if translated by something not optimized for it - and that a German channel probably would use English words in many cases...

I don't understand the algorithm behind that at all. My YouTube is set to English; the UI is in English (but the "Edition" is still DE, because Geofencing). Most video titles are left alone, but some are translated - to German. Wat? Now you might think, it depends on the source language, English and German aren't translated, everything else is, but that's not the case. It's always just some, seemingly random, videos that get a translated title and description (I'm not sure if always both are translated, but I think not).