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

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

#51

Post by dodobirdlord » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 5:20 AM UTC

wwweston wrote: post #36

dodobirdlord wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[flagged]

I didn’t say that there’s any legitimacy to the attacks from the right. But nonetheless they exist and they are a waste of resources to address and are a convenient excuse for a hostile government administration to harass the company.

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

#52

Post by nindalf » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 5:28 AM UTC

darthoctopus wrote: post #2

community-contributed subtitles are an essential part of the appeal of YouTube for me, particularly with non-English videos from small operations who may not have the resources to provide quality transcriptions/translations. I don't think this functionality was as little-used as the support post represents. Clearly more options exist for managing spam than just shutting down the feature altogether.

> I don’t think this functionality was as little used

Based on what? Because you used this feature a few times, it became widely used? 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.

> Clearly more options exist for managing spam

Yeah, I’ve heard this one before from well meaning people who start out with “why don’t you just ...” without realising that the approach would have poor precision/recall at scale. Any hard coded rule would probably rot. Building a classifier to detect this abuse would be tricky considering it’s low prevalence and that ML was doing a poor job of captioning in the first place (nothing to compare it to).

Another day, another top HN comment that confidently presents opinion as fact. Would it kill folks to be a little less confident?

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

#53

Post by MattGaiser » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 5:31 AM UTC

fakedang wrote: post #50

rrdharan wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realize that revenue and profit are distinct? Uber has massive revenues as do many other capital intensive businesses. That doesn't make them profitable.

Last time I checked, YouTube ads were a very profitable business. The parent to your comment chose revenue likely to note that Google makes money from the bed ie. it's not a service given away for free.

The bed referred to the community generated subtitles, not YouTube overall.

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

#54

Post by Dylan16807 » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 5:45 AM UTC

TameAntelope wrote: post #43

Dylan16807 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Earlier today I watched a video of two people talking. Youtube decided it was in french and the transcript had less than one word per minute, all of them wrong.

Are you suggesting that your anecdote is sufficient to meaningfully change YouTube's strategy around speech-to-text?

Change? No. Show that the system is not up to snuff? Yes.

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

#55

Post by calineczka » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 5:49 AM UTC

SllX wrote: post #45

toohotatopic wrote: post #18

Seems like they have enough resources to train their translation NN and speech-to-text NN. I don't think google has introduced those features for the users in the first place but they were a means to get training data.

Their automated CC sucks, always has, and I check multiple times a year only to see that it still sucks, most recently last month. I’ve never had the best hearing, so I usually turn CC on when I can, particularly with ESL speakers with heavy accents; but if the only option on a YouTube video is the automated captions, then the only option is crap and I’ll go without. On the other hand channels with a large dedicated…

Exactly same experience. Hearing disabled and using subtitles whenever I can. The generated ones are not good at all. The more unusual wording (i.e. full of technical terms or custom names) the worse it is.

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

#56

Post by throwawaysea » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 5:51 AM UTC

Somehow this minor feature stands as proof for me that Google doesn’t know its customers and doesn’t care. And yet they will be financially successful. Maybe they are too big.

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

#57

Post by totetsu » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 5:56 AM UTC

https://amara.org/en/ is an alternative service, but probably even less discoverable for most viewers.

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

#58

Post by verroq » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 5:56 AM UTC

People have been "contributing" legit looking subtitles and then inserting some spam in the middle for self promotion. Most big youtube channels e.g. pewdiepie has disabled community contributed subtitles.

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

#59

Post by curiousgal » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 6:06 AM UTC

SllX wrote: post #45

toohotatopic wrote: post #18

Seems like they have enough resources to train their translation NN and speech-to-text NN. I don't think google has introduced those features for the users in the first place but they were a means to get training data.

Their automated CC sucks, always has, and I check multiple times a year only to see that it still sucks, most recently last month. I’ve never had the best hearing, so I usually turn CC on when I can, particularly with ESL speakers with heavy accents; but if the only option on a YouTube video is the automated captions, then the only option is crap and I’ll go without. On the other hand channels with a large dedicated…

To be fair, the Live Caption feature on Pixel phone (which can transcribe videos you are watching) is great. Maybe they plan on rolling that.

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

#60

Post by LMYahooTFY » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 6:07 AM UTC

wwweston wrote: post #36

dodobirdlord wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[flagged]

I think the issue of the right wing of politics being underrepresented in "the media" is deeply convoluted, too much to so easily dismiss entirely.

If "the media" only includes Fox, MSNBC, and CNN, then it's fairly even.

If "the media" also includes Hollywood and Silicon Valley, it becomes far less popular clear.