Hello, and welcome back to the channel.
Now that I have your attention,
something interesting happened while I was gone for a couple of weeks.
Supposedly, allegedly, PewDiePie and a couple of other people
have saved YouTube and the Community Contribution fiasco.
And before I get more into that and into the timeline of it all,
I want to say that because this is Deaf Awareness Month,
then, this video is about craptions.
I do have my No More CRAPtions merch out on my Teespring store.
There is this sticker.
There are mugs, phone cases, shirts, etc.
So, if this is something up your alley,
I'll have a link down below so you can get one for yourself.
Also, if videos about deafness, accessibility and captions
are something you are intrigued by and want to learn more about,
be sure to subscribe to this channel and you will get more videos.
So, a good portion of me is known
for pushing the No More CRAPtions movement,
starting at 2016 and even before that.
I was talking about accessibility on YouTube, and captions,
and how important it is for creators to caption their own content.
And also, the whole thing about trolling creators and things like that
and creators not really checking their captions,
that also was a huge part of it.
My work became so known that Tyler Oakley has talked about it,
Lilly Singh has talked about it,
and I've been invited to VidCon to talk about it.
YouTube invited me out
to the YouTube Space Los Angeles Accessibility Summit
to talk about this kind of thing.
And the thing about all the work that I and other deaf people have done
is that it was very -
It was really hard to make it be recognised.
Whether it was we were actually talking to creators about it
and they were just ignoring us or just rejecting us flat out,
or talking to YouTube and Google as companies.
And they just were kind of like, "Hmm..."
And during the past two weeks, something big happened
with the Community Contribution and captions, translation.
Something made a video about PewDiePie
and how his channel is being ruined by translators.
And then, that blew up. The translator went viral.
And it was just a back and forth thing.
There's a lot of things that happened.
I'm gonna try to condense it down as small as possible.
So, like I said, it all started off when a YouTuber called JT,
who has 355,000 subscribers,
made a video that was titled, "Pewdiepie's Translators RUIN his channel..."
And it was talking about how at least one specific person
was translating his videos or even...
There were some of them more in English and...
maybe, it went from American English to UK English or something.
And the titles were racist, vile.
There was a lot of just very graphic things that were written.
And then, another YouTuber,
whose username I'm not sure how to pronounce, kliksphilip,
he has 171,000 subscribers,
and he posted another video that was called,
"The Much Problem of Translate".
It was about how translation fails kind of slip through the crack.
And they get accepted without anyone reviewing it
and making sure that it's correct.
Or at least makes enough sense that it's passable.
So, those were posted last month 2019,
but like I said, this is not the first time
that this has been brought up.
This is years in the making.
In 2016 in August, I uploaded a video.
I forgot the title.
I think it was just telling people to stop trolling
with jokes and commentary in videos.
Smosh was a big victim of this and just others in general.
People would write either really horrible jokes, insults,
or just weird phrases that didn't need to be in there.
PewDiePie was a victim.
Markiplier was a victim.
Jacksepticeye was a victim.
PewDiePie and Markiplier did not care.
They knew that this was going on. They didn't care.
And I went to Markiplier at VidCon and I talked to him about it,
and I was brushed off, he didn't care.
Jacksepticeye was the only guy to go on to Tumblr
and tell people to stop doing what they were doing,
and that's not what the captions were for.
And I've always appreciated that from him.
Also, YouTube did not care.
It was being brought up to YouTube.
People would be reporting it,
and it was just radio silence.
In September 2016, so a month later,
Caption Action 2 made a blog post talking about caption vandalism,
which is exactly what it says.
She mentioned that you only need at least, I think, two or three people
from the community to review the captions.
And if they approve it, it goes through.
I was under the impression, and I said this multiple times
when I was talking about community contribution,
that everything needed to be approved.
You, the creator, I, the creator, had to approve it.
But, Caption Action 2 investigated it
and that turned out not to be the case, so I was wrong.
What, I think - in my defence, I think from me,
I did have to manually review it
possibly because I don't have a big enough audience
that will go through the caption files and then review them.
That is why I was under the impression.
So, because of this weird crack in a wall,
it makes it just so easy for people to abuse the system.
And again, response from YouTube, non-existent.
Response from everybody else,
except Jacksepticeye in the past, non-existent.
We kept on talking about this for a long time.
Hearing allies were talking about it when I made the No More CRAPtions,
or pushed the No More CRAPtions campaign in September 2016,
I made a video and I tried to get a whole bunch of other YouTubers
to make videos on Deaf Awareness Day
so that hopefully, it would spread.
When you get a topic that talked about -
everybody talks about that same topic all at the same time,
there was a bigger chance of it trending.
It didn't really trend.
So with that campaign, just talking about it in general,
from 2015 to now, a lot of people just didn't care.
So, deaf people, the people who need it
and also people with APD and ADHD, etc.
The people who needed the captions were talking about them,
and creators and mostly viewers were just -
they just thought it was funny.
So, now, fast forward back to now,
when JT's video goes viral, people are talking about it.
And PewDiePie and Jacksepticeye have turned off
Community Contribution as a whole.
I'm not sure what Markiplier has done.
And they did apologise in either stream or a video.
Also, Jacksepticeye made a tweet, I believe.
Apologising to people who needed captions about,
you know, for what was going on.
I don't know if Markiplier has said anything.
Also, YouTubers and streamers like Pokimane, Keemstar,
Logan Paul even, they're also getting hit.
And regardless of how you feel about
so many YouTubers that are getting hit
because we know that there's a lot of controversy
with some of these YouTubers.
I don't care what they've done.
This shouldn't be happening.
The Community Contribution, translations, etc.
should not be happening even to these people.
People, if they want access to certain people, they deserve it.
That's the right to have it regardless of what people have done.
And then, once a few of these YouTubers start tweeting TeamYouTube
or YouTube Creators, they say that it's not their fault,
and that the creators need to be checking their files.
Now, I do think that YouTubers should be checking their files.
I think that's what should have been concrete from the get go
rather than having random viewers check them
because you'll never what's going to happen.
If viewers are going to troll,
they probably going to accept the trolling.
So, I've always been pro team - We have to check them.
But, YouTube shouldn't have this crack in the wall in the first place.
Why is YouTube letting things fall through the crack?
So, yeah. We should be checking it,
but random people on YouTube should not be checking them for us
and letting them slip through the crack.
Maybe, there could be like a VIP sort of fan.
Like on Twitch, you have mods, you know? Things like that.
Maybe, they could be a part of that, but not...
random Bob, Tom and Suzie on the street just randomly coming in
and being like, "Yeah, that's fine. Let's send this in."
So that caused a ruckus.
And then, a YouTuber, Memeulous, tweeted @TeamYouTube
the same sort of thing, and YouTube was like,
"All right. From here on out, we are making it
so that creators have to manually review everything."
Finally.
And YouTube could have avoided this whole controversy
just by doing that in the first place.
So, now, here's my take on it.
I have a few feelings about this and concerns, I guess.
For YouTubers like PewDiePie, Jacksepticeye,
Markiplier, Keemstar, Logan Paul even,
I really think that the easiest solution for people who are this big
and are well off enough for it,
actually paying to get them professionally done,
at least the English part, because that's going to be the cheapest
and that's probably the most universal language for them.
Getting those done professionally through a company
is going to be the number one solution for them.
I know Jacksepticeye said on Twitter that he was going to shut it off
until there was a fix.
And he said, hopefully, there will be a solution.
Your solution is not going to be Community Contribution.
Your solution, your 100% solution is going to be professional service.
And with PewDiePie, who has 100 million subscribers,
congratulations, that is amazing.
I can't see any reason other than just not caring
why you wouldn't just wanna go the professionally done route
instead of just hoping that
your viewers will contribute, which they will.
I mean, he has so many.
But it's just easier.
And it looks better. It's more legible, etc.
It is the solution.
My other concern is that, why did it take so long,
and why does it take one hearing person for people to care?
When we were talking about it,
it's not that I don't appreciate that somebody with a large following spoke out,
because I have been wanting and others have been hoping
that larger people will speak out and help us out
because that's what's going to work better.
But it does kinda suck when you've been talking about it
for years and years and years.
Trying to get YouTube to listen to you for years and years and years
as people who need the accessibility.
Why do people have to ignore the minorities, make fun of us,
be like, "Oh, this isn't important. Don't worry about."
"This is funny. Take a joke."
But when somebody else talks about it and they're like, "I agree."
And it sucks that YouTube took this long to listen
but I'm glad that they finally did.
And now there's one step in the right direction.
And it's the same with the creators, they didn't care before.
They were not really, I don't wanna say, encouraging it,
but I guess they are encouraging it.
If they're just like, "I don't care about this."
But they'll post screenshots on Twitter about the automatic captions,
or any sort of trolling.
And they're just kinda like, "Oh my god. What in the world is this?"
But they don't say stop, or they don't actually use the solution.
We could say that this is ignorance,
and some of it probably is.
But with people with that big of an audience,
and especially with people who are involved
in the technology side of YouTube,
whether it be gaming or technology reviews, things like that,
I don't believe that people don't know what the actual solutions are.
So, yeah. I'm curious to see what's going to actually happen with this.
I know some people are probably still going to turn it off,
because they don't know.
It's like with kliksphilip, I know he said
that he's gonna turn off it completely,
at least the translation part.
Maybe not the English part but at least the translation part.
Because English is the only language that he knows,
and this is probably going to be a pattern with other YouTubers
because they don't know Spanish, Mandarin, German, etc,
so it's hard for them to know,
OK, is this actually correct?
And it's just gonna be easier for them to shut that part off completely.
So, yeah.
I can appreciate that JT and Jacksepticeye, etc,
brought this up and finally got YouTube to crack down on it.
I just wish that those of us who were talking about it for so long
and trying to make this happen sooner
weren't brushed off to the side and ignored.
That part does suck. Oh, well.
Take the wins when you can get them, right?
So, if you found this video helpful
or appreciate any of the work that has been put into anything,
consider being a pledge on Patreon.
It really helps me out with making these videos,
campaign stuff, etc.
If you would like to help translate this video
very well and appropriately,
I'm gonna have a link to that down below in the description.
Always appreciate it. Really helps me out.
Thank you for taking the time out of your day to watch this video.
I really do appreciate it.
And I will see you later. Bye.
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