Hello! Welcome back to the channel.
How do I sign with
a wrist brace on my right hand? I don't know.
So as of September 28,
community captions are going to go away,
which is very unfortunate.
And I have a whole video about that. I'll put it over here.
And because of that, they are now trying to
do new and "better" things
with their automatic captioning system.
Basically, YouTube is censoring
practically everything now. Great.
But before we get into that, if you have not yet subscribed
be sure to do so and hit that notification bell
so you don't miss out on any videos.
I'm sure there's going to be more updates about this in the future.
If you would like to support the work that I do,
I do have a Patreon page
and I also have a channel membership,
which the button to that is down below.
So whichever one tickles your fancy more.
Both work just as well.
So if you are a user of automatic captions,
and I know a lot of fellow deaf people
don't like them. Myself included.
But I do end up using them because...
it is what it is, right?
And YouTube's automatic captions
have gotten better over the last couple of years.
And I have a video about that as well. We'll link over here.
But now it seems like
ever since YouTube has decided
that they're going to do away with community contribution,
they just keep digging themselves
into a deeper hole.
And you may have noticed
that, as you are watching captions now,
with the automatic ones
that certain words will have brackets on them.
Here is an example of what I'm talking about:
So what is happening is
when a YouTuber is saying a swear word,
the automatic captions will have brackets covering up that word.
If you've watched Netflix, you'll...you've noticed the same thing.
"Queer Eye" had a lot of this happening
where they would say bad words
and the captions would be censored.
This happens on cable television as well.
And the reason for this
is because YouTubers,
myself included - especially on Twitch,
have been complaining about
when they're talking in a video, right, they're saying stuff.
And words that come up in the automatic captions
would be really bad. And I don't mean just being wrong.
But I mean racial slurs,
homophobic slurs, et cetera, et cetera,
would pop up when they're not supposed to.
And rightfully so, we've been complaining about it.
And something needs to be done with that.
So I'm not faulting
Youtubers complaining about that.
And I'm not faulting YouTube
trying to come up with a solution for that.
I don't think this is a solution though.
"Because our automatic captions can make mistakes,
"we want to be extra careful not to caption certain words incorrectly.
"So to better avoid these mistakes,
"viewers will now see brackets appear
"instead of a potentially inappropriate word
"(when auto-generated subtitles/ closed captions
"are turned on during playback).
"This is the new default setting for all automatic captions.
"Note: this setting does not apply to manual captions
"or audio tracks and can be turned off
"at any time by creators at the channel level."
So yes, if you make your own captions,
whether you buy them from someone else,
like Rev or Ai-Media et cetera,
or if you type them up yourself,
or if you have community contribution
for the next few days that we have them,
you're not going to get the brackets.
If you say "fuck", "fuck" is going to show up.
And I'm going to leave that in there and not bleep it out.
And I'm going to leave the automatic captions on
and I want someone to tell me if that...
bracket shows up when I say that.
And then there's a little tidbit at the bottom,
that shows creators how to turn that settings off.
So, like I said, you can turn it off.
And I will have that article linked down below.
So if you want to turn it off,
which I would hope that you would,
there you go.
So it's not like the brackets
are going to...be permanent,
as in this is what you get and that's it.
But still...
"We want to help channels reach a wide audience
"and improve accessibility" (LAUGHS)
"for everyone on YouTube."
Sure, Jan.
"So we're committed to improving our systems
"and making automatic captions more accurate."
Here's why this system
is so frustrating.
People who need captions, like deaf people.
Hi!
People with APD, auditory processing disorder.
ADHD.
People who are learning English as a second language.
Et cetera, et cetera.
And especially deaf people.
We are...infantilized a lot.
And just seeing this doesn't help that feeling.
When you're watching the video, the word's already gonna be said.
The word is already going to be said out loud.
Hearing people are hearing these words.
And then we don't get access
to what the person is saying.
Even when people are swearing,
when people are saying...
This helps us understand the personality of somebody.
This helps us understand
exactly the point that somebody's trying to get across.
Yes, even if they're saying a swear word.
It's just frustrating to see.
We can see that somebody is swearing.
Like if I'm watching a Gordon Ramsay show,
sometimes the words are actually censored on the captions.
It will actually say "BLEEP"
instead of just putting the word.
Now when it's on cable TV,
obviously it's going to be bleeped
on the show and in the captions.
I understand that.
But if I'm watching it on the internet, when it's...
where it's the uncensored version?
They'll still censor it.
I know Gordon Ramsay swears.
Anybody who knows who Gordon Ramsay is
knows that he swears like a sailor.
What is the absolute point
of trying to bleep out what he's saying in the captions?
That makes absolutely (LAUGHS) no sense whatsoever.
And also, as my friend Andrew said on Twitter,
the feature just breaks automatically
when a person is saying something that they obviously said.
So the feature is trying to make sure
that they don't write what
the creator didn't mean to say.
But if they actually said
what they said.
If they meant what they said.
So they said the F word, the swear word,
and you're censoring it,
what good is that doing?
The feature isn't doing its job.
And right now, I'm seeing videos
where half of the sentence
or even almost the whole sentence
is just censored out with brackets.
And I'm trying to watch the video and I'm like...
"What is happening?"
So now I have to rely on the creator
to go in and turn this thing off?
Y'all couldn't even turn community contribution on!
And that's why "people weren't using it," quote, quote.
And now community contribution's going away.
And some people in the replies on my Twitter thread...
I made a whole Instagram graphic.
If you haven't followed me there, go follow me on Instagram,
go follow me on Twitter.
People were saying, "Man, why don't...
"Why don't we have the option...
"Creators should have the option
"to edit out
"all of that in the automatic captions."
Well, (1) you get the option to turn it off.
And (2) y'all didn't know that you had the option to...
edit your automatic captions
for like five years now?
Then again, I blame YouTube of course.
Because they can't promote anything
that's already there in the first place.
Again - community contribution. Damn it!
Creators have the option to turn that off,
so I and other people who need captions
have to wait on them.
And chances are they're not gonna go turn it off,
because they just don't want to.
It was the same... like...they...
They could have pressed the button to turn on community contribution,
but they weren't gonna do that.
Are they really gonna do the same thing for this?
And with YouTube stating
that they want to improve accessibility,
you've had the options to improve accessibility
right in front of you this whole time.
You're not actually improving on anything.
You're just taking away things.
You're taking away the best solutions and just giving us worse options.
I absolutely agree, everybody should agree,
that having the really bad words...
I don't mean swear words, I mean forbidden words.
I agree that those should...
There should be something that fixes that problem,
because nobody wants
to be saying what they're actually saying,
and then this shows up and they didn't actually say it.
That's why I took off the "automatic" captions on Twitch.
Because it was saying slurs that I never actually said.
And what I did was
I implemented other ways of accessibility.
I have a mod that transcribes everything in the chat.
Bless my mod.
And then I try to SimCom, which is not the best.
But if somebody needs me to type, I will type for them.
But I wasn't work...
I wasn't going to work backwards
when it comes to accessibility on my stream.
Here's the thing.
There should be a way to fix it
without completely censoring everything.
And there is a way.
But they're not pushing it for some reason.
So I've been talking with my pal Liam on this.
He's a British deaf YouTuber
who has also been talking about
the removal of community contribution
on his website.
We've been talking back and forth on Twitter for a bit.
And he showed me a snippet,
it's on his...website.
"They went on to add that they are working on
"minimizing the appearance of offensive words in captions
"by bettering the training of the models
"through 'context biasing' - which involves
"machines being told to focus on a specific context
"away from potentially offensive language."
So I'm wondering if they're actually
still working on that.
Like why aren't we just focusing on that,
instead of bringing out this new feature
that's censoring just everything.
It's being overly cautious
and it's taking away accessibility
from people who need it.
And what happens when or if
they "perfect" the context biasing?
Are we're still going to have this feature
where there's a whole bunch of brackets
that are showing up in every other word?
It just seems so frustrating,
especially for this particular month.
It's Deaf Awareness Month.
And, as I'm filming, it... It's Deaf Awareness Week
and hopefully this video will go up on time for that.
And it just seems like
everything's going backwards.
After they've already talked with multiple deaf people,
at least two now,
one-on-one about
what should be done with captions.
We know that the real good solutions are there,
but they don't seem to want to take those solutions
and use that to better a system.
They just want to take...
whatever they think of on the spot
and then be like, "Oh, yeah, this'll be fine."
Stick with the context biasing
thing that you want to do.
I think that's going to be
the best middle ground for creators
that don't wanna get demonetized.
Because I understand.
And for...
also, viewers like myself. Because I am a viewer
as much as I am a creator,
who wants to be able to enjoy
and be able to access videos.
We want to be able to have the same amount of information
as any other hearing viewer
that was watching it without...the captions.
And now that I think about it, my friend Morgan has a thread
and she is an accessibility specialist.
"This is, by the strict definition,
"not equal access to content and user experience
"and makes me question YouTube's practices.
"Not only is it patronizing,
"but extraordinarily ableist.
"I don't want to be overly critical,
"but this is setting a very dangerous precedent
"for accessibility and anyone and everyone
"who works at accessibility
"should be very concerned right now."
And then a couple of comments in the articles
on the support Google page
are pretty much against the idea.
There are some that are for it and then some...
just in general, over on Twitter, Facebook, whatever,
just being like "there's got to be
"a different way to...do this."
And again: there is.
So, so far, that's all I have to say on that.
Let me know what your experience is down below.
How much of the brackets that you're seeing?
Some videos will probably have a ton
and some videos probably won't have a lot.
Just depends on who you're watching.
Cause some people are swearers (LAUGHS)
and some people are not, obviously.
I have a good, like, mixture of people
that do swear and don't swear.
So it's interesting to...
compare...
how much you're gonna see a bracket.
Also, in case you're interested,
I do have a sale going on
on my merch store for Deaf Awareness Week.
All orders are going to be 20% off.
I'll have a link to my merch store
down below in the description box and in the pinned comment.
And, you know,
go wild if you want.
Thank you for taking the time out of your day to watch this video.
If you've made it this far,
don't forget to subscribe and like this video.
Give it a share so people know what's up.
And I will see you later.
Bye!
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