Platforms, such as YouTube have been recently adding accessibility features. Most notably for me, automatic translations of video titles, descriptions, and the AI generation of audio for other languages have been rolling out.

Increased accessibility is an all-round good thing, there is no argument about that, however the nature of the implementation leaves much to be desired. My mother language is Hungarian. I learnt English as a small child, and while my proficiencies with the language may not be the most exemplary, I can confidently say that I understand the vast majority of English content that I encounter on a daily basis.

However, YouTube does not offer this feature as an option, it is forced upon the user, without any consent, or ability to toggle off, which I think is rather detrimental. When I enter a query to search a video, which I know to be in Hungarian, the results page shows me English language content that has passed trough their automatic translation services. If I don't check more thoroughly, I may be misled to believe that the video and its contents are actually, originally Hungarian, but more severely: I lose the ability to search and find content that I know to be in a certain language. Not to mention the examples of horrible translation errors that occur with this system, that you have no way to opt out of!

YouTube used to have a community captions system, where basically anyone could submit their own subtitles to a video. Eventually it was removed, citing misconduct and abuse. These were something you toggled on your own, if you wanted. YouTube did not force you to use them, but they certainly force you to use their awful, AI generated translations.

To reiterate, my problem doesn't stem from the existence of these features, but their mandatory nature, which unfortunately precedes notions that a user should be able to adjust settings regarding their tastes and wishes.

I've also seen posts that claim human made subtitles are being removed as well, however I do not yet know enough to make an educated guess about this situation.
Reddit also automatically translates posts now, their quality just as atrocious. To their credit though, at least you can turn it off... yet.

TLDR;
Companies once again chase trends at the cost of the people who use their services..

2026-01-25

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