[clan]

So what you're saying: Please complain through proper channels and hope they accept your input?

Or should he just keep using the signals he gets and immediately clean up his feed?

I actually see this as a feature. YouTube recommends a lot of garbage. I suggested that they improved my feed but they implemented this signal instead. I use the exactly this method to weed out a lot of content I do not care for.

You cannot tell the 500 pound gorilla anything. I prefer my videos without subtitles. I have that set as a preference. Yet when chromecasting it is common for the subtitles to spontaneously turn on. And has done so for a long time.

English is not my first language and my first language is not widely used. Hence I am not used to dubbed movies/programming and I am used to seeing subtitles.

If a native english speaker could understand the horror show that the machine generated subtitles are. If you are used to subtitles they are extremely hard to ignore. You will then read and get the understanding (often hilariously wrong) before the audio catches up and you might end up rather confused.

I can understand an American might have a hard time watching a subbed German movie. Thats natural because it is not common. But when you grew up with subtitles it is actually effortless. Except when they are poor. Then it becomes worse because of the cognitive load of 2 languages and the effort to figure out what is correct.

Dear english only speakers: Translation is hard. A poor translation is worse that no translation as it obfuscates the message. AI is not there yet at all. Maybe impressive but often not helpful or plain and simply distorts the real message.

[eCa]

As a fellow non English native speaker, I concur with all of the above. But if you only have time for one sentence:

> A poor translation is worse than no translation

[bmn__]

What I wanted to transport is the following idea: attacking a channel owner (who is most likely innocent and did nothing wrong) with a metaphoric sledge-hammer when a more gentle and precise tool will do is not a great way to conduct oneself in society. vintermann and clan have a feed now without content that bothers them, but at the cost of lowering the channel owner's reputation in the eyes of the operators of Youtube, with the effect of slashing recommendations for the videos of the channel owner at large and his earnings. That's not nice, we should be considerate of the consequence of our actions. Does this make sense, do you understand this perspective?

This behaviour rankles me, I think is on the same level as the misuse of the feature "report this as spam (to some upstream entity/3rd party)" for e-mail messages that are not actually spam.

[vintermann]

Attacking? By saying "don't recommend this", I'm just saying I want to give someone else the chance to be seen, rather than the ones who will make their stuff objectively worse in order to juice their stats for the algorithm.

I'm sure my "don't recommend this" clicks don't in any way make up for Google's promotion of channels that "make their content accessible", because it doesn't even stop them from recommending me more machine-translated videos.

[bmn__]

There will be no understanding if you do not even make a token effort to suppress your egocentric worldview and engage in honest conversation.

[clan]

Did you?

They base the feed on user input. The feed is then (supposedly) adjusted to what I like.

What I call a signal you call an attack.

I signal that I do not like Minecraft videos. But I do not attack them.

Your anger is misdirected. You should be mad at YouTube because they do not seem to understand that there can be multiple signals at once.

The chances that I click on a Minecraft video is low. Autotranslated even lower.

So we differ strongly in opinion on how the platform should work. I read your "attack" argument as I should write to the Minecraft creators and tell them their content would be better if they played Minesweeper instead.

I do not punish anyone. I just pursue a clean and (for me) high quality feed.

If you are up in arms that I punish your channel that is another signal that I am probably not your target audience.

When dealing with audiences at scale you need to listen to these signals as handling personal opinions in mails from the discerning viewer is not feasible.