[lbotos]

You gotta remember that "think of the average person, and then remember 50% are dumber than that".

By doing this, Youtube has probably 10x'd available content for "dumb" ppl to watch. Respectfully, my parents are in that cohort, and I suspect my father will happily watch AI translated and dubbed woodworking channels and not care at all. He "wins" here.

I have to acknowledge that there are probably more people like him then like me who want to have Japanese videos in Japanese in my US feed.

YT needs to make it configurable and I'm fine to turn it off, but the fact that I need an extension to do so is very much lame. As well as that I'm not sure uploaders are aware of their videos being displayed in this way.

[vouaobrasil]

I've disabled dubbing on my channel completely. I think the world was a better place when people made an effort to learn languages, and making material in any language available in any other removes some of the magic from the world.

[SkiFire13]

> By doing this, Youtube has probably 10x'd available content for "dumb" ppl to watch.

But is that content really watchable for them?

[danielscrubs]

A generic algorithm is leaving money on the table if that’s the case.

[ahmedfromtunis]

What's dumb about watching dubbed woodworking videos? And what part of watching japanese videos in japanese makes superior?

You know what's dumb, though: failing to acknowledge that the world is diverse and people have diverse needs that we can't even start to imagine.

I'm happy for your dad that AI has opened for him the gates to even more content to watch from around the world about his hobby.

[b3orn]

> And what part of watching japanese videos in japanese makes superior?

Bilingual people exist and the AI translation YouTube currently uses sounds very unnatural and destroys everything that isn't voice.

[redwall_hp]

Multilingual people not only exist, but they're the majority in the world, with some estimates reaching over 60% of the global population (others are low 50s).

Even the US, which is a pretentious bubble, has a great many multilingual people. English is by far the most common, but many people speak it as a second language or not at all.

Another issue is not all people, whether they are proficient in one language or more, speak the dominant language of the country they reside in. Which language does some geofence decide Indians speak? Do Eastern Canadians speak English or French? (Officially both, and bilingual signage is a legal requirement.)

Maybe I'm travelling in Japan and I only know very basic Japanese, but the geo-targeting decides everything should be in Japanese. Or maybe someone is immigrating to the US and doesn't speak English (which is not a legal requirement in any way). We have many non-English speakers who live in the US.

Honestly, if it gets to the point that it's providing pressure against the use of a language where it's commonly spoken, it could arguably be considered ethnic cleansing adjacent...

[dzhiurgis]

Subtitles is way to go, esp. for likes of movies. For educainment I’m fine with dubbing. Obviously let me disable or enable multiple subtitles.

[unpaydijk]

>What's dumb about watching dubbed woodworking videos?

Nothing necessarily as long as the user knows it's dubbed and not the original, and so has the potential to judge whether the content is reliable knowing things may be off. Doing everything as instructed, with just some mistranslated units can be at best frustrating and at worst very dangerous

[stingraycharles]

Your comment appears very hostile considering the fact that the parent you’re replying to was actually doing exactly that, being considerate that there are many people that prefer things to be dubbed as they don’t master English all that well.

[lbotos]

> And what part of watching japanese videos in japanese makes superior?

We do have to acknowledge that putting in the effort to learn a second language (whatever language) "takes more skill" than watching a dubbed video, ya?

I took up the hobby of learning a second language to challenge myself. If I watch the videos dubbed in English, where is the challenge?

> failing to acknowledge that the world is diverse and people have diverse needs that we can't even start to imagine.

I think you missed my point because I (lovingly) called my dad dumb -- Youtube has absolutely liberated him and given him access to a rich world of woodworking content that cable TV could never. This feature is helping him access more of that.

Youtube also gave me a world of Japanese content that I could never imagine, but this feature is hurting me by making it harder for me to get the content I'm looking for. Maybe I'm no longer Youtube's target audience, but 1 toggle switch to disable this feature and I'm back in the target audience.