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It's mind-boggling and insane how hostile YT became to multilingualism. You'd think that out of the hundreds of people involved in this project, at least one wo

It's mind-boggling and insane how hostile YT became to multilingualism. You'd think that out of the hundreds of people involved in this project, at least one would've been bilingual and experienced this hostility firsthand. I can't even come up with any explanations for how this happened, except for no one important being bilingual (or even having thought of bilingual people), and/or some kind of systemic flaw that lets these breaking changes slip into the final product. YouTube doesn't care about the languages listed in your Google account, as everything else does. It doesn't care what content you watch. The algorithm seemingly takes your display language and forces poorly AI-translated content down your throat, more often than not completely obliterating any coherence the original video had. And this change is forced upon you, you must watch it in the language YouTube decides you have to watch it in. There is a browser extension that reverts this behavior to how it used to be and makes YouTube load the proper audio track. What happens when that stops working?

Tostino 1y ago
These companies are not actually diverse, even if they attempt(ed in the past) to hire diverse ethnicities.
- tavavex 1y ago
  But the strangest thing is that you don't need to be of a certain ethnicity to speak multiple languages. Sure, I think it's less likely for some average US-born employee, but I would still guess that probably >10% have got to speak a foreign language, especially since they're all highly educated people who had more exposure to other languages and cultures than the average American.
happysadpanda2 1y ago
Aha! I too have seen thumbnails of videos with context clues (product brands in the thumbnail which doesn't exist under that brand in my country) yet with a video title in my native tongue, which a clear "machine translation"-feel to it. Until I read this thread I assumed that it was the content creator doing shenanigans (low quality AI slop video mass-produced in many languages and targeting my locale with videos for my locale), but it does make so much more "sense" that it would be YT doing this. And my reaction to those thumbnails, thinking it was the creator doing low quality AI slop, was to "reward" them with "Don't recommend this channel". So I have been punishing innocent channels for crap that YT is doing...

Tostino 1y ago

These companies are not actually diverse, even if they attempt(ed in the past) to hire diverse ethnicities.

tavavex 1y ago
But the strangest thing is that you don't need to be of a certain ethnicity to speak multiple languages. Sure, I think it's less likely for some average US-born employee, but I would still guess that probably >10% have got to speak a foreign language, especially since they're all highly educated people who had more exposure to other languages and cultures than the average American.

happysadpanda2 1y ago

Aha! I too have seen thumbnails of videos with context clues (product brands in the thumbnail which doesn't exist under that brand in my country) yet with a video title in my native tongue, which a clear "machine translation"-feel to it. Until I read this thread I assumed that it was the content creator doing shenanigans (low quality AI slop video mass-produced in many languages and targeting my locale with videos for my locale), but it does make so much more "sense" that it would be YT doing this. And my reaction to those thumbnails, thinking it was the creator doing low quality AI slop, was to "reward" them with "Don't recommend this channel". So I have been punishing innocent channels for crap that YT is doing...