Instructions for unfucking YouTube audio tracks for videos in other languages. I only noticed this today after some particularly attrocious auto-dubs in the trailers for the films Heysel 85 and Rose posted by Screen International. Heysel 85 really was the worst of them.

A text copy of the instructions are listed below.

I’m also going to keep this post pinned for a while. Let me know in the comments when you’re sick of looking at it.

So YouTube is rolling out its trash automatic machine-generated audio dubbing to all users, enabled by default.

Here’s how to turn it off.

Find a video doing the bullshit, click the gear icon on the bottom-right, then click “Audio track”. It will probably have a little number by it in parenthesis.

If you just want to chage the audio for this video, you can click the original language and you’re done.

If you want to fix this for every video and never have to deal with this again, click the “preferred languages” link.

This should take you to the YouTube settings page. Under “Language” and “Preferred languages”, click the “Add or edit languages” link.

Check every checkbox. Every one. Even the one for Klingon.

There is no “select all” option. These are not standard checkbox html elements, so javascript tricks won’t work either. You have to click each one manually. Because fuck you.

Click confirm. You’re done.

Now look up “enshittification”.

  • whelk@retrolemmy.comEnglish
    6·
    1 month ago

    Probably will be like the auto play preview option that I have to turn off again several times a week because it keeps mysteriously enabling itself

  • Mark with a Z@suppo.fiEnglish
    2·
    1 month ago

    Big tech always caters to the lowest common denominator

    Now look up “enshitification”.

    Every time someone spells it with one t I read it as shite and not shit

    • neuracnu@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOPMEnglish
      2·
      1 month ago

      Whoops lol; fixed. It wasn’t in the spellchecker and I searched for it with one ‘T’ and found enough results that I figured that was it.

  • Hawke@lemmy.worldEnglish
    21·
    1 month ago

    You have to click each one manually.

    This is not true. You can use spacebar to check each box and tab to move to the next box. You will likely need to scroll several times though.

  • CatLikeLemming@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    1·
    1 month ago

    I think, for once, someone at YouTube actually thought it was a good idea for the users too. It’s like those websites that automatically change their language based on your IP instead of your browser setting. Some monolingual thought they were being nice.

    Anyways, the reason it’s on by default is likely because people like us will know we hate it and turn it off. The average user who would like this, which is a good few I reckon, wouldn’t know to turn it on. It’s like videos defaulting to 720p or 480p. Many people literally won’t notice and it saves YouTube a lot of bandwidth. Meanwhile if you set it back manually a couple times, YouTube does it way less.

    And my guess on the checkboxes is incompetence, not malice, the YouTube codebase is likely hellish.