the automatic subtitles on YouTube are not properly accessible. swear words being blanked out is not neutral accessibility for Deaf people like me. if the person in the video is swearing, we need to have that information conveyed to us, not [_____]. we are Deaf, not children. but no one wants to talk about this.
Oct 8, 2026, 2:37 AMExactly! It makes no sense to censor the subtitles if the audio track isn't censored. Not that I think that makes sense to do either, but in that case the two would at least match.
@love when I was a junior subtitler many, many years ago, this was one of the first lessons. Subtitles are not censors, and if deaf people do not wish to see swearing, the television has a channel changer and a power button. I wish more hearing people understood this in social media times.
@marcjones @love I've seen censored alt-text too. "Die" changed to "hear the worst" in text from a speech bubble in a cartoon, for example.
@timtfj @marcjones @love I see audio "die" changed to text "unalive" and I hate it
unrelated, recently I was watching a movie on Netflix with captions on, and they did not match the speech. How is one of the richest companies on earth failing at this?
@autonomousapps yep. A lot of that is due to censorship, including when crossposting to other platforms. Creators get their videos shadowbanned or demonetized if they use the actual words, so they hide them - quite often with live play videos, they are edited out so we can't hear them either, there will either be silence or silly noises, all because big tech has decided *nobody* can handle hearing words like "dead." I have language processing issues and it's a nightmare for me as well.
@love also need captions due to hearing loss, also pissed off about this
@love This can be turned off (caveat: only by the uploader) in Youtube Studio.
Go to: Youtube Studio, Settings, Under "Content" turn "Censor auto-captions" off.
This should be up to the viewer, to be clear, and not the uploader (who may not even be aware that this option exists, because Youtube is great at hiding/removing features that actually benefit people...)
Edit: on desktop, go to Settings, Channel, Advanced Settings, Automatic Captions (Don't show potentially inappropriate words)
@silverface @love I wonder if flipping this on hits the creators revenue; I know Mandalore went out of his way to uncensor his videos CCs, but hasn't done so in his more recent work. Could also just be some YouTube fuckery though, as you mentioned.
@SomeoneInParticular @silverface @love I think it must be a real issue. I recently saw a quite brilliant video by a historian about the Voynich manuscript, and the type of nudity censoring that, according to the historian, was mandated by YouTube hurt my brains.
It's a really funny video, by the way, if you want to see for yourself what I mean: https://youtu.be/51mm_u32mys
Oct 8, 2026, 9:48 AM@silverface @love oh shoot I didn’t know this was an option I’ll go make it on
@silverface @love There is no Content under settings. At least not in my studio.
Closest I was able to find was Settings > Channel > Advanced Settings > Scroll down to Automatic captions and there's an option for "Don't show potentially inappropriate words". I don't know if this is the right setting, but it sounds like it.
@Gwendolyn @love whoops, i was following the mobile version of Studio, thanks for pointing this out! will edit post
@silverface @love As someone who is about to upload a youtube video with lots of swearing in it, this is very useful thanks!
@silverface @love I hope someone comes up with a project similar to SponsorBlock or ReturnYouTubeDislike that replaces community captions. Community Captions was the best feature that got removed for absolutely no reason.
@love Fully agreed. Many streaming services also do this, and though I can hear, I need subtitles to catch all the dialogue in many cases, and it's really annoying to get censored subtitles when the audio isn't censored.
Oct 8, 2026, 3:32 AM@love US cultural hegemony: swearing ❌ graphic violence ✅
The automatic subtitles are unusable by anybody, because they aren't written in any parsable human language. A fine example of the race to the bottom that AI represents.
Oct 8, 2026, 11:11 AM@RustyRing @love I have faulty ears and can say with absolute certainty that you are wrong. They're far from perfect, but they are useful.
@DrHyde @RustyRing @love And let's not forget the searchable automatic transcripts.
Oct 8, 2026, 1:04 PM@DrHyde @RustyRing @love and some youtubers turn them off while also not providing their own which is infuriating
@RustyRing I'm Deaf. not completely, but they're usable enough that they help me.
@love I'm pleased you have that alternative. But I do wish you were better supported. (I.e., accurate, readable subtitles.)
@love It always drives me nuts to see a YouTube video with high production values - excellent expensive cameras, careful cinematography, vibrant tone mapping - and then they have automatic subtitles.
Just extend that commitment to excellence a TINY bit farther and either author subtitles or hire a caption service. We've hired professional caption services at work a few times when we needed live captions and they're shockingly affordable.
@mausmalone @love Yes!
@mausmalone @love YES. For minor amateur makers like me*, it isn't important, but for any company or individual that has spent time and money on doing decent video, this should be a simple decision, like having a title screen and crediting others properly. *This subject isn't really applicable to me, as I just upload simple, usually one take, video of me playing my uke and singing. But if I were to do an explanatory or tuition video in future, I'd consider this as part of the creative process.
Oct 8, 2026, 5:47 PM@UkeleleEric @mausmalone @love another issue is YT auto subtitles often mangle any kind of regional accent (they default to on for a lot of videos these days) and last night I saw them making a total pigs ear of what a lad from Yorkshire was saying..
@vfrmedia @UkeleleEric @love Oh absolutely. As a hearing person I can get around it because I have a sense of what words *sound like* other words. But I have to imagine it's much more of a hindrance for the deaf.
My pet nit with Mentour Pilot.
Oct 8, 2026, 4:47 AM@love many youtube creators started to blip the audio too, at least partially. Is the subtitles blipping new?
Oct 8, 2026, 1:20 PM
@love What's worse is subtitle skip words that they don't understand.
Oct 8, 2026, 1:02 PM
@Velveteen @love my favorite robocaptionism is "heat. heat." during periods of background music and occasional woodworking sounds
Oct 8, 2026, 5:35 AM
Oct 8, 2026, 6:00 AM@love paternalism run rampant.
@love American puritanicalism strikes again
@love This has also bothered me in work. I teach independence and employability skills to groups of students eith sever to mild learning difficulties and many have sensory impairments. Due to their difficulties, they have often been infantalised at school so it frustrates me when swearing, which is appropriate to the content and for their ages, is missed on the captions.
@love they are also starting to rephrase what is being said, so not only are entire words missing they don’t even match what the youtuber is saying
@love yeah it always bothers me this is like rule number one about subtitling shit, you subtitle it exactly as it is
you dont correct grammar, you dont censor words you dont like, it is your job to just transcribe what you hear into text
bugs me so much when people take different approaches
-carrie
@love thank you. It's also stupid as fuck without accessibility in mind, as it spins ambiguity around exactly the words where it might be the least favorable. Stupid ad-induced censorship 🤮
Oct 8, 2026, 6:33 AMThe audience being children is not a valid reason to censor swear words either!
@love THIS!!
My partner and I have auditory processing disorders and need subtitles. The fucking [__] bullshit just means I can’t understand what they’re saying!!
Nevermind when it’s wrong and that wasn’t profanity at all!
@love yes!
Oct 8, 2026, 7:08 AM@love This rhymes in mirror to the issue that AAC users (people with limited ability to communicate with spoken speech and instead rely on word-boards, etc.) often have to fight for,
the ability for AAC tools and setups to have rude or ugly or uncomfortable or sexual vocabulary available as words they are structurally able to, like, say.
(e.g. this section of this post, sorry I can't find a full essay talking entirely about it particularly:
https://communicationfirst.org/dear-parents-who-want-to-keep-their-nonspeaking-children-safe-as-they-go-out-into-the-world/#:~:text=They%20need%20words%20for%20ugly%20things
)
Oct 8, 2026, 8:38 AM@hayley@social.applied-langua.ge @love@social.lol @winter@social.translunar.academy god forbid deaf people see swear words, what would the advertisers think?!
Oct 8, 2026, 9:07 AM
@love@social.lol omg thank you, even for hearing people this is SO annoying, especially when subs are used to understand better a non-native language
@love they're also just straight up incorrect far too often.