YouTube's Captions Insert Explicit Language In Kids' Videos (wired.com) 78
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: A new study (PDF) of YouTube's algorithmic captions on videos aimed at kids documents how the text sometimes veers into very adult language. In a sample of more than 7,000 videos from 24 top-ranked kids' channels, 40 percent displayed words in their captions found on a list of 1,300 "taboo" terms, drawn in part from a study on cursing. In about 1 percent of videos, the captions included words from a list of 16 "highly inappropriate" terms, with YouTube's algorithms most likely to add the words "bitch," "bastard," or "penis." Some videos posted on Ryan's World, a top kids' channel with more than 30 million subscribers, illustrate the problem. In one, the phrase "You should also buy corn" is rendered in captions as "you should also buy porn." In other videos, a "beach towel" is transcribed as a "bitch towel," "buster" becomes "bastard," a "crab" becomes a "crap," and a craft video on making a monster-themed dollhouse features a "bed for penis."
Automated captions are not available on YouTube Kids, the version of the service aimed at children. But many families use the standard version of YouTube, where they can be seen. Pew Research Center reported in 2020 that 80 percent of parents to children 11 or younger said their child watched YouTube content; more than 50 percent of children did so daily. [...] YouTube spokesperson Jessica Gibby says children under 13 are recommended to use YouTube Kids, where automated captions cannot be seen. On the standard version of YouTube, she says the feature improves accessibility. "We are continually working to improve automatic captions and reduce errors," she says. "The team also ran audio from kids' YouTube videos through an automated transcription service offered by Amazon," adds Wired. "It too sometimes made mistakes that made the content edgier. [...] 'Fluffy' became the F-word in the transcript of a video about a toy; one video host asked viewers to send in not 'craft ideas' but 'crap ideas.'"
Automated captions are not available on YouTube Kids, the version of the service aimed at children. But many families use the standard version of YouTube, where they can be seen. Pew Research Center reported in 2020 that 80 percent of parents to children 11 or younger said their child watched YouTube content; more than 50 percent of children did so daily. [...] YouTube spokesperson Jessica Gibby says children under 13 are recommended to use YouTube Kids, where automated captions cannot be seen. On the standard version of YouTube, she says the feature improves accessibility. "We are continually working to improve automatic captions and reduce errors," she says. "The team also ran audio from kids' YouTube videos through an automated transcription service offered by Amazon," adds Wired. "It too sometimes made mistakes that made the content edgier. [...] 'Fluffy' became the F-word in the transcript of a video about a toy; one video host asked viewers to send in not 'craft ideas' but 'crap ideas.'"
If you think that's bad... (Score:1)
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Legitimate complaint, though I don't understand the low Score. "No comment history available" means what?
As for the story, I'm hard pressed to care less. However I have a number of beefs with YouTube. The new one involves the ads. I think they've started a new scam. When the video ads are supposed to play, it just sits there doing nothing. Then, after 10 or sometimes up to 30 seconds, the video starts playing. It's almost as though YouTube is trying to avoid my cancel-ad clicks while telling the advertisers
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"No comment history available" means the post has not been moderated yet. No positive or negative mods yet and no karma bonus points.
I have also seen YouTube videos that appear to just sit there for 10 to 30 seconds but I attribute that to my ad blocker hiding the ads from me. YouTube waits until it thinks the ad has finished then proceeds to display the video. Since I don't see the ad, I can't click the "Skip ad" button so I have to wait.
If you have an ad blocker, you can test this by temporarily turnin
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No ad blocker. I basically accept the deal and I know there's no free lunch.
On your last suggestion, I have a similar strategy by switching to a different video.
I would like to estimate the advertising overhead more accurately, but pretty sure it's lower than on television in the days when I used to watch commercial TV. I pretty much quit watching TV before cable, so I can't assess the advertising there, but what boggles my mind is noticing the advertising channels (in passing). Who in their right mind woul
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No way for me (though I agree with your filtering considerations). I see that option as paying the blackmailer. YouTube is fundamentally a criminal enterprise, the google is increasingly EVIL, and the main thing I want is alternatives. But the game is rigged to prevent sincere competition from competitors.
But you are still being subjected to the in-video advertising and pitches for their sponsors, so even that part of the deal is bogus.
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YouTube's automatic captioning system gets it right most of the time. Every now and then, the AI tosses in a naughty word for shakes and giggles. If you're a content creator, you do your own captions or pay a third-party company to create captions for you.
In my opinion, YouTube should require closed captioning on every new video that gets posted. The content creator can outsource the job to a third party or use YouTube's voice recognition algorithm to create a first draft, then manually correct the captioning. Requiring closed captions on new content won't fix the millions of videos already in YouTube, but it should be mandatory for all new content.
I have a deaf friend that tries to use YouTube for everything from home repairs (how to replace a toilet flap
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"fuck" has no meaning in flemish - its not even an f-word here , its actually not even a word here ...
Taalunie [woordenlijst.org] and Van Dale [vandale.nl] disagree.
holy shit (Score:3, Funny)
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That'd be a Religious world.
("Conservative" in the USA)
Re: holy shit (Score:2)
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You mean puritan reformed christian... Catholics aren't this stupid by a loooong shot.
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There are situations in which using the word "penis" when talking to a child would be appropriate. Vanishingly few of those situations seem reasonable to handle in a Youtube video. If your Youtube content aimed at children is talking about penises, you're probably doing something wrong.
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Fun at the lake (Score:1)
Dick and Muffy have fun with her fury belly!
Dogs love to have their belly rubbed.
Better headline (Score:2)
No sympathy for parents (Score:3)
That's what happens when parents let the kids use the adult version of a product. It is in no way Youtube's fault.
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YouTube Kids is trash and is full of junk content. The only useful option is full YouTube with parental supervision.
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That's what happens when parents let the kids use the adult version of a product. It is in no way Youtube's fault.
On one hand, "I use a machine as a surrogate parent and it's a worse parent than I am" isn't sympathy-invoking.
On the other hand, the sooner your kids are desensitized to profanity, the sooner you can not give a shit about what the subtitles are doing.
On the gripping hand, this might encourage them to read, since they might find something juicy in the subtitles.
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The summer of 2020, my kids spent a lot of time at the neighborhood park with a babysitter. There was graffiti there briefly, but someone painted over it fairly promptly.
I thought very little of it until, a few days later, I was struggling with something in the kitchen and said "stupid jar" (or whatever). My almost-six-year-old, dutifully and very matter-of-factly, chimed in from the next room: "'Stupid' is a bad word. But not as bad as 'fuck'."
He wasn't wrong....
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The summer of 2020, my kids spent a lot of time at the neighborhood park with a babysitter. There was graffiti there briefly, but someone painted over it fairly promptly.
I thought very little of it until, a few days later, I was struggling with something in the kitchen and said "stupid jar" (or whatever). My almost-six-year-old, dutifully and very matter-of-factly, chimed in from the next room: "'Stupid' is a bad word. But not as bad as 'fuck'."
He wasn't wrong....
I hear you. The real problem with kids and profanity is that other people get offended. You don't want them saying "shit" around people who will be bothered. I mean, it's not great to just sprinkle them constantly into discourse, but these words really do only have the power over us that we let them have.
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My goddaughter and her dad both like to remind me that I taught her the word "fuck" (not literally taught her, she overheard me getting angry at someone while I was on speakerphone).
More correct title: Speech to Text not flawless (Score:2)
It's like machine translation of foreign texts. Sometimes, the results are humorous, some times they're offensive, and sometimes they get it right.
They always say they hope to improve it some day.
Maybe it should default to "off" more often?
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I recently recorded a lecture I was giving in MS Teams. The "transcript" was the most appalling nonsense I have sever seen. Of course, the lecture was in German, but Teams apparently did not notice that and was trying really hard to transcribe all of it in English. Will show that to my students when I have a minute as example of how broken and unfinished some "modern" tech actually is. Of course, when it does not even recognize that a different language is spoken, it will make the most horrible mistakes eve
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I so do hope that Putin nor Biden use such shitty translators .. well otherwise we will all get a serious sun burn.
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Notably, Khrushchev DID say "We will bury you", but it wasn't meant as a threat, just his belief that the Soviet Union would still be there after the United States collapsed in on itself.
Even correct literal translations can go very wrong.
Re: More correct title: Speech to Text not flawles (Score:2)
Reminds me of a Google Voice transcript of a spam voicemail that was partly in Chinese. The last "sentence" was "I do not cranking I soon 2013 tonight."
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Reminds me of a Google Voice transcript of a spam voicemail that was partly in Chinese. The last "sentence" was "I do not cranking I soon 2013 tonight."
Yes, pretty much. The only thing this is good for is getting laughs.
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"Teams defaulted to the assumption that the spoken language was English" is hardly justification for the broad claim that modern tech is "broken and unfinished". You suggest that Teams should "recognize that a different language is spoken" as if that's a trivial thing to do.
Did you even try to change Teams to a "German" mode? If not, this seems analogous to me to complaining that your computer blew up because you plugged it in in Europe while the PSU had the input voltage switch et to 110 instead of 220
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Google has that option. [google.com] Detecting a single language is easier than what that's doing; that's detecting multiple languages in the same source.
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Yeah, yeah. I fundamentally agree with OP that it'd be a nice feature for Teams to recognize the language you're speaking. And yeah, I know it's possible. But find the complaint whiney nonetheless.
"Ugh! This app is interpreting the things I'm saying (through a cellphone mic, in a lecture hall, spoken at conversational speed) and it doesn't even detect that I'm not speaking the language that the app is set to! It should totally suggest changing to another language that it detects!! :'-(. Unusable! 1 out of
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Obviously you have not even a basic clue how speech recognition works and how badly they must have messed up the parameters for this to even be possible.
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"Teams defaulted to the assumption that the spoken language was English" is hardly justification for the broad claim that modern tech is "broken and unfinished".
A speech "recognition" software that cannot tell it is listening to a different language than it expects is.
Oh no (Score:3)
I wonder if the offensive language on YouTube is worse than what kids hear at home from their own parents?
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Exactly.
Also, why is "penis" an offensive word? It is a body part, are kids not supposed to know this exists?
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The second dictionary definition of bitch is "a malicious or promiscuous woman," although my understanding is that it means "an incessantly complaining woman." It's insulting. If you're picky about such things, it's also sexist.
Shakespeare may be responsible for the bad connotation of the word "bastard."
Buy Cheap, (Score:2)
Oh noes! These kids will be ruined for life! (Score:2)
Or not. Because they all will have heard and read far worse. Seriously, stop treating kids as precious little flowers that die on the first whiff of something "inappropriate". Any kid with a smartphone will have seen hardcore porn, people getting killed and really disturbing things like Trump speaking. For most this will cause absolutely no problem at all and the rest cannot really be isolated from this either.
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Even grown up people who get paid to see people getting killed get PTDS (look up how facebook moderators feel about their work). Those sorry sods are doing it not because Zuk is a sadistic bastard that wants pay people to suffer. They do it because other FB users don't want to be traumatized as well. Apparently you look think that what grown ups can't handle is totally ok for children.
About swearwords, it's not like hearing them in isolation will traumatize children. It's because parents don't want to hear
Re: Oh noes! These kids will be ruined for life! (Score:2)
don't want to hear their child say "Happy 50th birthday you fucking cunt!"
How do you teach them not to say "Happy birthday, poopy-head!" The aforementioned phrase is mean. When the kids see it, you explain it to them that way. Another lesson learned and your kids will be better for it.
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Apparently you have your head deeply lodged in your backside. Screening stuff for work is fundamentally differently from looking at stuff you selected yourself and can stoop looking at any time.
The children! (Score:3)
Our Earth is degenerate in these later days; there are signs that the world is speedily coming to an end; algorithms are feeding our children pornography; bribery and corruption are common; children no longer obey their parents; every man wants to write a book and the end of the world is evidently approaching. <ref>Assyrian clay tablet, 2800 B.C</ref>
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.. algorithms are feeding our children pornography; bribery and corruption are common; ..
You really should stop smoking shitty shit shit it makes you delusional, and you should start a healthy off-internet diet because your mind is poisoned.
Some shitty reference to bible or apocryph or some other text written by an ancient shit smoker who was keen on seeing the world ending.
However the end could really be near, I mean when Putin crosses the NATO border he is ultimately outgunned and outmanned (population vs. weapons vs. the painful effect of western weapons russian soldiers are experiencing now) and even with only the european forces
And well with 90% of Ukrainian people (even people of russian decent) lusting for revenge in his back (along with people from Georgia and many other occupied regions that will rise when the military is shifted towards NATO borders)
And Putin's ego will drive him to press the red button .. and well perhaps younger people don't realize what a nuclear 3rd world war will really mean - we will soon all be dead.
Now you can go crazy.
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Tip: You might want to review more carefully before posting rants, especially when the target was posted at +2 reflecting earned Karma from a history of reputable posting.
You might also want to read https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/10/22/world-end/ [quoteinvestigator.com] and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law [wikipedia.org]. I deliberately attempted to account for Poe's Law, in that the five thousand year old quote mentions "algorithms". That should have been a clear hint.
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1300 taboo words?!? (Score:2)
What kind of nanny state do we live in where there are 1300 words considered “taboo”, whatever that means. Is there a fleet of Sunday-school teachers making up this list. Seriously, I get to about word number 50 in my list of worst coarse language and I’ve fallen into the realm of “mildly offensive to the thin-skinned”. With an average vocabulary of 20-30 thousand words, this is 4-7% of our words. Sure glad I don’t have a host of risk-averse corporate advertisers my life
Re: 1300 taboo words?!? (Score:1)
Re: 1300 taboo words?!? (Score:2)
That any words are taboo is a bit of a cultural relic that is quickly becoming out of place in the modern age.
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The Real Story Here (Score:1)
Delusional (Score:2)
You think this will prevent kids learning bad words? Have you seen an adult who grew up not knowing them?
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Good to know (Score:2)
It's not just the FCC [youtu.be] attempting to censor anatomy.
Penis? (Score:2)
Since when is penis an explicit word rather than the anatomically correct description of a body part. I can think of many variations of the word penis which would be explicit but I think this says more about the writers of the article than it says about Youtube.
Dutch and German captions are even worse (Score:1)
The YouTube captioning algorithm also tries to caption Dutch and German ads/commercials resulting in a really unreadable mess.
My main pet peeve with YouTube commercials/ads is that the volume is way louder than the video and so my mute button on the TV remote needs to pressed directly after selecting a video or otherwise the neigbours will complain....
Yes well (Score:2)
Thank god that all this is backed up by the mountains of scientific evidence that support that children reading the word “penis” has negative effects on them, and goes into great detail describing what those negative effects might be.
No Shit, Sherlock? (Score:2)
I can't say that I've noticed YouTube having a "captioning" system, but maybe I just use it differently to the average user. Concentrating on the lectures I download, that sort of thing. Do people use it for casual entertainment too?
OMG (Score:2)
"words in their captions found on a list of 1,300 "taboo" terms, "
Most teachers would love if their pupils had a 1300 word vocabulary.
Cocker sucking Christians (Score:2)
Re: Cocker sucking Christians (Score:2)
maybe skip over the topic of genitals when talking to children. except in the most narrow and clinical of context.
First world problems (Score:2)
This "article" summed up in one sentence (Score:2)
"Automated captions are not available on YouTube Kids, the version of the service aimed at children. But many families use the standard version of YouTube"
Or maybe two sentences:
"one video host asked viewers to send in not 'craft ideas' but 'crap ideas'."
And I guess this "study" was one of them. Maybe also "study" some Quentin Tarantino films and conclude that children are being "exposed to a lot of violence" because, although those films aren't aimed at children, some films are, and some parents might have
Re: This "article" summed up in one sentence (Score:2)
It's modern parenting. When I grew up, the TV set was expected to raise children. Now it's their phones.
How many? (Score:2)
There are 1300 "taboo" terms? Really? Let's see the list.
if you're a parent (Score:2)
and you let your kid on youtube, you're a shit parent and deserve whatever you get
Way back when (Score:2)
Proofread before posting (Score:1)
Super Awful Headline Wording Time (Score:1)
Penis? (Score:2)
Why is penis a bad word? Is a liver a bad word too? How kids should talk about their penises? Wee-wee?