this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2026
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These offer customization like colors, text styling and positioning and are used to distinguish who is speaking or for karaoke subs and are now potentially being lost forever.

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[–] termaxima@slrpnk.net 119 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Dammit, it was very useful to poison subtitle files for AI !

Write immense amounts of garbage text outside the viewport. AI sees it, viewers don't ! I believe there's even a way to prevent screen readers from getting confused by it... It was great.

[–] FaceDeer@fedia.io 61 points 3 days ago (2 children)

"Why did they take that feature away? I was busy abusing it!"

[–] umbrella@lemmy.ml 56 points 3 days ago (1 children)

you are right but to be fair fuck ai.

[–] AceFuzzLord@lemmy.zip 7 points 3 days ago (2 children)

I wouldn't fuck ai. You won't know what STD you get because it'll hallucinate every symptom you both have.

[–] FinalRemix@lemmy.world 8 points 2 days ago

Electrogonnorhea: the noisy killer

[–] umbrella@lemmy.ml 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

found the robot. i'm onto you, humans don't get computer viruses.

[–] AceFuzzLord@lemmy.zip 6 points 2 days ago

I'm autistic, so you ain't that far off from me being a robot.

[–] kittenzrulz123@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 points 3 days ago (1 children)

This shouldn't be a problem because YouTube shouldn't have AI, it shouldn't have shorts, it should just be a place to watch normal videos made by real people ideally with an algorithm that promotes quality content

[–] FaceDeer@fedia.io 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Youtube isn't the way you think it should be, though.

Wow, its almost as if I literally said that

[–] luridness@lemmy.ml 7 points 3 days ago

F4mi’s video on that topic was so very interesting :( plus ass is just the best subtitle format

[–] morrowind@lemmy.ml 62 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Didn't crunchyroll recently do something similar?

Wtf is going on, what do companies have against fancy subtitles

[–] Washedupcynic@lemmy.ca 30 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Crunchyroll subtitles are absolute dogshit now. I am mad enough to cancel my account. Fucking sad that pirating will get me a better product than the one I was paying for.

[–] ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 19 points 3 days ago

Always did, especially so with anime

[–] Imaginary_Stand4909@lemmy.blahaj.zone 14 points 3 days ago (1 children)

In the past my mom pirated anime while still paying for Funimation, because they had a quality service that got simuldubs and had a lot of content. Then CR bought them oit and now were stuck with this "pay for the highest tier to get all the content and no ads" and "oh it's only on our platform until March!" and "Oops we didn't even port over all the shows on Funimation, sorry lol!" and "Oh, like the AI generated subtitles?"

We will not be giving CR a single fucking penny. I'm close to finishing my home/media server and we'll just watch that way or with Kodi.

[–] Deceptichum@quokk.au 4 points 2 days ago

This comment has aged me considerably.

[–] Goodlucksil@lemmy.dbzer0.com 28 points 3 days ago

MMW YouTube will push AI fancy subtitles.

[–] carrylex@lemmy.world 41 points 3 days ago (4 children)

> Use UNSUPPORTED subtitle format instead of one of the other 10 supported ones

> Fast forward some time

> YT disables and removes the UNSUPPORTED format

>

[–] ClamDrinker@lemmy.world 31 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

While that's true, it clearly worked and massive channels used it. So why is YouTube's avoiding any responsibility and trying to kill it as quickly and silently as possible? Like, I get that sometimes you'll have to drop support for things (even things you unofficially support), but there should be a phase out period during which people can either backup and re-upload videos with those captions to preserve them. They could and should honestly provide a heads up for that or even help them out.

Now they are literally decimating people's hard work and on top of that pissing off actual partners. Not saying it will be successful, but cutting into people's business like that is the kind of thing you can get sued over. So it doesn't even make sense to take that risk from what we know.

[–] KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com 20 points 3 days ago (2 children)

More like unofficially supported. The fact that they worked points to the fact that they were quite literally supported.

[–] gravitywell@sh.itjust.works 16 points 3 days ago

Unsupported typically just means they wont provide (technical) support if/when it breaks.

[–] TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 12 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Generally unsupported means "we will not provide support for this, you're on your own if something goes wrong"

Rather than "this will not work at all, we have ensured that"

[–] Goodlucksil@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 3 days ago

YT is throwing out the baby with the bathwater

[–] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 3 days ago

Those styling option sure sound like something SSA subs could do...Wonder why that wasnt used.

[–] vogi@piefed.social 8 points 2 days ago

f4mi made a video about them last year. never knew they were a thing.

[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 23 points 3 days ago

AI for you!

[–] Auster@thebrainbin.org 18 points 3 days ago

Because God forbid using anything other than their own generated subs. Or to have options.

If that's a push to their AI systems, while AI has its uses, when coincidences or fuck ups are too consistent, it may not be either anymore. And thus it feels like Google is trying to tarnish AI to the point even supporters move away from it.

[–] guy_threepwood@lemmy.world 16 points 3 days ago

I have random issues with youtube subtitles in general. I often watch foreign language videos, occasionally for learning. Except sometimes whilst they work in the video’s language, the translations don’t…until I reload the page, or quit the browser. Or on specific computers which never have issues. 🤷‍♂️

[–] carrylex@lemmy.world 14 points 3 days ago (2 children)

While I'm not quite sure about the exact reasons for the removal, here are some probable guesses:

  • it's a bug
  • the unsupported, internal format - that allows for pretty much everything - is in some way exploitable
  • It's getting replaced by something better/standardized as the current solution doesn't seem to always work properly in YT's apps
[–] HertzDentalBar@lemmy.blahaj.zone 22 points 3 days ago (2 children)

On the last point, it's probably not for something better or standardized, It's gonna be to push the AI captioning and dubbing.

[–] xthexder@l.sw0.com 10 points 3 days ago

I'm sure auto-generated captions will work great for channels like Primitive Technology where there's no actual talking and the subtitles are describing what he's doing...

[–] carrylex@lemmy.world 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

What have auto-generated/AI caption contents to do with the general format captions???

YT has auto-generated captions now for years, so why would they remove an unsupported, internal format because of that?

[–] Syrc@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

To encourage people to use the auto-generated ones and normalizing it.

I mean, I don’t see any other reason for them to remove a previously working format otherwise.

[–] Lyrl@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 3 days ago

the unsupported, internal format - that allows for pretty much everything - is in some way exploitable

It prevents AI summaries of the video from including all the video content. Obvious solution: remove the information missing from the summary from the video itself. Now they match! /s

[–] semperverus@lemmy.world 8 points 3 days ago

Oh this sucks hard, The Glorious Octagon is going to be ruined.