this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2025
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Chapotraphouse

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I was browsing Youtube on my phone as one does when I landed on some random Japanese short. My ears are immediately assaulted by some robotic TTS voice speaking English and I start frantically tapping for an option to change the audio track, and of course there is none.

I run Youtube Vanced, and I have both "Force original audio" and the iOS TV spoofing options enabled which should get rid of autodubs on regular videos and shorts respectively, but apparently spoofing just doesn't work on some URLs.

I didn't even really care to see the video but I was so infuriated about having the shitty autodub foisted on me I copied the URL and opened it in Firefox (with Ublock installed, obviously). Turns out that the YT Shorts player does not have the option to change audio tracks, so I switched to the desktop version of the page, but no, it uses the same player.

I then installed Greasemonkey and a script that auto redirects Youtube Shorts URLs to use the regular player instead, and after one more change to the desktop version of the page, I could finally, after all that, switch the audio to the original Japanese and watch the stupid video I didn't even care about.

The best part was that since the video had hardcoded Japanese subtitles I could immediately tell the automated English translation sucked. There was also a song playing in the background that got butchered in the dubbed version after Youtube had done whatever it did to splice in the robot voice.

Words can't express how much I fucking hate Google for forcing this autodub shit on everyone. As an option, it'd be fine for foreign-language tutorials or whatever but to leave it as the default and actively hide the options to switch to the original audio makes me go honk-enraged

You will consume the AI slop and you will be happy

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[–] bdonvr@thelemmy.club 30 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

Fucking American megacorp assuming nobody is bilingual. Shit drives me up a fucking wall.

Some of my devices are on English. Some in Spanish. My Spanish devices often auto-dub videos in English to Spanish and vice-versa

I wouldn't even mind this being a default thing BUT THERE'S NO FUCKING OPTION TO TURN IT OFF WHAT THE FUCK

IF I UNDERSTAND THE AUDIO I DON'T WANT YOUR FUCKING SLOP DEAD MONOTONE SOUNDING AUTOMATIC TRANSLATION LET ME TURN IT OFF HIJO DE PUTA PERSONAS BILINGÜES EXISTEN

[–] oscardejarjayes@hexbear.net 7 points 1 week ago

That sounds nightmarish.

[–] doublepepperoni@hexbear.net 7 points 1 week ago

It's the sheer arrogance of not hiding the option to turn it off on mobile that really irks me, especially when there are plenty of cases like ASMR videos where dubbing actively ruins the video

They just automate this shit and don't give a fuck if it works or not

[–] azalea_simsii@lemmygrad.ml 14 points 1 week ago (3 children)

this goddamn “feature” drives me insane too oh my god. it’s clearly made for dumbass murricans who start pissing and crying when they have to hear a language that’s not english, but i genuinely cannot understand why they force this onto every single person by default. what a dogshit company

[–] Awoo@hexbear.net 6 points 1 week ago

It's because those people you're talking about would literally never find it without it being on by default. Making it a nightmare to turn it off is a huge problem though.

[–] PorkrollPosadist@hexbear.net 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

This shit makes my tin-foil hat start buzzing. I feel like it is created deliberately to aid in the distribution of propaganda, which language barriers have siloed for better or worse.

[–] azalea_simsii@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 1 week ago

oh my god, i thought it was just because they wanna shove ai into everything to make shareholders happy, your theory is even worse 💀

[–] i_drink_bleach@hexbear.net 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Hi! Dumbass 'murican here. I don't want this shit either. I'm happy with subtitles. Fucking up the audio is anathema.

[–] azalea_simsii@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 1 week ago

thank you for being a reasonable murican 🫡

[–] PolyethylenePt2@hexbear.net 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I noticed this garbage feature a few months back when I wanted to watch an ASMR vid in French and I was immediately greeted with that loud ass English overdub. The only possible demographic this could appeal to is Americans who shit themselves when they hear anything that isn’t English, which to be fair is at least 40% of the country. Anyone know if Google autodubs to other languages or if you’re just forced to listen to English even if you’re in a non-English speaking country?

[–] doublepepperoni@hexbear.net 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I've seen plenty of complaints from Spanish and German speakers that they get English videos auto-dubbed based on their location so it's not just English.

Autodubbing ASMR videos is a very galaxy brained move data-laughing

My personal favourite autodubbing fail was when a short featuring a cute talking pet crow got dubbed over by a robot

[–] Diurnambu1e@hexbear.net 1 points 1 week ago

Yeah it is in Europe too.

[–] Kopfrkingl@hexbear.net 10 points 1 week ago

Nowadays I can't live without ublock and my userscripts. Firefox is a lifesaver on mobile for supporting extensions.

[–] Orcocracy@hexbear.net 8 points 1 week ago

Time to go to the public library and borrow some DVDs, internet video is over.

[–] Cysioland@lemmygrad.ml 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

suicideWatched a video of someone's spouse saying that their loved one committed suicide, all crying and understandably emotional, and saw comments saying that YouTube autodubbed it for some reason.

It's actual fucking ghoulish shit

[–] doublepepperoni@hexbear.net 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

spoilerlmao, I can imagine the AI's chirpy robot cadence

layoff-stare My wife took her own life, I am devastated

[–] Moidialectica@hexbear.net 7 points 1 week ago

fuck youtube

[–] oscardejarjayes@hexbear.net 6 points 1 week ago

Invidious ftw

[–] Edie@hexbear.net 5 points 1 week ago

The option to make dubs is really cool. If it is done by the creator and not this generative ai shite.

[–] SpookyBogMonster@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 week ago

Sometimes video playback will crash on SmartTubeNext, and my video will die and come back Spanish. It's so fucking shitty!

[–] kleeon@hexbear.net 5 points 1 week ago

God damn I've also encountered this issue on youtube revanced a few days ago. Apparently you can turn off auto-dubbing in the official app (but only on per-video basis unfortunately)

I'm so tired of monolinguoids and their bullshit

[–] buckykat@hexbear.net 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The really wild thing is that there are videos that have robot dubbing but no subs. Like, if google wanted to inflict machine translation on videos without anyone asking, why did they go with the most intrusive form of it?

[–] doublepepperoni@hexbear.net 5 points 1 week ago

It almost feels spiteful

[–] Diurnambu1e@hexbear.net 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It will stick. I hate this and disable it each time but my daughter like to watch translated show she doesn't understand without the translator.

[–] doublepepperoni@hexbear.net 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I assume she's too young for subtitles? Maybe this is a cultural thing, but in Northern Europe subtitles are the norm and nothing outside of documentaries and children's programming gets dubbed

I hope AI dubs don't change this

[–] Diurnambu1e@hexbear.net 2 points 6 days ago

We never use subtitle. I didn't even think about them... That would be a good use. It may be a cultural thing