YouTube has disabled the collaborative subtitling feature due to its low popularity

The feature helped deaf and hard of hearing people watch videos from creators who did not add subtitles themselves.

YouTube has since September 28 disabled the “Community Help” feature, which allowed users to collectively create subtitles for videos. This is reported on the video service website.

Representatives of the service said that the function was disabled due to the fact that it was rarely used. Moderators also found that there was an increase in abuse and spam in content added using this feature. Now only authors can add subtitles - manually or using automatic ones. YouTube also promised to give creators who used the feature on at least three videos in the last 60 days a free six-month subscription to the Amara subtitle service.

YouTube announced the disabling of this function at the end of July. At the time, blogger Rikki Poynter, who is hard of hearing, said co-creating subtitles was important not only for viewers, but also for disabled authors who cannot create subtitles themselves or have to spend money to create them.

Philosophy Tube blogger (740 thousand subscribers) also agreed with Poynter. He said he couldn't afford to create subtitles in multiple languages ​​and used to "rely on the community" so that the videos could be watched by viewers from different countries.

British journalist Liam O'Dell said at the time that many YouTubers in the deaf community felt that Community Help was a poorly promoted feature. Users have also complained that the service doesn't advertise it well enough or make it more visible in the user interface. In the latest update to this feature, YouTube also required video creators to confirm custom subtitles.

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