Recently, YouTube finally removed the Community Contributions feature, much to the dismay of many disgruntled creators.
The feature allowed anyone to create video titles, descriptions, closed captions and subtitles for any video on the platform. Then, creators reviewed and published the contributions. In some cases, the contributions could forgo the creator and publish if they received enough community reviews.
Why it wasn’t working — according to YouTube
In a YouTube Help Community post — posted at the end of July this year — a member of TeamYouTube made the announcement. While the feature originally intended to improve accessibility, the platform concluded that the feature is “rarely used,” and when it is, it’s filled with spam and abuse.
“Both creators and viewers have reported problems with the community contributions feature, including spam, abuse and low-quality submissions,” according to YouTube.
They said creators rarely use the feature, with less than 0.001% of channels using community captions in the month prior. Creators are apparently using other captioning tools provided by YouTube.
Most creators aren’t happy
Some creators, such as PewDiePie, faced some problems with Community Contributions. Some people abused the feature to promote their own channels.
However, an overwhelming amount of people are far from happy with the removal of the Community Contributions feature. In fact, many creators pleaded for the feature to remain on YouTube. However, the platform decided the removal of the feature is best.
User Casey Connor 8820 states “Very disappointed to hear this, as I am one of the—apparently few—creators who greatly benefit from community-submitted captions.”
Despite the concern, YouTube assures users that no other captioning tools will be removed from the platform. These tools are manual and automatic captions, as well as the built-in automatic captioning feature.
YouTube ends the post by stating, “We’re committed to improving existing accessibility and caption features, as well as introducing new and better tools for creators to reach the broadest possible audience.”
Let’s see if they can make up for this in the future.