YouTube changes community translation system to contain trolls
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
YouTube has changed its rules around community contributions after the feature was misused for a harassment campaign. Under the new rules, contributed translations won’t be published to YouTube until the channel owner has manually approved them, making it harder for trolls to sneak abusive or self-promoting translations onto a popular channel.
Community translations were envisioned as a way for channels with active fanbases to crowdsource translation work. Filipino fans might be happy to translate their favorite YouTuber’s titles and descriptions into their native language, thus making the channel more accessible to international audiences without any additional work from YouTube or the channel owner. Under the old system, creators could...