Almost never, since all the content I consume is in English. But several channels made posts about that upcoming change and there was quite some feedback by people depending on this (as far as I could tell, especially the Spanish speaking community).

> In practice, in the real world, features that have few takers are removed because the maintenance burden doesn't justify the benefit.

By that measure, traditional TV stations better scrap subtitles too, since the number of viewers actually relying on them is a minority, and maintaining it probably takes some effort too.

I think community generated subtitles, just like regular subtitles on TV, enable people to access information (or entertainment) they otherwise couldn't. There should be a better measure for its value than just how much effort it takes to maintain that functionality vs the number of users, otherwise there would be little reason for any kind of barrier-free technology or efforts really.

I suspect the answer to this question is entirely dependent on whether you speak English. If you don't speak English (and the person you're responding to obviously does), then you're reliant on subtitles regardless of source, unless you only stick to videos in your native language.