DeArrow - A Browser Extension that removes clickbait titles and thumbnails

e8d79@feddit.de to Free and Open Source Software@beehaw.org – 252 points –
DeArrow - A Browser Extension for Better Titles and Thumbnails
dearrow.ajay.app

The creators of SponsorBlock did it again, now we can crowdsource better titles and thumbnails as well. I just tried it with LinusTechTips who is a worst offender when it comes to clickbait and its really great.

Compare without DeArrow

and with the extension

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Just out of curiosity, how do you determine what is and isn't clickbait?

I'd like to know this as well. The extension looks super interesting, but how does it determine what to replace the thumbnail and title with?

It uses user submitted titles and thumbnails if they are available. If not, it uses a random frame from the video as a thumbnail and applies some rules to the title (like no caps etc.).

For example a LTT video from yesterday:

Original title: 'Only YOU can fix GPU pricing... Here's how!'

Replaced title: 'How to find a good deal on a used GPU'

And about the thumbnails, just take a look on YouTube. In general I mean 😄

Like the existing "Clickbait Remover" addon, I believe it just removes formatting (caps lock, exclamation marks, other symbols and emojis) of the video title and swaps the custom thumbnail with either a thumbnail of the beginning, middle or end of the video (youtube provides thumbnails for various points in videos).

You can see in the video linked in the extension's website. It relies on people proposing and voting for different titles and thumbnails.