Man this creator keeps on giving, making YouTube better than Google does so
It's pretty telling a platform like YouTube really only gets fully enjoyable with an adblocker, sponsorblock and this. I wish PeerTube had a lot of good creators, but last time I checked (years ago, admittedly) it was mostly conspiracy theorists and cryptobros.
The problem with PeerTube is that there's no built-in way for creators to get paid. If there are no ads or sponsors, then the only alternative is some kind of value for value system like what Podcasting 2.0 has. Until some kind of well integrated funding system gets built for PeerTube, creators really are not going to be incentivized to publish stuff on the platform.
At this point I’m down with paying a monthly subscription to a creator for content. I’ve never signed up for any creator’s pattern or anything because how the system is currently set up. I know some creators switched to posting less frequently because their more frequent posting appeared to be hurting their view count due to YouTube’s algorithm. I am so willing to pay a creator directly for them to go back to making more frequent content (and content they actually enjoy and not stuff just for views)
my only issue with this is eventually people will hit a financial limit and only be able to support a few creators, leaving others without funding
I'm following over 30 youtube channels, even at $1/month per channel that would still be $30/month which is too much for me honestly. not to mention the fact I would have to manage 30 different subscriptions
I'd like a youtube premium style subscription where I can specify a group of channels and the money gets distributed to them only
this way my money isn't going to conspiracy channels, and I would only have a single subscription to manage
I subscribe to Nebula now.
Does nebula have enough content to be worth it now? I haven’t heard anyone with a sponsor spot for nebula in a few years now
I don't know how much content would be "worth it" to most people. I just subscribed for Lindsay Ellis coming back, since she's no longer uploading to YouTube due to the "git her b****, it's her time" cancelling bullshit.
If you are willing to pay... then why not yt premium ? A cut goes to google, sure, but it goes to creators, based on your watch time, without falling into having to support 1-infinite channels etc. Plus no ads without any tricks
I already pay for YouTube premium but that doesn’t change how creators make content. The YouTube algorithm and its mystery has really changed how people make content over the years. There have been people I’ve watched for 10+ years now and it’s sucks to see them have to chase the algorithm to maintain their livelihood. If I could pay a creator directly to get more content, I gladly would
Best I can think of, would be implementing Librepay into PeerTube and make payments easy af.
https://tilvids.com has some reasonable ones, although they're often just as well YouTubers, so you get similar clickbait, unfortunately.
Tilvids.com is probably the best place for good creators on PeerTube.
Ooh! Thanks for the tip! Dumb question, Peertube federates, right? Where you can get a feed of all subscribed channels from lots of instances on one instance? With a quick poke around I'm not seeing username@instancsname so I'm slightly thrown off, but I've also only been on the fediverse for like a month
PeerTube is also part of ActiviyPub, so yes it federates.
I know tilvids.com doesn’t federate directly with anyone, but you can subscribe to any channel on tilvids.com from any other PeerTube instance.
Don’t forget the PocketTube extension, which allows you to sort subscriptions into self-made categories. Which is shockingly not a default feature.
adblocker, sponsorblock and this
I'd even add Unhook (hide Trending, Shorts, Merch, replace "Home Feed" with subscriptions etc.) and Age Restriction Bypass (avoid the need to verify your account with a credit card). I also use Clickbait Remover. It essentially does the same as DeArrow without the crowdsourcing, which is already good enough for me.
I mean yes but also it's not that hard. Google is not trying to give you a great experience, they're trying to drive clicks to ads.
I did the opposite. I installed an addon that adds Mr Beast to every thumbnail.
I need a mod for my phone my that just makes every icon a picture of some character with their mouth wide open, yelling.
i tried that too, its one of my favourite extensions
There’s also a Scott the Woz version, which I have installed
Lmao
I've used it for exactly three minutes and this is already amazing. I hope it gets integrated into ReVanced and Newpipe.
I would love it on Piped, they already have sponsorblock
Never heard of piped. Filling the same niche as revanced?
Kind of. It's a desktop web front-end to Youtube. I'm not sure whether it blocks in-stream ads (and I'm not turning off Ublock to find out), but it does basically reimplement the Youtube interface without many of its undesired elements.
Thanks, I didn't know revanced was a thing.
I only enjoyed old vanced for briefly in its last days. So good to hear theres still options like this around.
Really good extension, I've added it to my browser.
While some creators like Linus have said they dislike the clickbaity titles and thumbnails but they have to do it due to engagement that's simply because the younger generations are the ones engaging with that content. As an older person I'd rather just have a to the point description of what I'm going to get.
I might get it for the titles alone. The clickbaity thumbnails don't really bother me, but I'd like to have a good title at least.
Yeah the titles are actually a huge draw for me.
I'm going to set the fallback thumbnail to the original instead of a random thumbnail. The randomly generated thumbnails are too out of context to be useful.
I don’t think it can be said to conclusively be an age issue. I assure you that many Boomers and older Xers love clickbait titles.
It’s a more granular demographic than just age.
It's definitely an intelligent based issue, not necessarily age.
Maybe but I can only go with my own anecdotal experience and It tends to be the younger audience more attracted to them.
Of course, I fully admit I may be completely wrong.
There is a reason clickbait images and titles are used, they work. If they didn't work, no one would use them.
Don't forget that creators will release a video that you might want to watch later and then change the information.
You'll see a video you want to check tomorrow but not enough to add it to the "watch later". But when you check your subscriptions the next day it's been 12+ hours and they've changed the title and thumbnail to further game the algorithm.
But I don't want to reward people that do this by watching their videos
I second this. The only reason click bait trash thumbnails work is people accepting it.
KIDS. accept it, that's all who has all this time to watch these dumbed down videos , and what are they attracted to? Apparently gaping mouths.
Too late for that
Also be sure to get the restore YouTube dislike button extension
As well as uBlock Origin, Sponsorblock and BlockTube.
I believe YouTube is going to start detecting ad blockers, and there will be an arms race
heard its on chromium based browsers. just hope it does not come to Firefox.
So what you're saying is that YouTube will become incompatible with firefox?
Not hard to disguise the browser you're using. I use Mullvad (Firefox fork) and it will show up as Chrome on the host side.
I haven't seen it happen on Brave browser yet. We'll see how long that holds up.
Not worried about ad blockers, ytdlp is my sine qua non, figured they'd have blocked that years ago.
For a while, it was getting blocked regularly and a new update would come out that fixed it. Repeat.
Let's be honest, they never took it seriously at all.
They could push a patch for encrypted streams to chrome and even firefox, basically you need a google account to watch videos, wouldn't be optimal but they could get away with it.
Ytdl has login parameters. It would still get cracked.
Hulu with ads displays no ads when watching in a browser with uBlock origin. I don't know if this is down to lazy design by Hulu or not but it's another data point
One that they'll never win
Sadly I can't find Sponsorblock and BlockTube in the Firefox addon store (Android).
You have to use a custom add-on collection and Firefox Beta because Mozilla restricts which add-ons you can use
github.com/ajayyy/SponsorBlock/wiki/Android
For this ridiculousness alone I quit Firefox. They absolutely do not care about their users. They also have been pushing a lot of shady things, like running experiments and tracking by default. And ff for Android still doesn't have printing, 5 years after requesting to add it BACK
I'm curious to know what's your usecase for BlockTube
Removing clickbait channels, foreign language channels, livestreams, channels I dislike, and whatever Youtube keeps recommending me over and over no matter how many times I hit "not interested"
Removing clickbait channels, foreign language channels, livestreams, channels I dislike, and whatever Youtube keeps recommending me over and over no matter how many times I hit "not interested"
This add-on needs to:
Store unlimited amount of client-side data
Access your data for sites in the googlevideo.com domain
Access your data for sites in the youtube.com domain
This add-on may also ask to:
**Access your data for all websites
Is there a better option than for it to need unlimited amount of client-side data?
Also, why "Access your data for all websites"?-
Creator of theq extension here, that is an optional permissions (may ask). It never asks to access to all sites, it only optionally let's you add support for additional sites such as different Invidious instances. These are arbitrary domains, so it needs permission to ask for any arbitrary website.
Support for invidious is not actually done yet, so right now, it never asks for permission for any new sites anyway
The client side data is used to store your submissions to always show your preferred title, even if there is another submission on the server. You can disable this option in the settings
Thanks for your informative reply.
Bro, I seriously would marry you and make you food every day
Thank you for your work !
Access your data for all websites
It's required to access iframes.
Without having investigated the plug in itself, going by just what you posted: That's not likely to be a nefarious request, the plug-in needs to store data on your computer. Dealing with large number of titles it makes sense that it would cache things on your computer to minimise overtaxing their servers, to serve you more or less the same data over and over.
Maybe it's for embedded videos? idk
Google's algorithm has forced people into using click bait thumbnails and titles. If they don't attract more views and subscribers, then their channels are not pushed.
I think a bigger problem is they demonetize and depromote any video discussing a controversial or kid-unfriendly topic. This affects the actual content.
Also, don't forget to subscribe, hit that like button, smash that bell, and leave a comment letting me know what you think!
Are you implying that content creators don't themselves want more views and subscribers? Of course they do!
"They only use thumbnails and titles that get views and subscribers because if they don't... they won't get views and subscribers since Google isn't pushing their content."
That's what it sounds like you're saying.
I think the point is that you can't get more views by being genuine and honest, as the algorithm awards griftiness
You can, it’s just exceedingly difficult.
I mean, you just aren't going to get as many views if you don't. Veritasium has a video on it, regarding his rubber balls video.
Linus also mentioned it, he said he hates doing it but the clickbait videos significantly outperform others.
I never said otherwise, but it is possible to be successful without the clickbait. There are a few creators that have managed it. They would just make more money if they went with clickbait.
The point is that channel growth, clicks and interactions as a metric is used more for suggesting videos than relevancy and the likelihood that someone will watch a video to the end.
This creates a click bait arms race between creators.
isn't the whole point of running a YouTube channel to get views and subscribers?
It's real easy to solve this problem by just not pushing videos with text, arrows, symbols or reaction soyfaces in thumbnails. The issue is that they push all of that to the top and push everything else to the bottom.
Love the idea, but just to be the devil's advocate, I think it will just mask garbage videos. Currently, the clickbait thumbnails and titles are an indicator to blacklist a channel, without having to waste time watching it.
Unfortunately because of the way Youtube's algorithm works, even high quality channels are buried if they don't play the game.
Yeah, even good ones do it.
Got any examples? I don't recall any actually quality and worthwhile channels that still use those dumb thumbnails.
Veritasium, he even has a video crunching the numbers as an explanation why he has to doit
Do you have a link to the video? I casually skimmed through his video list for the past year or so, but none of the titles jumped out at me for this.
Could also be a good example of why this extension sounds cool haha
Edit: Found it just a few more videos below here I stopped haha. "Clickbait is Unreasonably Effective" https://youtu.be/S2xHZPH5Sng
Yeah, that one I stopped hating clickbait so much after watching it, trying to become immune to it
LTT and SmarterEveryDay to name two.
All those channels in the screenshot in this post.
If you look at the DeArrow website and browser extension pages, I made sure to only use high quality channels as examples (Tom Scott, CGP Grey) to demonstrate how far reaching the sensationalism problem is.
CGP Grey is personally painful to me. He used to be a no-nonsense education youtube legend, but in the last few years he's just maximised clickability - even going thorugh his whole back catalogue and changing titles and thumbnails.
For example, he made a great video about generative adversarial networks ~5 years ago but now its titled "How machines like ChatGPT learn" - despite coming out before GPT.
Pretty much every successful YouTube channel edits titles. It's just part of the algorithm game now. You will often see videos cycle through several different titles shortly after release.
You have to blame YouTube and the people who click those garbage thumbnails
yep.... that one is just rediculus
Tom Scott's thumbnails aren't that bad IMO, they're pretty minimal in comparison to some other channels.
But they are so much worse than they were 6 months ago. He's gone and ruined all of the old ones too with arrows and more deceptive titles.
The Real Engineering video used as an example here is excellent.
I kind of like seeing the clickbait, it lets me know which videos/channels arent worth my time. I know most use at least a little clickbait these days, but from the better channels its usually managable and still on topic (like the Real Engineering example shown here, whereas the others are complete clickbait that I would avoid).
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If a channel that makes clickbait garbage thumbnails pops up I just click to not have the channel recommended again, and that has worked pretty well.
Clickbait works and I encourage all YouTubers that I watch to do so. The more people they reach, the more money they earn and the better their content can become. Outside of a minor annoyance to the superusers, using clickbait titles and thumbnails is just good business. Even the very best content producers in their category (Veritasium in educational content, MKBHD for tech reviewing are great examples) use it because they have to: but lots of them dislike doing it. Veritasium has two great videos about it: clickbaiting is a HUGE benefit to any YouTube channel, a good thumbnail alone can account for 20-50% of all views on a video.
Imagine it like this: every time you pay for anything, you get a free 30% discount if you pinch yourself in the arm. Wouldn't you always just do it? Who cares about the minor annoyance.
That's what it's like for the content creator. Put 30 minutes of work into a clickbait thumbnail + title and it's 30% more views on every single video.
I understand but I don't have to like it or see it on my stream. I'm sure they won't miss the fraction of missed views from people like me if they're making 30% more from others.
Thumbnail and first 5-10 seconds for auto play or preview play or whatever it's called is super important. I post some videos just for fun and can see the boost when I take effort in those two things.
I never thought it could be possible to do that, thank you so much for this and making YouTube a better place.
If someone knows how to get rid of shorts in the search results I'd be most grateful 👌
Thank you so much, I can't wait to try this and get rid of those!
Replying to find this comment again later.
I don't mind the clickbait as much because I've learned to filter the crap out to some degree (following F1 channels does that to a mf), but still, anything to keep the bullshit to a minimum.
This should be a part of newpipe.
The majority of videos I that pop up on my home feed don’t have clickbait thumbnails. A few admittedly do, but they are usually way toned down and when mixed among other videos in my feed not as vacuous when it’s just a few of them.
I think the issue can be largely self correcting on the user side if people just take a little bit of effort to curate good content for themselves.
Unfortunately, terrible thumbnails and titles are just a part of the culture in some circles, even if the channels themselves make good content. Look at this trash, and these are actually the better ones:
Clickbait works
LTT has repeatedly done less clickbaity titles/thumbnails and their views are noticeably lower. The YT algorithm pushes clickbait a lot more than non-clickbait.
It's not really yt algorithm that pushes it. People click more on clickbait (duh) so yt sees more engagement so it shoes it more. Blame people, not youtube imo
It's a combination of both. Google pushes people into watching random shit rather than a curated feed of their subscriptions. It didn't used to be this way. YT used to reward subscribers heavily but now creators are dependent on the algo for ~50% of their traffic.
I installed this app and looked up some Mr. Beast vids as a test. If anything, it made more tempted to check out his vids just because I don't have to see his annoying giant soyface in every thumbnail now.
lmao, who unironically says soyface?
If you've got another way to describe that facial expression Mr. Beast does in all his thumbnails, then I'm all ears.
Tbf I can't think of any instance where Marques has click baited. At most they're just obnoxious. But it's been proven to work, as dumb as it is. Also Marques's thumbnails are nowhere near as cringe as other Youtubers.
While I wish the days of 2007-2013 YouTube returned to the non clickbait and non garbage thumbnails, those days are over. I'd rather have the obnoxious thumbnails so I know which creators are trash.
I don't know who this person is, but the example in the OP is definitely clickbait. "This phone is nearly perfect" but doesn't say what the phone is, baiting you to click for the answer instead of just mentioning what phone we're reviewing.
No judgement, it's his business and he's gotta make money, but saying he doesn't do this just seems demonstrably wrong.
Yeah exactly, these kinds of titles make me not wanna click at all because I got no idea what it's about (since it's almost certainly not gonna be the perfect phone), so usually I don't watch this kind of content at all. DeArrow really helped navigate around this crap and even LTT is kinda interesting to watch again because I finally know if a video is gonna be interesting to me BEFORE clicking it.
The sad thing is that even good channel are driven to do this bullshit because people do really watch those more often. How can we be such a brainless hive mind...
E.g. Marques Brownlee actually does do decent reviews.
had me until the last line
marques only does impressions and doesn't do reviews
the only review he has done is the iPhone 13 pro 6 months later
every other video is made with 2-3 weeks of usage(he gets device a few weeks before launch and uses beta version of software to make "reviews")
That's the way consumer reviews have always worked. Short of a few exceptions, most professional reviews for any hardware are impressions. If it took 6 months to review a washing machine, it would take a lot of people to keep up. Same with phones, same with video games. It's nice when someone can give a long term review, but if every phone he reviewed took 6 months to review, he'd have 1-2 videos a year.
phones gets updates over months which enhance or worsens the experience of the device
eg pixel 6 got worse with updates and it didn't even get updated for 2-3 months I think and various poco phones had bad motherboard issues which only showed up after a few months
in fact, it was common for pixel series to get widespread hardware issues like green screen on pixel 2, screen not placed evenly on pixel 5 and more, even though it got good "reviews" on YouTube because they were impressions
users buy based on reviews thinking the device is good but that is just an impression
and coming to the last line, why do you need to be bombarded with review videos?
its ok if we get 1-2 device review
If you are wanting reviews to take 6 months, there won't be any reviews of the phone until half way through their sales cycle. I agree things change over time. I have a Pixel 5 and on release it had horrible brightness sensing problems thanks to the under screen brightness sensor, and that got a lot better after a couple of months. But it is unrealistic to expect people to wait 6 months to see if a phone might be good. That was doubley true when most phones only had 2 years of support tops.
It's a little better now, but if you aren't buying a phone when it first hits the market you are shaving time off the life of the phone, if you are like me and camp on a phone for years. Heck, for a long time cell phone carriers were selling phones who's EOL had already come, it was bad.
I've used clickbait remover addon for more than a year now. I vastly prefer just a random screenshot as a thumbnail than those custom ones.
Clickbait remover uses YouTube's auto generated ones, which while are seemingly random, are not. They use some algorithm to target faces in exaggerated expressions.
DeArrwow uses actually random ones (and then a user can submit specific timestamps if there is a better one). It's noticeable better on many channels imo
(I made DeArrow)
you are the goat. thanks for making these banger extensions for youtube
Yeah, especially for some creators like veritasium where they play "musical thumbnails" and change it every few days for about a week or so. It's so annoying because I keep thinking it's a different video.
Can newpipe implement this please
this is brilliant!! thank you so much for creating this and also for giving us sponsorblock. you're the goat!!
But then how do I filter out clickbaity videos?
This...if they want to make their thumbnail as pathetic as possible, let them. It's much easier to spot the junk this way.
Nice way to remove clickbait, but now my home page looks like 2014
bliss
The extension allows you to keep the original thumbnail or a random frame from the video is a community-submitted thumbnail is unavailable.
I want to know when YT made it possible to have thumbnails be their own image and not taken from the video itself. I can scrub the video through every single frame and never actually find the thumbnails anymore.
Hell, sometimes the text in the thumbnail says something that isn't even discussed in the video at all. Those are the ones I hate the most. And I wouldn't necessarily want to remove the thumbnail, just because there are plenty of channels that make the thumbnail the actual title and the title is just... Bullshit, non-descriptive, a number, etc. Not all of them are bad. Civvie 11 and Internet Comment Etiquette do this. Erik probably does it on purpose both for the fact it works and also because he is a satire channel that regularly shits on these practices by showing how dumb they are. Civvie also satirizes YT's bullshit, but that's not really the prime focus of the channel.
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For specific types of video where they are mostly similar looking (For example, online TCGs and such), it can be hard to get a thumbnail you want that looks different than other videos of the same type, so people were adding long segment with the static image of thumbnail they wanted at the end of the video for a workaround, until Google finally relented and just let people use the thumbnails they want.
I don't have a problem with this, I just try not to watch videos with clickbait thumbnails and/or titles, because if they think they "had" to do that, then their content usually isn't very good to begin with.
I think it's really telling when creators have different thumbnails on Nebula vs YouTube. It could even be interpreted as a scream for help "this is the thumbnail I wanted but this is the thumbnail that puts food on my table"
I suppose to drive engagement with fake thumbnails, the same thing they do when they put irrelevant things into your search results (thankfully that one is easily blocked by a uBlock filter).
True, but even if YouTube forced you take a screenshot from the video people would add the image in the last frame similar to what they sometimes do for YT shorts.
Thing is, I know I won't click the ones on the left. The ones on the right actually look interesting.
... Which means I'll be promoting writing clickbaity titles by clicking on the videos and I'm not sure how I feel about that
the only way to get out of the cycle is to not open any gates that traps you into it
its like withdrawal, yeah it sucks but its better for you in the long run
For people wondering, the extension is also capable of changing clickbait title into a more descriptive one. You could also have a button toggle on each video to see the original title and thumbnail vs the changed one
Agreed. I like the title change, but the chance of not being able to remember the actual title of a video when I need to is not worth it.
What does remembering the actual title mean if they change it every five minutes ;)
But yea, a DeArrow search engine would solve that problem
Fair, but the YouTubers I usually watch tend not to do the whole clickbait thing, so this is really a non-issue for me 🤣
i would use this but some of the channels i watch the most number their thumbnails and dont do clickbait like this. if i could pick and choose per channel somehow it would be more helpful to me. i do agree with the sentiment though!
there's a whitelist!
You can do different settings per channel. So, you can allowlist channels, or even do the reverse, and only change titles/thumbnails on channels you don't like.
Same. The channels I really enjoy create their own non-clickbait emails. They also tend to "standardize" their video titles so they all follow a similar format. I wish there was a way to whitelist certain channels.
There is
Getting rid of "thumbnail face" is reason enough to use this add-on. Thanks for the recommendation!
Thank you for the link. It works great! Now I have the perfect YouTube with Ublock Origin + Sponsor Block + Dearrow + Return Youtube Dislike. It's crazy how many extensions you need to add to make YouTube bearable.... it's really time for a good competitor to take its place !
A different platform would also be plagued by clickbait and sponsor messages.
Don't forget Enhancer for YouTube; it's an absolute essential in my book.
Great idea! You can't really get away from the clickbait thumbnails. As others said even good channels are heavily incentivised to do it.
It is already really difficult to find the stuff that is actually worth watching on YouTube. If you boycotted all clickbait thumbnails you would miss out on some otherwise great creators.
I'd much rather take clickbait thumbnails and baked in ads though as I can get around them with extensions and there is still a worthwhile video behind them.
When creators start doing low effort content like reaction videos, unboxings/product first impressions, or product "showcases" (ads) is when I usually know a channel has outlived its usefulness and stop watching altogether.
Can't wait to have this on YouTube ReVanced and SmartTube.
Why though..it only is going to make garbage crap videos look ok and you'll be just consuming more trash.
Not everything is completely crap
It'll make finding the noncrap much harder is it all doesn't look like crap though
Awesome idea and the feedback suggests it works well, too. Any plans to support Firefox on Android?
You can assume how good the inside content would be from a specific video by looking at its title and thumbnail. I'd rather not using it.
on the extreme levels, yes, but almost everyone on the platform does some form of deception to convince you to click.
Like it says on the dearrow website:
"Clickbait" isn't the exception anymore, it's becoming the norm. Many have even started going through their entire backlog, changing old titles and thumbnails to be more attention grabbing and vague.
It's no one's fault. It's a system that creates a race to the bottom.
It's absolutely the fault of YouTube for pushing this sort of interface, and the fault of viewers who click on garbage thumbnails
You can ascertain how much effort the creator was willing to put in the thumbnail but that’s really it. All YouTube thumbnails are basically just try to trick monkey brains into clicking. I can’t stand clickbait thumbnails so this would be really nice in my opinion
Can vouch this extension is amazing. I started using it when it had 200 chrome downloads and it was already had many prominent creators in its database.
Title and thumbnail replacements are based on community votes, just like sponsorblock.
I have dearrow and I like it. I also installed Unhook, which "hides YouTube related videos, comments, shorts tab, suggestions wall, homepage recommendations, trending, and other distractions".
But now you don't know if it's click baity or not and will click it to watch.
Wo a new extension worthy of installation, the last time that happened was a years ago, Channel Blocker. Feels like an ongoing battle with yt, to make it viewable to a human rather than it's own bots.
Or rather, the trained dopamine minorit monkey that it tries to turn you into
This is awesome, installing it right now.
Is this available as a vanced patch aswell?
Not yet, but hoping it is in the future. Also did just check because Sponsorblock from the same dev is available.
Cool, sponsor block must've saved hours of my life by now.
This is awesome. Just installed it.
I went to install it but realised it's already among the 30 or so extensions I have to make the web bearable. Does that happen to anyone else?
You should compile a list
This sounds like a nice addon, sadly most of my YT consumption is done from my Nvidia Shield TV with STN, so I still get those annoying thumbnails I think (I have them in my home screen and that's where I watch them or add them to the list to watch later within the Shield menu).
Crowdsourced?
Would be nice to get a random frame of the video instead of the actual thumbnail..
Thats what this does if theres no crowdsourced thumbnail available. It just picks a random frame from the video.
That's what it does if there's no crowdsourced thumbnail.
I just thought about giving it a try then remembered that 99.9% of my time on YT is through the Android app (ReVanced to be precise) and TV (YT AdFree on LG TV)
I'd expect the ReVanced team to add this as a patch soon, seems very cool
Yeah I wouldn't be surprised if they did
You can use Firefox for Android with plugins
Nah it is not worth it for me, the app UX/UI and functionality is miles ahead of the mobile site
I use ReVanced and wasn't aware of AdFree, thanks! I try and use Odysee wherever I can, but to be honest, my favorite stuff is still on YouTube.
The real engineering original is basically spot on.
Removed the clickbaity thumbnail though!
I don't really see how it's click baity. Click bait implies that it's lying or exaggerating something, and that thumbnail is basically spot on. You click that link and you get exactly what you expected.
Click bait implies it’s giving you a reason to click. “Doomed to fail?” Has a subtext of “Click and watch the video to find out!”
Need this on SmartTube for AndroidTV
It does have it. You can choose at which part of every video to take the thumbnail from. Just might take a while to find it in the settings.
Yes I have it turned on. I was interested about the title generation
Brilliant
On firefox youtube videos take a long time to load, they'll play for a bit and then buffer. Without this extension youtube works fine on chrome. I guess this extension is in beta stage, needs to be polished more.
Considering it's from the same person behind sponsorblock, I'm positive future updates will fix this issue..
Edit: Seems I was using old version, just updated the extension as developer said they'd fixed the above issue in new version. So far so good, now videos are playing fine on firefox..
clickbait no more
By default, if there are no submissions, it will [...] set a screenshot from a random timestamp as the thumbnail.
Would it be possible to extract the most watched position from the watch graph in the seek bar or use positions that were already tagged as highlights in sponsorblock for better defaults?
It's just a screenshot of square raid shadow nordvpn space...
Doesn’t it really matter if the title is click baity if the content is worth watching. It generates revenue for the content creator so I feel like I’d rather them have what works than a cleaner title.
awesome! It's available for firefox based browsers!
hey that's cool
Thanks for sharing!
Maybe a feature request, but is there an addon that just blocks videos with shitty thumbnails or all caps? Might make the front page almost presentable.
If this extension could just hide those videos as an option, or at least flag them it might make browsing better.
Clickbait remover uses YouTube’s auto generated ones, which while are seemingly random, are not. They use some algorithm to target faces in exaggerated expressions.
DeArrow uses actually random ones (and then a user can submit specific timestamps if there is a better one). It’s noticeable better on many channels imo
(I made DeArrow)
I really like your idea. What do you think about showing 4 random thumbnails in split-screen to give a better impression of the content?
YouTube Clickbait-Buster has a feature where you can see all the images from the hovering preview from the seekbar. A more refined version of that could be interesting to look into in the future maybe.
Thanks for posting about this extension! It's a very welcomed addition to make YouTube more bearable.
I think i'm okay with NewPipeXSponsorBlock or Freetube, but for straight up YouTube, this is good stuff.
Does npxsb generate its own too?
This extension is awesome thank you
But this will make me stop clicking on 6 different videos before I find one I like... Where's the fun in that?
nice, good to see an adblocker for clickbaits
This guy is doing God's work 🙌
Yooo that's so cool!
I'm already using SponsorBlock for in-video stuff, uBlock Origin for the around the video stuff, and a Thumbnail remover (can't recall the name rn).
But I think this is even better, because just the first or middle frame of a video isn't exactly capturing the essence of that video.
Clickbait remover uses YouTube’s auto generated ones, which while are seemingly random, are not. They use some algorithm to target faces in exaggerated expressions.
DeArrwow uses actually random ones (and then a user can submit specific timestamps if there is a better one). It’s noticeable better on many channels imo. It also let's us do things like make sure the random thumbnail is not in a sponsor using SponsorBlock data
(I made DeArrow)
Good human
Thanks for sharing!
And then there's that extension that puts Mr. Beast's signature clickbait grin on every thumbnail
Does anyone know how to convert this into a Userscript? I use Userscripts (a Tampermonkey reimplementation for Safari) and I did not get it to work.
That's a great idea!
This feels like, IMHO, trying to put out a forest fire with a single bucket of water. Instead, we should have a platform that does not encourage making titles and thumbnails completely unrelated to the video's content.
Fantastic!
Just like sponsor block this is only going to improve with time. Hopefully it gets integrated into revanced as well
Fuck, this is awesome. Great idea!
Oh oh I wish this was available for Safari too
test
Marques Brownlee was that guy fervently saying the Samsung S22 fake moon filter wasn't a fake moon filter. What a shill.
I don't think he said that isn't fake. He just said that it's more than just taking a pic of the moon and sticking it in the photo.
Every phone camera does some post processing these days to make the pics look better than what they actually are. How's this any different?
If you read the original Reddit post, or watch the MKBHD video specifically referencing it, you will see that Brownlee recreated an experiment demonstrating that the phone was inserting a pre-made image of the moon when and where it 'recognised' the moon in the scene. This is beyond what you could call 'post processing', it's in the realm of 'photoshopping'. No Brownlee was not especially outspoken but I don't think there was anything ambiguous or deceptive with his presentation.
I'm assuming the difference would be that most post processing doesn't add additional details to the photo but rather just edits or adjusts the already present details in the photo. Do you have any source confirming any other phone that adds extra details to the photo like the samsung s22?
I wonder what happens if you try to search off the changed titles? Obviously it won't work on other devices that don't have it, but on the same device, will "Zenfone 10 review" return that MKB video?
I wish it was available in Safari but I’m still going to give it a try. Thanks for sharing.
Pretty useful
This looks fantastic, will give it a try, thanks!
Oog yes
Good thing I can already use uBlock to remove the jumpscare that is "verified badges."
great extension but slows down YouTube loading a lot :(
This really feels like another one of those bandwagon pet peeves, like Comic Sans, pineapple on pizza, or toilet paper orientation. Like, if it pisses you off so much, then don't reward the creator by watching their video. In fact, the addon kind of defeats its own purpose by making you more likely to do just that.
More and more channels have been using this type of clicks ate, because if they do not then they get buried by the algorithm.
There are lots of good channels that should be cleaned up.
YouTube creator guidelines encourage clickbaiting because engagement means more ads being served. They also encourage begging for "like, subscribe, ring the bell and comment" in every video for the same reason.
The algorithm burying other videos is just the side-effect. Non-clickbaity videos are still suggested if the engagement is high.
I hate that the YouTube scheme works, it's extremely unfriendly to both the consumers and the creators. But that's how the world turns nowadays. My YouTube bookmark links to my subscriptions tab, so I never have to go to the main site.
Sadly I don't think boycotting clickbait channels is a solution at this point. First, because almost every Youtuber does it. Second, even if you boycott it, it will remain a shockingly effective strategy.
Case in point, after installing this extension I was shocked as to how little I wanted to click on videos - clickbait works.
This really feels like another one of those bandwagon pet peeves
Open YouTube in a private tab, and if you aren't convinced click on the first MrBeast video you see, mute and let it play through then return to the homepage and see the results. Some creators are far worse than others, but the top .1% of channels are so insanely over the top with this
tech people get annoyed at the weirdest shit...
It wouldn't bother me too much but have a look at the explore tab, it makes the app look so cheap and like a clickhole website.
The content isn't necessarily bad but this and sponsor block will only improve things.
If people wanted what this extension did, YouTubers wouldn’t make thumbnails like this. Unfortunately, it’s what gets clicks, so they’re forced to do it to get engagement. Linus of LTT has lamented the fact that he has to make click bait titles, but it earns the big bucks so he has to do it. That’s how being a YouTuber works.
Just because my monkey brain falls for clickbait doesn't mean that I want it.
The MKBHD thumbnail is a perfect example of this. I really want to know what makes that phone almost perfect because I can't fight my curiosity but when faced with an honest title like the one on the right which states that it's just a review makes me realize that I'm actually not interested in it.
And after clicking on a clickbait video and scrolling through it to check if it actually delivers on it's promises I'm mostly left disappointed and will close it again.
And I can't just ignore all titles that pose a question like this because there are youtubers like technology connections that actually deliver on their titles promise in a thourough way.
maybe I'm a sucker, but I love MKBHD and I don't know if I'm clicking into a Zenfone 10 review video without the clickbait. I'm glad I did and I learned about the phone that is almost perfect in his eyes.
Yeah it's definitely a real thing I don't doubt, it's that YouTube promotes this line of promotion.
Man this creator keeps on giving, making YouTube better than Google does so
It's pretty telling a platform like YouTube really only gets fully enjoyable with an adblocker, sponsorblock and this. I wish PeerTube had a lot of good creators, but last time I checked (years ago, admittedly) it was mostly conspiracy theorists and cryptobros.
The problem with PeerTube is that there's no built-in way for creators to get paid. If there are no ads or sponsors, then the only alternative is some kind of value for value system like what Podcasting 2.0 has. Until some kind of well integrated funding system gets built for PeerTube, creators really are not going to be incentivized to publish stuff on the platform.
At this point I’m down with paying a monthly subscription to a creator for content. I’ve never signed up for any creator’s pattern or anything because how the system is currently set up. I know some creators switched to posting less frequently because their more frequent posting appeared to be hurting their view count due to YouTube’s algorithm. I am so willing to pay a creator directly for them to go back to making more frequent content (and content they actually enjoy and not stuff just for views)
my only issue with this is eventually people will hit a financial limit and only be able to support a few creators, leaving others without funding
I'm following over 30 youtube channels, even at $1/month per channel that would still be $30/month which is too much for me honestly. not to mention the fact I would have to manage 30 different subscriptions
I'd like a youtube premium style subscription where I can specify a group of channels and the money gets distributed to them only
this way my money isn't going to conspiracy channels, and I would only have a single subscription to manage
I subscribe to Nebula now.
Does nebula have enough content to be worth it now? I haven’t heard anyone with a sponsor spot for nebula in a few years now
I don't know how much content would be "worth it" to most people. I just subscribed for Lindsay Ellis coming back, since she's no longer uploading to YouTube due to the "git her b****, it's her time" cancelling bullshit.
If you are willing to pay... then why not yt premium ? A cut goes to google, sure, but it goes to creators, based on your watch time, without falling into having to support 1-infinite channels etc. Plus no ads without any tricks
I already pay for YouTube premium but that doesn’t change how creators make content. The YouTube algorithm and its mystery has really changed how people make content over the years. There have been people I’ve watched for 10+ years now and it’s sucks to see them have to chase the algorithm to maintain their livelihood. If I could pay a creator directly to get more content, I gladly would
Best I can think of, would be implementing Librepay into PeerTube and make payments easy af.
https://tilvids.com has some reasonable ones, although they're often just as well YouTubers, so you get similar clickbait, unfortunately.
Tilvids.com is probably the best place for good creators on PeerTube.
Ooh! Thanks for the tip! Dumb question, Peertube federates, right? Where you can get a feed of all subscribed channels from lots of instances on one instance? With a quick poke around I'm not seeing username@instancsname so I'm slightly thrown off, but I've also only been on the fediverse for like a month
PeerTube is also part of ActiviyPub, so yes it federates.
I know tilvids.com doesn’t federate directly with anyone, but you can subscribe to any channel on tilvids.com from any other PeerTube instance.
Don’t forget the PocketTube extension, which allows you to sort subscriptions into self-made categories. Which is shockingly not a default feature.
I'd even add Unhook (hide Trending, Shorts, Merch, replace "Home Feed" with subscriptions etc.) and Age Restriction Bypass (avoid the need to verify your account with a credit card). I also use Clickbait Remover. It essentially does the same as DeArrow without the crowdsourcing, which is already good enough for me.
I mean yes but also it's not that hard. Google is not trying to give you a great experience, they're trying to drive clicks to ads.
I did the opposite. I installed an addon that adds Mr Beast to every thumbnail.
I need a mod for my phone my that just makes every icon a picture of some character with their mouth wide open, yelling.
(refer to this reddit post for what I mean)
Calculator? Someone yelling.
Settings? Someone yelling.
Camera app? Believe it or not, someone yelling.
i tried that too, its one of my favourite extensions
There’s also a Scott the Woz version, which I have installed
Lmao
I've used it for exactly three minutes and this is already amazing. I hope it gets integrated into ReVanced and Newpipe.
I would love it on Piped, they already have sponsorblock
Never heard of piped. Filling the same niche as revanced?
Kind of. It's a desktop web front-end to Youtube. I'm not sure whether it blocks in-stream ads (and I'm not turning off Ublock to find out), but it does basically reimplement the Youtube interface without many of its undesired elements.
More like Newpipe but it actually works (GURU MEDIATION) and has nice UI. I just found it yesterday on FDroid, I recommend it.
Thanks, I didn't know revanced was a thing. I only enjoyed old vanced for briefly in its last days. So good to hear theres still options like this around.
Really good extension, I've added it to my browser.
While some creators like Linus have said they dislike the clickbaity titles and thumbnails but they have to do it due to engagement that's simply because the younger generations are the ones engaging with that content. As an older person I'd rather just have a to the point description of what I'm going to get.
I might get it for the titles alone. The clickbaity thumbnails don't really bother me, but I'd like to have a good title at least.
Yeah the titles are actually a huge draw for me.
I'm going to set the fallback thumbnail to the original instead of a random thumbnail. The randomly generated thumbnails are too out of context to be useful.
I don’t think it can be said to conclusively be an age issue. I assure you that many Boomers and older Xers love clickbait titles.
It’s a more granular demographic than just age.
It's definitely an intelligent based issue, not necessarily age.
Maybe but I can only go with my own anecdotal experience and It tends to be the younger audience more attracted to them.
Of course, I fully admit I may be completely wrong.
There is a reason clickbait images and titles are used, they work. If they didn't work, no one would use them.
Don't forget that creators will release a video that you might want to watch later and then change the information.
You'll see a video you want to check tomorrow but not enough to add it to the "watch later". But when you check your subscriptions the next day it's been 12+ hours and they've changed the title and thumbnail to further game the algorithm.
But I don't want to reward people that do this by watching their videos
I second this. The only reason click bait trash thumbnails work is people accepting it.
KIDS. accept it, that's all who has all this time to watch these dumbed down videos , and what are they attracted to? Apparently gaping mouths.
Too late for that
Also be sure to get the restore YouTube dislike button extension
As well as uBlock Origin, Sponsorblock and BlockTube.
I believe YouTube is going to start detecting ad blockers, and there will be an arms race
heard its on chromium based browsers. just hope it does not come to Firefox.
So what you're saying is that YouTube will become incompatible with firefox?
Not hard to disguise the browser you're using. I use Mullvad (Firefox fork) and it will show up as Chrome on the host side.
I haven't seen it happen on Brave browser yet. We'll see how long that holds up.
Not worried about ad blockers, ytdlp is my sine qua non, figured they'd have blocked that years ago.
For a while, it was getting blocked regularly and a new update would come out that fixed it. Repeat.
Let's be honest, they never took it seriously at all.
They could push a patch for encrypted streams to chrome and even firefox, basically you need a google account to watch videos, wouldn't be optimal but they could get away with it.
Ytdl has login parameters. It would still get cracked.
Hulu with ads displays no ads when watching in a browser with uBlock origin. I don't know if this is down to lazy design by Hulu or not but it's another data point
One that they'll never win
Sadly I can't find Sponsorblock and BlockTube in the Firefox addon store (Android).
You have to use a custom add-on collection and Firefox Beta because Mozilla restricts which add-ons you can use
github.com/ajayyy/SponsorBlock/wiki/Android
For this ridiculousness alone I quit Firefox. They absolutely do not care about their users. They also have been pushing a lot of shady things, like running experiments and tracking by default. And ff for Android still doesn't have printing, 5 years after requesting to add it BACK
I'm curious to know what's your usecase for BlockTube
Removing clickbait channels, foreign language channels, livestreams, channels I dislike, and whatever Youtube keeps recommending me over and over no matter how many times I hit "not interested"
Removing clickbait channels, foreign language channels, livestreams, channels I dislike, and whatever Youtube keeps recommending me over and over no matter how many times I hit "not interested"
Store unlimited amount of client-side data
Access your data for sites in the googlevideo.com domain
Access your data for sites in the youtube.com domain
Access your data for sponsor.ajay.app
Access your data for dearrow-thumb.ajay.app
Access your data for www.youtube-nocookie.com
This add-on may also ask to: **Access your data for all websites
Is there a better option than for it to need unlimited amount of client-side data? Also, why "Access your data for all websites"?-
Creator of theq extension here, that is an optional permissions (may ask). It never asks to access to all sites, it only optionally let's you add support for additional sites such as different Invidious instances. These are arbitrary domains, so it needs permission to ask for any arbitrary website.
Support for invidious is not actually done yet, so right now, it never asks for permission for any new sites anyway
The client side data is used to store your submissions to always show your preferred title, even if there is another submission on the server. You can disable this option in the settings
Thanks for your informative reply.
Bro, I seriously would marry you and make you food every day
Thank you for your work !
It's required to access iframes.
Without having investigated the plug in itself, going by just what you posted: That's not likely to be a nefarious request, the plug-in needs to store data on your computer. Dealing with large number of titles it makes sense that it would cache things on your computer to minimise overtaxing their servers, to serve you more or less the same data over and over.
Maybe it's for embedded videos? idk
Google's algorithm has forced people into using click bait thumbnails and titles. If they don't attract more views and subscribers, then their channels are not pushed.
I think a bigger problem is they demonetize and depromote any video discussing a controversial or kid-unfriendly topic. This affects the actual content.
Also, don't forget to subscribe, hit that like button, smash that bell, and leave a comment letting me know what you think!
Are you implying that content creators don't themselves want more views and subscribers? Of course they do!
"They only use thumbnails and titles that get views and subscribers because if they don't... they won't get views and subscribers since Google isn't pushing their content."
That's what it sounds like you're saying.
I think the point is that you can't get more views by being genuine and honest, as the algorithm awards griftiness
You can, it’s just exceedingly difficult.
I mean, you just aren't going to get as many views if you don't. Veritasium has a video on it, regarding his rubber balls video.
Linus also mentioned it, he said he hates doing it but the clickbait videos significantly outperform others.
I never said otherwise, but it is possible to be successful without the clickbait. There are a few creators that have managed it. They would just make more money if they went with clickbait.
The point is that channel growth, clicks and interactions as a metric is used more for suggesting videos than relevancy and the likelihood that someone will watch a video to the end.
This creates a click bait arms race between creators.
isn't the whole point of running a YouTube channel to get views and subscribers?
It's real easy to solve this problem by just not pushing videos with text, arrows, symbols or reaction soyfaces in thumbnails. The issue is that they push all of that to the top and push everything else to the bottom.
The only way to win the game, is to not play in the first place unfortunately
There is also an extension that adds Mr Beast to every thumbnail
Yooo, can I have a source for this? Just for research purposes
https://mrbeastify.github.io/
Love the idea, but just to be the devil's advocate, I think it will just mask garbage videos. Currently, the clickbait thumbnails and titles are an indicator to blacklist a channel, without having to waste time watching it.
Unfortunately because of the way Youtube's algorithm works, even high quality channels are buried if they don't play the game.
Yeah, even good ones do it.
Got any examples? I don't recall any actually quality and worthwhile channels that still use those dumb thumbnails.
Veritasium, he even has a video crunching the numbers as an explanation why he has to doit
Do you have a link to the video? I casually skimmed through his video list for the past year or so, but none of the titles jumped out at me for this.
Could also be a good example of why this extension sounds cool haha
Edit: Found it just a few more videos below here I stopped haha. "Clickbait is Unreasonably Effective" https://youtu.be/S2xHZPH5Sng
Yeah, that one I stopped hating clickbait so much after watching it, trying to become immune to it
LTT and SmarterEveryDay to name two.
All those channels in the screenshot in this post.
If you look at the DeArrow website and browser extension pages, I made sure to only use high quality channels as examples (Tom Scott, CGP Grey) to demonstrate how far reaching the sensationalism problem is.
CGP Grey is personally painful to me. He used to be a no-nonsense education youtube legend, but in the last few years he's just maximised clickability - even going thorugh his whole back catalogue and changing titles and thumbnails.
For example, he made a great video about generative adversarial networks ~5 years ago but now its titled "How machines like ChatGPT learn" - despite coming out before GPT.
Pretty much every successful YouTube channel edits titles. It's just part of the algorithm game now. You will often see videos cycle through several different titles shortly after release.
You have to blame YouTube and the people who click those garbage thumbnails
yep.... that one is just rediculus
Tom Scott's thumbnails aren't that bad IMO, they're pretty minimal in comparison to some other channels.
But they are so much worse than they were 6 months ago. He's gone and ruined all of the old ones too with arrows and more deceptive titles.
The Real Engineering video used as an example here is excellent.
I kind of like seeing the clickbait, it lets me know which videos/channels arent worth my time. I know most use at least a little clickbait these days, but from the better channels its usually managable and still on topic (like the Real Engineering example shown here, whereas the others are complete clickbait that I would avoid).
.
Clickbait works and I encourage all YouTubers that I watch to do so. The more people they reach, the more money they earn and the better their content can become. Outside of a minor annoyance to the superusers, using clickbait titles and thumbnails is just good business. Even the very best content producers in their category (Veritasium in educational content, MKBHD for tech reviewing are great examples) use it because they have to: but lots of them dislike doing it. Veritasium has two great videos about it: clickbaiting is a HUGE benefit to any YouTube channel, a good thumbnail alone can account for 20-50% of all views on a video.
Imagine it like this: every time you pay for anything, you get a free 30% discount if you pinch yourself in the arm. Wouldn't you always just do it? Who cares about the minor annoyance.
That's what it's like for the content creator. Put 30 minutes of work into a clickbait thumbnail + title and it's 30% more views on every single video.
I understand but I don't have to like it or see it on my stream. I'm sure they won't miss the fraction of missed views from people like me if they're making 30% more from others.
Thumbnail and first 5-10 seconds for auto play or preview play or whatever it's called is super important. I post some videos just for fun and can see the boost when I take effort in those two things.
I never thought it could be possible to do that, thank you so much for this and making YouTube a better place.
If someone knows how to get rid of shorts in the search results I'd be most grateful 👌
There is an add on, and it works well! Firefox add-on
Thank you so much, I can't wait to try this and get rid of those!
Replying to find this comment again later.
I don't mind the clickbait as much because I've learned to filter the crap out to some degree (following F1 channels does that to a mf), but still, anything to keep the bullshit to a minimum.
This should be a part of newpipe.
The majority of videos I that pop up on my home feed don’t have clickbait thumbnails. A few admittedly do, but they are usually way toned down and when mixed among other videos in my feed not as vacuous when it’s just a few of them.
I think the issue can be largely self correcting on the user side if people just take a little bit of effort to curate good content for themselves.
Unfortunately, terrible thumbnails and titles are just a part of the culture in some circles, even if the channels themselves make good content. Look at this trash, and these are actually the better ones:
Clickbait works
LTT has repeatedly done less clickbaity titles/thumbnails and their views are noticeably lower. The YT algorithm pushes clickbait a lot more than non-clickbait.
It's not really yt algorithm that pushes it. People click more on clickbait (duh) so yt sees more engagement so it shoes it more. Blame people, not youtube imo
It's a combination of both. Google pushes people into watching random shit rather than a curated feed of their subscriptions. It didn't used to be this way. YT used to reward subscribers heavily but now creators are dependent on the algo for ~50% of their traffic.
I installed this app and looked up some Mr. Beast vids as a test. If anything, it made more tempted to check out his vids just because I don't have to see his annoying giant soyface in every thumbnail now.
lmao, who unironically says soyface?
If you've got another way to describe that facial expression Mr. Beast does in all his thumbnails, then I'm all ears.
Jumpscare Scream.
Also. Hi All ears, im toastedenough
True, you're right.
=O
Yeah but that reading rainbow thumbnail is fire
Yeah, let's burn it.
Tbf I can't think of any instance where Marques has click baited. At most they're just obnoxious. But it's been proven to work, as dumb as it is. Also Marques's thumbnails are nowhere near as cringe as other Youtubers.
While I wish the days of 2007-2013 YouTube returned to the non clickbait and non garbage thumbnails, those days are over. I'd rather have the obnoxious thumbnails so I know which creators are trash.
I don't know who this person is, but the example in the OP is definitely clickbait. "This phone is nearly perfect" but doesn't say what the phone is, baiting you to click for the answer instead of just mentioning what phone we're reviewing.
No judgement, it's his business and he's gotta make money, but saying he doesn't do this just seems demonstrably wrong.
Yeah exactly, these kinds of titles make me not wanna click at all because I got no idea what it's about (since it's almost certainly not gonna be the perfect phone), so usually I don't watch this kind of content at all. DeArrow really helped navigate around this crap and even LTT is kinda interesting to watch again because I finally know if a video is gonna be interesting to me BEFORE clicking it.
Titles picked within the last 4 months:
This is what parasocial relationships do to you...
We need this on Revanced too. Also on NewpipeXSponserblock.
Oh lord yes, I was scrolling through the replies in the hope of finding a ReVanced reference.
Glad that I fulfiled your satisfaction
Man, I wish this is available for my TV..
Here's hoping this gets added to SmartTube like SponsorBlock was.
Basically an Adblocker for your brain... nice!
If you label your videos as click bait trash, I'll treat it like click bait trash and not watch it.
I'm not going to install software to correct and support your shit behavior.
I just use the tried and true method of unsubscribing and watching another channel
“Don’t recommend this channel” has been a life saver
You'll run out of channels fast, trying to do that.
You'd think, but honestly I've still found a helluva large amount of good channels that don't do this.
The sad thing is that even good channel are driven to do this bullshit because people do really watch those more often. How can we be such a brainless hive mind...
E.g. Marques Brownlee actually does do decent reviews.
had me until the last line
marques only does impressions and doesn't do reviews
the only review he has done is the iPhone 13 pro 6 months later
every other video is made with 2-3 weeks of usage(he gets device a few weeks before launch and uses beta version of software to make "reviews")
That's the way consumer reviews have always worked. Short of a few exceptions, most professional reviews for any hardware are impressions. If it took 6 months to review a washing machine, it would take a lot of people to keep up. Same with phones, same with video games. It's nice when someone can give a long term review, but if every phone he reviewed took 6 months to review, he'd have 1-2 videos a year.
phones gets updates over months which enhance or worsens the experience of the device
eg pixel 6 got worse with updates and it didn't even get updated for 2-3 months I think and various poco phones had bad motherboard issues which only showed up after a few months
in fact, it was common for pixel series to get widespread hardware issues like green screen on pixel 2, screen not placed evenly on pixel 5 and more, even though it got good "reviews" on YouTube because they were impressions
users buy based on reviews thinking the device is good but that is just an impression
and coming to the last line, why do you need to be bombarded with review videos?
its ok if we get 1-2 device review
If you are wanting reviews to take 6 months, there won't be any reviews of the phone until half way through their sales cycle. I agree things change over time. I have a Pixel 5 and on release it had horrible brightness sensing problems thanks to the under screen brightness sensor, and that got a lot better after a couple of months. But it is unrealistic to expect people to wait 6 months to see if a phone might be good. That was doubley true when most phones only had 2 years of support tops.
It's a little better now, but if you aren't buying a phone when it first hits the market you are shaving time off the life of the phone, if you are like me and camp on a phone for years. Heck, for a long time cell phone carriers were selling phones who's EOL had already come, it was bad.
I've used clickbait remover addon for more than a year now. I vastly prefer just a random screenshot as a thumbnail than those custom ones.
Clickbait remover uses YouTube's auto generated ones, which while are seemingly random, are not. They use some algorithm to target faces in exaggerated expressions.
DeArrwow uses actually random ones (and then a user can submit specific timestamps if there is a better one). It's noticeable better on many channels imo
(I made DeArrow)
you are the goat. thanks for making these banger extensions for youtube
Yeah, especially for some creators like veritasium where they play "musical thumbnails" and change it every few days for about a week or so. It's so annoying because I keep thinking it's a different video.
Can newpipe implement this please
this is brilliant!! thank you so much for creating this and also for giving us sponsorblock. you're the goat!!
But then how do I filter out clickbaity videos?
This...if they want to make their thumbnail as pathetic as possible, let them. It's much easier to spot the junk this way.
Nice way to remove clickbait, but now my home page looks like 2014
bliss
The extension allows you to keep the original thumbnail or a random frame from the video is a community-submitted thumbnail is unavailable.
I want to know when YT made it possible to have thumbnails be their own image and not taken from the video itself. I can scrub the video through every single frame and never actually find the thumbnails anymore.
Hell, sometimes the text in the thumbnail says something that isn't even discussed in the video at all. Those are the ones I hate the most. And I wouldn't necessarily want to remove the thumbnail, just because there are plenty of channels that make the thumbnail the actual title and the title is just... Bullshit, non-descriptive, a number, etc. Not all of them are bad. Civvie 11 and Internet Comment Etiquette do this. Erik probably does it on purpose both for the fact it works and also because he is a satire channel that regularly shits on these practices by showing how dumb they are. Civvie also satirizes YT's bullshit, but that's not really the prime focus of the channel.
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For specific types of video where they are mostly similar looking (For example, online TCGs and such), it can be hard to get a thumbnail you want that looks different than other videos of the same type, so people were adding long segment with the static image of thumbnail they wanted at the end of the video for a workaround, until Google finally relented and just let people use the thumbnails they want.
I don't have a problem with this, I just try not to watch videos with clickbait thumbnails and/or titles, because if they think they "had" to do that, then their content usually isn't very good to begin with.
I think it's really telling when creators have different thumbnails on Nebula vs YouTube. It could even be interpreted as a scream for help "this is the thumbnail I wanted but this is the thumbnail that puts food on my table"
I suppose to drive engagement with fake thumbnails, the same thing they do when they put irrelevant things into your search results (thankfully that one is easily blocked by a uBlock filter).
True, but even if YouTube forced you take a screenshot from the video people would add the image in the last frame similar to what they sometimes do for YT shorts.
Thing is, I know I won't click the ones on the left. The ones on the right actually look interesting.
... Which means I'll be promoting writing clickbaity titles by clicking on the videos and I'm not sure how I feel about that
the only way to get out of the cycle is to not open any gates that traps you into it
its like withdrawal, yeah it sucks but its better for you in the long run
For people wondering, the extension is also capable of changing clickbait title into a more descriptive one. You could also have a button toggle on each video to see the original title and thumbnail vs the changed one
Agreed. I like the title change, but the chance of not being able to remember the actual title of a video when I need to is not worth it.
What does remembering the actual title mean if they change it every five minutes ;)
But yea, a DeArrow search engine would solve that problem
Fair, but the YouTubers I usually watch tend not to do the whole clickbait thing, so this is really a non-issue for me 🤣
i would use this but some of the channels i watch the most number their thumbnails and dont do clickbait like this. if i could pick and choose per channel somehow it would be more helpful to me. i do agree with the sentiment though!
there's a whitelist!
You can do different settings per channel. So, you can allowlist channels, or even do the reverse, and only change titles/thumbnails on channels you don't like.
Same. The channels I really enjoy create their own non-clickbait emails. They also tend to "standardize" their video titles so they all follow a similar format. I wish there was a way to whitelist certain channels.
There is
Getting rid of "thumbnail face" is reason enough to use this add-on. Thanks for the recommendation!
Thank you for the link. It works great! Now I have the perfect YouTube with Ublock Origin + Sponsor Block + Dearrow + Return Youtube Dislike. It's crazy how many extensions you need to add to make YouTube bearable.... it's really time for a good competitor to take its place !
A different platform would also be plagued by clickbait and sponsor messages.
And add a Youtube shorts block while you're at it.
Don't forget Enhancer for YouTube; it's an absolute essential in my book.
Great idea! You can't really get away from the clickbait thumbnails. As others said even good channels are heavily incentivised to do it.
It is already really difficult to find the stuff that is actually worth watching on YouTube. If you boycotted all clickbait thumbnails you would miss out on some otherwise great creators.
I'd much rather take clickbait thumbnails and baked in ads though as I can get around them with extensions and there is still a worthwhile video behind them.
When creators start doing low effort content like reaction videos, unboxings/product first impressions, or product "showcases" (ads) is when I usually know a channel has outlived its usefulness and stop watching altogether.
Can't wait to have this on YouTube ReVanced and SmartTube.
Why though..it only is going to make garbage crap videos look ok and you'll be just consuming more trash.
Not everything is completely crap
It'll make finding the noncrap much harder is it all doesn't look like crap though
Awesome idea and the feedback suggests it works well, too. Any plans to support Firefox on Android?
You can assume how good the inside content would be from a specific video by looking at its title and thumbnail. I'd rather not using it.
on the extreme levels, yes, but almost everyone on the platform does some form of deception to convince you to click.
Like it says on the dearrow website:
It's absolutely the fault of YouTube for pushing this sort of interface, and the fault of viewers who click on garbage thumbnails
You can ascertain how much effort the creator was willing to put in the thumbnail but that’s really it. All YouTube thumbnails are basically just try to trick monkey brains into clicking. I can’t stand clickbait thumbnails so this would be really nice in my opinion
Can vouch this extension is amazing. I started using it when it had 200 chrome downloads and it was already had many prominent creators in its database.
Title and thumbnail replacements are based on community votes, just like sponsorblock.
I have dearrow and I like it. I also installed Unhook, which "hides YouTube related videos, comments, shorts tab, suggestions wall, homepage recommendations, trending, and other distractions".
But now you don't know if it's click baity or not and will click it to watch.
Wo a new extension worthy of installation, the last time that happened was a years ago, Channel Blocker. Feels like an ongoing battle with yt, to make it viewable to a human rather than it's own bots.
Or rather, the trained dopamine minorit monkey that it tries to turn you into
This is awesome, installing it right now.
Is this available as a vanced patch aswell?
Not yet, but hoping it is in the future. Also did just check because Sponsorblock from the same dev is available.
Cool, sponsor block must've saved hours of my life by now.
This is awesome. Just installed it.
I went to install it but realised it's already among the 30 or so extensions I have to make the web bearable. Does that happen to anyone else?
You should compile a list
This sounds like a nice addon, sadly most of my YT consumption is done from my Nvidia Shield TV with STN, so I still get those annoying thumbnails I think (I have them in my home screen and that's where I watch them or add them to the list to watch later within the Shield menu).
Crowdsourced?
Would be nice to get a random frame of the video instead of the actual thumbnail..
Thats what this does if theres no crowdsourced thumbnail available. It just picks a random frame from the video.
That's what it does if there's no crowdsourced thumbnail.
I just thought about giving it a try then remembered that 99.9% of my time on YT is through the Android app (ReVanced to be precise) and TV (YT AdFree on LG TV)
I'd expect the ReVanced team to add this as a patch soon, seems very cool
Yeah I wouldn't be surprised if they did
You can use Firefox for Android with plugins
Nah it is not worth it for me, the app UX/UI and functionality is miles ahead of the mobile site
I use ReVanced and wasn't aware of AdFree, thanks! I try and use Odysee wherever I can, but to be honest, my favorite stuff is still on YouTube.
The real engineering original is basically spot on.
Removed the clickbaity thumbnail though!
I don't really see how it's click baity. Click bait implies that it's lying or exaggerating something, and that thumbnail is basically spot on. You click that link and you get exactly what you expected.
Click bait implies it’s giving you a reason to click. “Doomed to fail?” Has a subtext of “Click and watch the video to find out!”
Need this on SmartTube for AndroidTV
It does have it. You can choose at which part of every video to take the thumbnail from. Just might take a while to find it in the settings.
Yes I have it turned on. I was interested about the title generation
Brilliant
On firefox youtube videos take a long time to load, they'll play for a bit and then buffer. Without this extension youtube works fine on chrome. I guess this extension is in beta stage, needs to be polished more.
Considering it's from the same person behind sponsorblock, I'm positive future updates will fix this issue..
Edit: Seems I was using old version, just updated the extension as developer said they'd fixed the above issue in new version. So far so good, now videos are playing fine on firefox..
clickbait no more
Would it be possible to extract the most watched position from the watch graph in the seek bar or use positions that were already tagged as highlights in sponsorblock for better defaults?
It's just a screenshot of square raid shadow nordvpn space...
Doesn’t it really matter if the title is click baity if the content is worth watching. It generates revenue for the content creator so I feel like I’d rather them have what works than a cleaner title.
-> Firefox Addon
awesome! It's available for firefox based browsers!
hey that's cool
Thanks for sharing!
Maybe a feature request, but is there an addon that just blocks videos with shitty thumbnails or all caps? Might make the front page almost presentable.
If this extension could just hide those videos as an option, or at least flag them it might make browsing better.
BlockTube can block videos based on keywords
I use this extension, clickbait remover for youtube. Does it's job perfectly well!
Clickbait remover uses YouTube’s auto generated ones, which while are seemingly random, are not. They use some algorithm to target faces in exaggerated expressions.
DeArrow uses actually random ones (and then a user can submit specific timestamps if there is a better one). It’s noticeable better on many channels imo
(I made DeArrow)
I really like your idea. What do you think about showing 4 random thumbnails in split-screen to give a better impression of the content?
YouTube Clickbait-Buster has a feature where you can see all the images from the hovering preview from the seekbar. A more refined version of that could be interesting to look into in the future maybe.
Image
Thanks for posting about this extension! It's a very welcomed addition to make YouTube more bearable.
I think i'm okay with NewPipeXSponsorBlock or Freetube, but for straight up YouTube, this is good stuff.
Does npxsb generate its own too?
This extension is awesome thank you
But this will make me stop clicking on 6 different videos before I find one I like... Where's the fun in that?
nice, good to see an adblocker for clickbaits
This guy is doing God's work 🙌
Yooo that's so cool! I'm already using SponsorBlock for in-video stuff, uBlock Origin for the around the video stuff, and a Thumbnail remover (can't recall the name rn). But I think this is even better, because just the first or middle frame of a video isn't exactly capturing the essence of that video.
Clickbait remover uses YouTube’s auto generated ones, which while are seemingly random, are not. They use some algorithm to target faces in exaggerated expressions.
DeArrwow uses actually random ones (and then a user can submit specific timestamps if there is a better one). It’s noticeable better on many channels imo. It also let's us do things like make sure the random thumbnail is not in a sponsor using SponsorBlock data
(I made DeArrow)
Good human
Thanks for sharing!
And then there's that extension that puts Mr. Beast's signature clickbait grin on every thumbnail
Does anyone know how to convert this into a Userscript? I use Userscripts (a Tampermonkey reimplementation for Safari) and I did not get it to work.
That's a great idea!
This feels like, IMHO, trying to put out a forest fire with a single bucket of water. Instead, we should have a platform that does not encourage making titles and thumbnails completely unrelated to the video's content.
Fantastic!
Just like sponsor block this is only going to improve with time. Hopefully it gets integrated into revanced as well
Fuck, this is awesome. Great idea!
Oh oh I wish this was available for Safari too
test
Marques Brownlee was that guy fervently saying the Samsung S22 fake moon filter wasn't a fake moon filter. What a shill.
I don't think he said that isn't fake. He just said that it's more than just taking a pic of the moon and sticking it in the photo.
Every phone camera does some post processing these days to make the pics look better than what they actually are. How's this any different?
If you read the original Reddit post, or watch the MKBHD video specifically referencing it, you will see that Brownlee recreated an experiment demonstrating that the phone was inserting a pre-made image of the moon when and where it 'recognised' the moon in the scene. This is beyond what you could call 'post processing', it's in the realm of 'photoshopping'. No Brownlee was not especially outspoken but I don't think there was anything ambiguous or deceptive with his presentation.
I'm assuming the difference would be that most post processing doesn't add additional details to the photo but rather just edits or adjusts the already present details in the photo. Do you have any source confirming any other phone that adds extra details to the photo like the samsung s22?
I wonder what happens if you try to search off the changed titles? Obviously it won't work on other devices that don't have it, but on the same device, will "Zenfone 10 review" return that MKB video?
I wish it was available in Safari but I’m still going to give it a try. Thanks for sharing.
Pretty useful
This looks fantastic, will give it a try, thanks!
Oog yes
Good thing I can already use uBlock to remove the jumpscare that is "verified badges."
great extension but slows down YouTube loading a lot :(
This really feels like another one of those bandwagon pet peeves, like Comic Sans, pineapple on pizza, or toilet paper orientation. Like, if it pisses you off so much, then don't reward the creator by watching their video. In fact, the addon kind of defeats its own purpose by making you more likely to do just that.
More and more channels have been using this type of clicks ate, because if they do not then they get buried by the algorithm.
There are lots of good channels that should be cleaned up.
YouTube creator guidelines encourage clickbaiting because engagement means more ads being served. They also encourage begging for "like, subscribe, ring the bell and comment" in every video for the same reason.
The algorithm burying other videos is just the side-effect. Non-clickbaity videos are still suggested if the engagement is high.
I hate that the YouTube scheme works, it's extremely unfriendly to both the consumers and the creators. But that's how the world turns nowadays. My YouTube bookmark links to my subscriptions tab, so I never have to go to the main site.
Sadly I don't think boycotting clickbait channels is a solution at this point. First, because almost every Youtuber does it. Second, even if you boycott it, it will remain a shockingly effective strategy. Case in point, after installing this extension I was shocked as to how little I wanted to click on videos - clickbait works.
Open YouTube in a private tab, and if you aren't convinced click on the first MrBeast video you see, mute and let it play through then return to the homepage and see the results. Some creators are far worse than others, but the top .1% of channels are so insanely over the top with this
tech people get annoyed at the weirdest shit...
It wouldn't bother me too much but have a look at the explore tab, it makes the app look so cheap and like a clickhole website.
The content isn't necessarily bad but this and sponsor block will only improve things.
If people wanted what this extension did, YouTubers wouldn’t make thumbnails like this. Unfortunately, it’s what gets clicks, so they’re forced to do it to get engagement. Linus of LTT has lamented the fact that he has to make click bait titles, but it earns the big bucks so he has to do it. That’s how being a YouTuber works.
Just because my monkey brain falls for clickbait doesn't mean that I want it.
The MKBHD thumbnail is a perfect example of this. I really want to know what makes that phone almost perfect because I can't fight my curiosity but when faced with an honest title like the one on the right which states that it's just a review makes me realize that I'm actually not interested in it.
And after clicking on a clickbait video and scrolling through it to check if it actually delivers on it's promises I'm mostly left disappointed and will close it again.
And I can't just ignore all titles that pose a question like this because there are youtubers like technology connections that actually deliver on their titles promise in a thourough way.
maybe I'm a sucker, but I love MKBHD and I don't know if I'm clicking into a Zenfone 10 review video without the clickbait. I'm glad I did and I learned about the phone that is almost perfect in his eyes.
Yeah it's definitely a real thing I don't doubt, it's that YouTube promotes this line of promotion.