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.
There’s also a Scott the Woz version, which I have installed
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.
Don’t forget the PocketTube extension, which allows you to sort subscriptions into self-made categories. Which is shockingly not a default feature.
https://tilvids.com has some reasonable ones, although they’re often just as well YouTubers, so you get similar clickbait, unfortunately.
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’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?
More like Newpipe but it actually works (GURU MEDIATION) and has nice UI. I just found it yesterday on FDroid, I recommend it.
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.
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).
Also be sure to get the restore YouTube dislike button extension
As well as uBlock Origin, Sponsorblock and BlockTube.
Can’t wait to have this on YouTube ReVanced and SmartTube.
It’s on revanced now
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.
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.
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.
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 👌
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
- 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
Thank you for your work !
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.
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).
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.
All those channels in the screenshot in this post.
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.
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.
You have to blame YouTube and the people who click those garbage thumbnails
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.
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.
how would that be possible?
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.
