this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2023
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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

funny. if the creator used the right side for the xenphone I might click on it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

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).

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

how would that be possible?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Can't wait to have this on YouTube ReVanced and SmartTube.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

It's on revanced now

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Unfortunately because of the way Youtube's algorithm works, even high quality channels are buried if they don't play the game.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, even good ones do it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Got any examples? I don't recall any actually quality and worthwhile channels that still use those dumb thumbnails.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Veritasium, he even has a video crunching the numbers as an explanation why he has to doit

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah, that one I stopped hating clickbait so much after watching it, trying to become immune to it

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

All those channels in the screenshot in this post.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

LTT and SmarterEveryDay to name two.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

You have to blame YouTube and the people who click those garbage thumbnails

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

The Real Engineering video used as an example here is excellent.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

I did the opposite. I installed an addon that adds Mr Beast to every thumbnail.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

There’s also a Scott the Woz version, which I have installed

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

i tried that too, its one of my favourite extensions

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Also be sure to get the restore YouTube dislike button extension

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

As well as uBlock Origin, Sponsorblock and BlockTube.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But I don't want to reward people that do this by watching their videos

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I second this. The only reason click bait trash thumbnails work is people accepting it.

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