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
i tried that too, its one of my favourite extensions
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.
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 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.
funny. if the creator used the right side for the xenphone I might click on it.
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.
Also be sure to get the restore YouTube dislike button extension
As well as uBlock Origin, Sponsorblock and BlockTube.
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.
There is a reason clickbait images and titles are used, they work. If they didn’t work, no one would use them.
You must think marketing is made of infallible geniuses. Just because it exists doesn’t make it good.
They didn’t say it was good, just that it’s what works; that’s why it’s everywhere.
Nobody said “good”, but if it keeps existing, it works or at least isn’t harmful. Bit like evolution.
Or there are people with an interest in keeping it that way.
I don’t think there’s any big conspiracy about YouTube titles, but let’s not pretend thing like wealth inequality still exist because they’re not harmful.
What “interest” would they have to keep it that way if it wasn’t working?
Wealth inequality exists because it works for the people who have the power to control it. In a way, it’s not harmful ENOUGH to change evolutionarily.
Are you serious? You literally answered your own question with the very next sentence.
What? The original argument was “Just because it exists doesn’t make it good.”, implying that it (click-bait thumbnails) doesn’t necessarily work. To which I said that the fact that it exists means it works. To which you seemed to object by saying that there may be people who have an interest in it existing - like they want it to exist despite it actually not working. I’m confused about what it is you’re saying.
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.
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.
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.
LTT and SmarterEveryDay to name two.
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
The Real Engineering video used as an example here is excellent.
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 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).
Can’t wait to have this on YouTube ReVanced and SmartTube.
It’s on revanced now
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.
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 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 !
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 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.
