DeArrow extension for YouTube that makes thumbnails bearable

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.

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 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 would love it on Piped, they already have sponsorblock

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 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.

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.

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.

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

Too late for that

As well as uBlock Origin, Sponsorblock and BlockTube.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

The only way to win the game, is to not play in the first place unfortunately

Yooo, can I have a source for this? Just for research purposes

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.

There is an add on, and it works well! Firefox add-on

Replying to find this comment again later.

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.

Oh lord yes, I was scrolling through the replies in the hope of finding a ReVanced reference.

lmao, who unironically says soyface?

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.

Tbf I can’t think of any instance where Marques has click baited.

Titles picked within the last 4 months:

• This Phone is Nearly Perfect!
• How Does Sony Keep Doing This?
• I Tried a Secret Google Project!
• What is Happening with Samsung's Camera?
• iPad Killer or Clone?
• Apple's Forbidden Words
• This is the Dumbest Product I've Ever Reviewed
• This Smartphone Hardware is Getting Crazy!

This is what parasocial relationships do to you...

You read it wrong.

Yeah, let's burn 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.

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

Here's hoping this gets added to SmartTube like SponsorBlock was.

“Don’t recommend this channel” has been a life saver

You'll run out of channels fast, trying to do that.

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.

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)

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.

bliss

The extension allows you to keep the original thumbnail or a random frame from the video is a community-submitted thumbnail is unavailable.

.

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"

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.

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).

This...if they want to make their thumbnail as pathetic as possible, let them. It's much easier to spot the junk this way.

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.

And add a Youtube shorts block while you're at it.

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.

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.