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.
deleted by creator
I mean, you’re not necessarily wrong, but for some people that is kind of just the appeal. It’s very obviously targetted at a very niche group of people, and if you’re not in that, of course you’ll dislike it
deleted by creator
If you feel so strongly about the matter, feel free to not use it. Or better yet, contribute to the project to bring it up to feature parity.
As for the link - I guess whatever parses the URLs on Lemmy doesn’t recognise
.videoas a valid top-level domain. All I wrote waspiped.video, everything else was added by the website.deleted by creator
You just threw six paragraphs of vitriol at me, but I’m the one who’s screeching? Okay.
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.
deleted by creator
Honestly ReVanced is quite a bit more extensible than Vanced and works very reliably. Plus it’s open source and you can download it off GitHub. The manager makes downloading patches about as easy as installing Vanced with the manager a few years ago. I’m sure someone will add a derrow patch to Revanced very soon
funny. if the creator used the right side for the xenphone I might click on it.
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.
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”
Custom thumbnails have been allowed since December of 2008. Initially only partners were allowed to do it, but then the partner thing basically went away, and everyone who verified their account got access to it.
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 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).
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.
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)
I subscribe to Nebula now.
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
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
https://tilvids.com has some reasonable ones, although they’re often just as well YouTubers, so you get similar clickbait, unfortunately.
Don’t forget the PocketTube extension, which allows you to sort subscriptions into self-made categories. Which is shockingly not a default feature.
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.
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.
(refer to this reddit post for what I mean)
Calculator? Someone yelling.
Settings? Someone yelling.
Camera app? Believe it or not, someone yelling.
Lmao
i tried that too, its one of my favourite extensions
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.
deleted by creator
Can newpipe implement this please
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.
Removed by mod
I have not mentioned the thumbnail, only the title.
I would argue that this sort of clickbait is not really intended for person 1. A bit for person 2 but probably most for person 3, the guy looking at YouTube’s recommendation algorithm. The title purposefully omits information to draw the reader in.
Again, I’m making no arguments about this being a bad or immoral thing to do, I’m simply saying that is a classic clickbait tactic. It’s his job to draw in viewers and that’s what he’s doing.
Removed by mod
Another point in his favour may be the clear view of the phone in the thumbnail, considering that his target audience may recognise it by appearance. However, I still think he should’ve just said it in the title for everyone else, and for audience members for whom his video is their first exposure to the model.
Regarding the last section, though, I see clickbait titles less as ‘it doesn’t cover every nuance of the video’ and more ‘the title is overly reductive, genuinely misleading or pointlessly vague’, unless there’s artistic reasons it’s that way. A review title should name the reviewed product imo; it barely increases its length and lets people decide better whether the content’s worth their time without wasting any of it.
I also don’t think a title summarising a video’s central point well makes it bad. A good video doesn’t just repeat different wordings of the title for 10 minutes, it goes into specifics to argue why that is. I sometimes see nuanced, heavily researched video essays get some comment like ‘saved you half an hour, guys! (the main point in one sentence!)’ because the video didn’t… have some massive plot twist, I guess? And I don’t get why people would approach informational content that way. It feels anti-intellectual. Maybe the Silent Hill nurses are a work of art; the video would only be bad if it can’t argue that well or has a lot of fluff between the points.
Removed by mod
(Adding to the other comment, last thing I swear)
I should be clear that I think MKBHD is chill, this is pretty minor, and I can’t blame creators for doing it when youtube’s algorithm is brutal and more and more content is fighting for our declining attention spans.
It sucks that people have to be a little baity to survive on there. I think it’s fair for people to be annoyed by it anyway, but we should direct most of that negativity at the platform and extreme examples.
(Sorry for the above being sent multiple times, I had a network issue.)
You’re suggesting larger changes to the title. I’m only saying ‘this phone’ should be replaced with ‘the pixel 69’ or whatever the model’s name is. ‘The pixel 69 is almost perfect’ is short, informative (edit: by which I mean informative enough about the video’s topic), more informative to anyone that hasn’t seen the phone before, and draws people in: why’s it almost perfect? That’s worth clicking to find out, and the details aren’t something you’d expect someone to cram into a general review title.
I fully agree that the title should encourage people to keep reading, but in my opinion ‘basic writing’ is keeping a balance between both goals of a title. The examples of clickbait I’ve given involve people optimising the title for attracting views while neglecting the goal of reasonably accurate description. If taken too far it could start making viewers feel patronised, and if I encounter a video with misleading clickbait I assume the rest of their videos will waste my time as well and avoid them. (Edit 3: I increasingly assume the same about vague titles from unfamiliar channels as well.)
If your thesis statement is the entirety of your argument then you are wasting everyone’s time.
The last part of my previous comment was about this; maybe we’re miscommunicating by using ‘summarise’ differently, as in ‘covers every point’ vs ‘vague overview’? I’ve been saying titles should do the latter because that’s what this entire conversation has been about. Nobody thinks every point of a review should be included in its title, just that the title should be reasonably descriptive about the central thesis or central question being explored. Quoting myself:
A good video doesn’t just repeat different wordings of the title for 10 minutes, it goes into specifics to argue why that is.
the video would only be bad if it can’t argue [the title’s statement] well or has a lot of fluff between the points.
TL;DR: there’s a balance to be struck between making the title descriptive and drawing clicks, and talking about full summaries as titles is a bit of a strawman.
EDIT 2: Removed some italics because they made this sound unintentionally patronising. Apologies, haha.
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…
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.
I haven’t seen it happen on Brave browser yet. We’ll see how long that holds up.
So what you’re saying is that YouTube will become incompatible with firefox?
One that they’ll never win
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.
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
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”
Removed by mod
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!
The only way to win the game, is to not play in the first place unfortunately
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.
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 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 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.
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.
Linus also mentioned it, he said he hates doing it but the clickbait videos significantly outperform others.
isn’t the whole point of running a YouTube channel to get views and subscribers?
deleted by creator
You decide for yourself which videos to click. I usually only watch channels of which I know they will deliver.
deleted by creator
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
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.
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.
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.
They didn’t say it was good, just that it’s what works; that’s why it’s everywhere.
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.
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.
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
