The creator of SponsorBlock has just made public a browser extension, DeArrow, for improving titles and thumbnails on YouTube. It’ll work via crowdsourced submissions, like SponsorBlock does.
The result: a feed of more honest and descriptive titles and thumbnails
As a base config, you can choose how you want titles formated (lowercase, Title Case…), and three thumbnail options (random screenshot from the video, blank box and original thumbnail). So even if there are no submissions, it will feel less baity.
And then, if there are user submissions, it will display the best ranked.
I think it is a really interesting project to battle toxic clickbaity practices and attention seeking behaviours (which imo are a huge problem on todays internet), and to reclaim some of the nice human feeling that the web used to have
I’ve been submitting entries and it is a great writing and visual excercise to come up with good titles and thumbnails that are interesting while still honest and representative, and you help users in the process
I wonder if we will see any of the youtube frontends / 3rd party clients (Piped, Newpipe, Libretube, Freetube, etc) build this into their software in the same way sponsorblock has been. Unlike Sponsorblock (which some people feel undermines a privacy non-invasive revenue stream for content creators), I think this should not be divisive.
I think some creators may not like it, for different reasons.
Worse performance. Titles and thumbnails are what incites people to click on a video, and clickbait or not, an attractive first impression gets more attention, views, and it is a competitive advantage. If there’s an extension they have no control over that changes how their videos are displayed without their approval, their videos could perform worse for that pool of users (which i think will be a small niche, but who knows).
Creative control. I am a creator, and seing my channel changed to random screenshot thumbails the first time i used DeArrow was kinda painful, even if i am small enough to vote my own titles and thumbnails for them to stay like that.
I’m totally in favor of it, same as Sponsorblock, imo you should be in control of what enters your computer and its totally fair. Ads are annoying and many titles and thumbnails can be both misleading and annoying.
you can mislead and manipulate without lying, like hiding relevant information or omitting the topic of the video altogether, which i see many times in LTT and many other channels
there are also ways to do clickbait with truth and without misleading and manipulating. which MrBeast, the clickbaitiest channel of all, is a surprising example of, for the most part
Imagine if the devs integrate ChatGPT & Midjourney into this.
ChatGPT reads the entire script of the video, then creates it’s own accurate title to display. It then asks Midjourney to create a thumbnail to match the video.
All this would occur automatically without needing community submissions. At most, community could vote on the different variations ChatGPT / Midjourney created to pick the best one.
