DeArrow: Crowdsourcing better titles and thumbnails on YouTube | Hacker News Reader

DeArrow: Crowdsourcing better titles and thumbnails on YouTube

github.com

95 pointstech234a34 comments

This is from the same person who made SponsorBlock[0] for YouTube, which strips in-video advertising and sponsored segments.

[0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/sponsorblock/

Speaking of SponsorBlock? Does it affect the YouTuber revenue stream. Sponsors are not YouTube and not the owner of the video. They probably don't know the audience of the sponsored segment. It may affect the number of clicks on affiliate links, but I guess SponsorBlock users don't click much anyways.

It affects watch time depending on how long the blocked sections last, which should affect money received by ads.

I would say skips rather than strips.

If you use something like yt-dlp that supports it then sponsorblock also strips it from the resulting files.

This is super cool, but there's enough YouTube enhancer extensions now that I'm starting to wish someone would build a standalone browser-wrapper YouTube client that has them all baked in to help keep extension load in my main browser down.

yeah or maybe just combine the extensions into one. Like I love the Return YouTube Dislike and it would be great if these two were merged together. Is it rare for open-source extensions like these to merge?

They exist, check Tartube

https://github.com/axcore/tartube

Looks like youtube users are fighting hard to improve experience of the site and keep using it while youtube itself is working hard to make it impossible to use.

Interesting dynamics. I wander where it would lead.

Can confirm. My youtube experience became infinitely better after I installed unhooked and shorts blocker extensions

And what about video recommendations? my youtube just dumbing down the choice and pushes me to see the same things. It just literally blocking the ability to see something else by reducing categories to choose from. The feeling is that you should fight to see something new outside the bubble and chances to win this fight are minimal. YT just feed you the same shit and insist on it. How idiotic is that.

I just open the first page . Scroll it to the end and there is nothing interesting to see but you can’t scroll more. I think that is the essence of their ‘great’ optimisation.

This is the abusive relationship that is all major web services. They succeed at the expense of their users. See “enshittification” for more.

Excellent idea, but I'm conflicted about using it. I see the sensationalism as additional information about a video, and I do use it when choosing to avoid one, or even to ban the whole channel from the suggestions.

This looks like a brilliant idea. Unfortunately, many websites that started out as social-networks have turned into places of “creators” seeking attention to make money on ads. Because of a bad incentive structure. It seems Twitter is now heading this direction as well. This extension might help to bring a bit of sanity back to the web. I also enjoy using the SponsorBlock extension made by the same guy.

Has there been any research in the area of psychology exploring why these "clickbaity" thumbnails actually result in increased revenue/higher click-through rates?

I find them (and the often incredibly exaggerated fake-emotional faces) pretty off-putting, personally.

I don't know of any real research but I've heard YouTubers say that they don't like sponging it but there's a notable change in views with them. They have pretty good view and watch time analytics from what I can tell.

I can recommend the Clickbait Remover add-on: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clickbait-rem...

It just replaces the thumbnails and works quite well without the crowdasourcing effort.

The description and screenshots in the extension page are more useful to figure out the details and should probably also be in the readme: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/dearrow/

Now that LLMs can summarise videos (I'm guessing it's probably using the srt files) wouldn't it be easier to generate the default better title using that as well

humans > AI

for now

It could generate a thumbnail, title, and description!

Instead of crowdsourcing you can download captions for the video and send it to chatgpt to make a title for you.

I wish I had this, and something to hide all shorts, on my roku.

Does Roku run an Android based OS?

I use SmartTube on my FireTV and honestly wouldn’t watch YouTube without it. Built in Adblock, Sponsor block, video speed control, hiding shorts, etc

On my iPhone I use uYou+ for the same reason. Honestly it’s so stupid because I would happily pay Google the $10/month if they got rid of those stupid shorts. The regular ads are the least annoying part of YouTube.

ruku is it's own thing not android

These days I guess a google tv chromecast would be a good enough replacement for roku except I happen to use the headphone jack in the remote allllll the time, and nothing else has that that I know of.

Could we get a bit of a run down of what this actually is?

The readme is super vague and only describes install instructions..

From the Firefox addon store: > DeArrow is a browser extension for YouTube for reducing sensationalism, misleading titles and aggressive thumbnails. DeArrow works by formatting all titles, and replacing thumbnails with screenshots at specific timestamps.

> No more dealing with clickbait, arrows, or annoying faces.

> Users can submit better titles and thumbnails for each video and vote on them.

> replacing thumbnails with screenshots at specific timestamps

so in other words bringing YouTube back to the better. I think there was a point in time in the past where creators were not able to upload custom thumbnails and instead they could only use the select thumbnail from time feature or perhaps even the thumbnail was automatically chosen. I don't quite remember.

It's funny because I have actually found that making good thumbnails really is challenging. I run a PeerTube instance of my own where I host some videos and in general even though I tried to put some effort into making useful thumbnails by hand I think my handmade thumbnails are not very good and it's better to just use some frame from the video itself as thumbnail.

I remember at one point it used the thumbnail that was at exactly 50% of the video. So some creators would cut their videos to intentionally select a specific frame.

Thanks. I probably should have dug a bit more into it.

I don't think I would have clicked on a video titled "Testing Bulding Techniques by Simulating an Earthquake Using a Shake Table", but I did click the original "Shake tables are way more complex than I thought" from Tom Scott.

If clickbaiting didn't work, people wouldn't do it.

A much needed extension, so many creators give shit titles for their videos. Sometimes they produce interesting content, but it's hard to know if the video is worth checking out without a clear explanation of what to expect from the title.

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