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DeArrow – Solving clickbait on YouTube
- hrdwdmrbl 3y agoFun! In an ideal world it would be better to use ML to recognize the faces, arrows, etc. A first pass could blur them. In a real ideal world the ML would watch the video and give it better titles and thumbnails too! Sadly we live in the real world . Maybe in 2030
- el_isma 3y agoYou could generate titles from the subtitles! Even auto-generated subtitles are pretty good nowadays, feed it to AI and get it to summarize them in one phrase?
- ajayyy 3y agoBehold, a perfect training set :) https://sponsor.ajay.app/database https://sponsor.ajay.app/database
- basch 3y agoWhatever solution needs to be at the network layer to capture android tv, Apple TV, Roku, Xbox etc. Having it be a chrome extension only fixes the problem for a computer, not everyone in a household. And realistically, it would be nice to extend way beyond YouTube, rewriting all headlines on all articles with a community sourced patch list you can scroll through and upvote the best variant of each title. And then rewrite the articles to remove repetition. Combine articles that say the same thing. I can almost imagine a web browser, that when it invests a page, uses what it can take from the page to update an internal store of that story with new information.
- kuhaku22 3y agoUnfortunately, this approach cannot solve the clickbait problem, because it is baked into the videos themselves. If someone is using clickbait for their videos, the video itself is very likely to be low quality. The rise of clickbait has led to content creators doing things like exaggerating reactions, misrepresenting things for views, putting on overexcited voices, etc. It's just the same as how the creator's previous work, SponsorBlock, can only put a bandaid on things, because ad incentives lead to creators padding out their videos to 10 minutes, causing the videos to be needlessly long and rambling. Not to mention videos where the entire content itself is an advertisement.
- kruuuder 3y ago> If someone is using clickbait for their videos, the video itself is very likely to be low quality. I disagree. There are many creators that produce content that I consider high quality that use clickbait thumbnails and titles. If they don't, they have a disadvantage because of the metrics the YouTube recommendation algorithm uses.
- gunshai 3y agoVeritasium is a good example of this.
- kruuuder 3y agoYes, they also made a video about this specifically. Other examples are Rick Beato and LTT.
- MaxMatti 3y agoWith LTT it's a 50/50 situation imho. Some videos are interesting and/or informative, some are basically just an ad for a medium-quality but expensive product. And most of the time it's not easy to judge which is which from the title and thumbnail. On floatplane it's mostly possible, but still not as easy as I'd like and there's still the odd video that is presented as being an honest opinion but in the end is just ads again. And the way he addresses this when being asked about it on his streams is just adding insult to injury. It's kind of sad that such a good source of news and general information in that field is being diluted with so much (more or less blatantly) sponsored content.
- ajayyy 3y agoHere is a reply I made in the past to a similar complaint > It's not just the Linus Tech Tips or the Mr Beasts of the world doing algorithm optimized titles and thumbnails now. Even really great channels like Tom Scott, CGP Grey, and Kurzgesagt are falling for the trap now. > And I don't blame them! That's what's needed to survive on the platform these days. It's a race to the bottom. > DeArrow hopes to solve this. DeArrow puts everyone on a level playing field. There is no race to the bottom since no one is allowed to be algorithmically optimized. It pauses the race, and let's the true best videos rise to the top. While a niche extension of course can't remove all bad incentives, it still brings out the videos that actually are good themselves, ignoring the branding they were put in.
- charcircuit 3y agoGood marketing is not inherently clickbait. YouTube already solved clickbait in how videos are punished for getting bad watch time.
- joemi 3y agoI agree with your first sentence, but I don't think I agree with your second sentence (namely "solved").
- charcircuit 3y agoMore specifically they solved the "bad" form of click bait where people click on a video and it turns out to be something they did not want despite the thumbnail and title being attractive.
- high_pathetic 3y agoI've been using this https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/clickbait-remover-for-you/omoinegiohhgbikclijaniebjpkeopip https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/clickbait-remover-... extension for quite some time. Works wonderfully.
- grey_earthling 3y agoI also use this (but for Firefox) and I always forget quite how obnoxious the “real” thumbnails are until I see YouTube on another device — it's the same disorientation as seeing a browser without an ad-blocker, or an OEM Android or Windows. So I guess I'm also in the “why and how do other people put up with so much crap” camp :)
- mry2048 3y ago[dead]
- nfriedly 3y agoThis is awesome! I expect there will be a ReVanced patch shortly.
- simlevesque 3y agoI really appreciate your work ! How can I donate ?
- ajayyy 3y agohttps://dearrow.ajay.app/donate/ https://dearrow.ajay.app/donate/ :)
- simlevesque 3y agoDone ! I can't give much right now but you've saved me so much time.
- joemi 3y agoIt's kind of odd to me that the two examples shown on the page are from creators who aren't really all that clickbaity, CGP Grey and Tom Scott. Their videos typically _are_ what the title says, maybe with a slight bit of poetic license, and their thumbnails are eye catching but relevant and not too egregious.
- ajayyy 3y agoThis was a purposeful choice to demonstrate the extent of the clickbait/sensationalism problem. Both channels have only changed their thumbnail and title style in the last few months, and previously had great titles and thumbnails. Edit: To clarify, when I say "clickbait" here, I am using it as a neutral term referring to any materials used to convince someone to click on a link. I understand that it is kind of a loaded term and it is not used anywhere in the extension itself because of this. The title of this post seems to be taken from the satire title on my YouTube video demo. If you install the plugin and view the video from there, there is a better title. It was meant as a demo of the extension.
- joemi 3y agoI guess I haven't noticed any difference, and what I see on their channels today isn't what I consider clickbait. IMO it's at least a step or two from clickbait.
- suddenclarity 3y agoLooking at Tom Scott now I don't really see it. Most of the thumbnails seems to be him next to the object, an arrow highlighting it and a short fact about it. On the contrary, seeing the submarine in the thumbnail with this plugin kinda spoil the ending of his video.
- progbits 3y agoHe's retroactively changed thumbnails to match this new style. Edit: this video shows the old and new styles: https://youtu.be/CcyTzhrN6bM https://youtu.be/CcyTzhrN6bM
- globular-toast 3y agoThis starting to annoy me too. It's not just shitty channels. Even good channels are doing it because the analytics tells them to. General patterns: - "I <verb>ed the <superlative> thing in <place>" - <thing> vs <other thing> - Boobs/cleavage in thumbnail - Stupid face in thumbnail - Large amounts of money and/or other numbers I'm going to try the plugin.
- mvdtnz 3y ago- You've been doing [obvious simple thing] wrong! - NEVER do this (thumbnail of doing something clearly correctly) - 12 things you NEED to know before you [buy/do something trivial]
- atum47 3y agoI spend most of my time on youtube asking it to "not recommend this channel". But even youtube is decreasing in quality theses days, regarding recommendations. God forbid if I search for something, the next day 30% of my recommendations is about that topic.
- mostlysimilar 3y agoSame thing if you click a YouTube link from a friend. I only open them in private windows now because otherwise it wrecks my recommendations, even if I tell YouTube to forget I watched it or to not recommend it etc.
- progbits 3y agoRemoving it from watch history will have effect on recommendations, but not immediately. But yeah for a random "guilty pleasure" garbage video I use incognito too, it's just faster.
- zimpenfish 3y agoI added a whole bunch of stuff to Watch Later last week because, obvs., I wanted to watch them later. Since then, those exact same videos have been front and centre every day in the "FOR YOU" list. I mean, well done, I guess, for thinking I might want to watch videos I've specifically indicated I want to watch?
- Tildey 3y agoThis infuriates me. I know the video exists, that’s why it’s on my watch later. It’s like adding an item to your cart, and then having an ad for it at the top of every search result. Another thing I hate is if you watch a video from a playlist (or the “podcasts” tab on a channel), and go into your watch history to continue the video, you can’t. It just shows a link to the entire playlist
- comex 3y agoI on the other hand wish it would do that more often. When I open YouTube I’m always distracted by the recommendations on the initial screen, and then I never get around to the Watch Later list. So it’s nice when Watch Later videos show up on the initial screen. I wish I could tell it to consistently show me one or two Watch Later videos on the initial screen rather than doing so seemingly at random.
- qwertox 3y agoI'd like an extension which filters out all those Short-videos. No way to pause, no way to scroll, they are horrible.
- ajayyy 3y agohttps://github.com/mchangrh/yt-neuter/blob/main/filters/noshorts.txt https://github.com/mchangrh/yt-neuter/blob/main/filters/nosh... or if you still want to see them, but with the normal player: https://uscript.mchang.xyz/yt/yt-shorts-redirect.user.js https://uscript.mchang.xyz/yt/yt-shorts-redirect.user.js
- satvikpendem 3y agoA combination of Enhancer for YouTube and PocketTube allows you to do this, you can auto convert shorts to normal videos you can scroll through with the former, and with the latter, you can filter out shorts in your subscriptions.
- unforgivenpasta 3y agoThese are the uBlock Origin filters i use for blocking shorts ! YT Homepage - Hide the Shorts section youtube.com##[is-shorts] ! YT Menu - Hide the Shorts button www.youtube.com###guide [title="Shorts"], .ytd-mini-guide-entry-renderer[title="Shorts"] ! YT Search - Hide Shorts www.youtube.com##ytd-search ytd-video-renderer [overlay-style="SHORTS"]:upward(ytd-video-renderer) ! YT Search and Channels - Hide the Shorts sections www.youtube.com##ytd-reel-shelf-renderer ! YT Channels - Hide the Shorts tab www.youtube.com##ytd-browse[page-subtype="channels"] [role="tab"]:nth-of-type(3):has-text(Shorts) ! YT Subscriptions - Hide Shorts - Grid View www.youtube.com##ytd-browse[page-subtype="subscriptions"] ytd-grid-video-renderer [overlay-style="SHORTS"]:upward(ytd-grid-video-renderer) ! YT Subscriptions - Hide Shorts - List View www.youtube.com##ytd-browse[page-subtype="subscriptions"] ytd-video-renderer [overlay-style="SHORTS"]:upward(ytd-item-section-renderer) ! YT Sidebar - Hide Shorts www.youtube.com###related ytd-compact-video-renderer [overlay-style="SHORTS"]:upward(ytd-compact-video-renderer) I think these were on the uBlockOrigin subreddit, couldn't find the post
- me_bx 3y ago
- Zetice 3y agoArtifact (a news platform mobile app) tackles this problem with AI regenerating the article's title if you ask it to (and reporting the ask back to its servers to save others).
- CodeCompost 3y agoDidn't work for me.
- godelski 3y ago> It's no one's fault. It's a system that creates a race to the bottom. This is another way to say that it is a market of attention with individual actors acting (nearly) independently but with similar convergence. In a way, that makes it everyone that is a "buyer's" fault. Which unfortunately means this will not appeal to most people (doesn't mean it isn't useful). But we've converged to selecting click bait videos over non-clickbait. Cliques are a weird thing. People have them memorized and will roll their eyes at you if you repeat them, but this is the epitome of "judging a book by its cover." Repeat it all you want, but there has to be a hook. And anyone properly marketing their work intentionally wants you to judge the work by the cover. As a bigger issue, I think YouTube fails for "explorers" and concentrates too much on "exploiters." Referring to exploration vs exploitation strategies. ML models will typically do this. Especially because most people are "exploiters."
- halfjoking 3y agoCan it undo fake Anime eyes? https://i.ytimg.com/vi/nzlSBBVpbS4/maxresdefault.jpg https://i.ytimg.com/vi/nzlSBBVpbS4/maxresdefault.jpg I actually like 'Pitch Meeting' videos - but their thumbnails are the worst.
- charcircuit 3y agoThose eyes are not anime eyes. I can't think of one character who has circle eyeballs with circle iris and no pupil.
- balaji1 3y agoDoes anyone like seeing a video (usually clickbaity title and thumbnail) but with super low view count? I only want to see if such a video is coming from a channel I explicitly subscribe to (friends usually).
- hollerith 3y agoI would use (and contribute to) a system like this for HN headlines (where of course thumbnails would not be needed).
- michaelkrem 3y agoThis sounds like something you could use LLMs for as LLMs are quite good at removing bias in content. You might run into context length issues feeding the whole transcript in though .
- langsoul-com 3y agoI think that would be insanely expensive. Perhaps could be possible for a few channels though. Unless there was something like sampling, similar to how shazam recognising music from a few seconds works. Could someone only get a portion of the content and, semi accurately generate a summary?
- t0bia_s 3y agoWould by nice to implement it into Freetube or Newpipe since I watch YT exclusively here.
- 2-718-281-828 3y agoi second that!
- 2-718-281-828 3y agoi mostly access yt via freetube but if i don't then clickbait remover for youtube protects me from a visual barrage of atrocious open mouth pictures ... i just couldn't put up with it anymore. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clickbait-remover-for-youtube/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clickbait-rem...
- Andrew_nenakhov 3y agoIf only YouTube had some social mechanics like dislikes, where you can mark a video as 'bad' so users would see that far more people disliked this video than liked, so it is likely not very good and you shouldn't waste your time. ...
- eimrine 3y agoYou can mark a video as bad if you are a rightholder or a censour from enough powerful state. So, users would not see the bad video any more.
- midoridensha 3y agoYouTube already has dislikes. You just need to use a better front-end so you can see them.
- yladiz 3y agoNot exactly. It did exist, and creators can see the actual count, but otherwise the dislike count isn’t sent by the API anymore. What’s actually going on is those browser plugins are recording the number of dislikes themselves and inferring the number.
- Technotroll 3y agoSounds like a good use case for a Kalman filter.
- Karellen 3y agoWhat if the content is good, but the titles and thumbnails are just annoying? ...and not because the creators want to make clickbait titles and OTT thumbnails, but because that's what everyone else clicks on, and is therefore what The Algorithm boosts, so that's what they all need to chase.
- mock-possum 3y agoReport those posts for misleading title / thumbnail
- eimrine 3y agoI do not think I gonna use it since all I watch is an 1+ hour long videos kind of "speaking heads". There are no problems of clickbait titles if you can overcome an urge to click on clickbait and chose to pick a quality content only at least for the sake of good recommendations afterhand. But I feel the problem of arrows and I will recommend the extention to my friends with bad cases of youtube addiction.
- theage 3y agoThis just rewards bad behavior with my consideration which will only beget more of the same kind of trickery elsewhere in the videos. Personally I BlockTube anyone I see using a soyface/arrow because it is indicative of what kind of uncritical audience they want. I can easily wait a year and get a summary of all those videos in 1 minute total from a respectable intellect. There is no FOMO.
- drivers99 3y agoHere’s an idea in the same vein. Why have thumbnails at all? Just have a reasonable description.
- chakintosh 3y agoI feel this would be better automated with a LLM rather than relying on user-generated content which can be subjective. For the thumbnails, they can be simply a snapshot of a moment in the video (most played moment where the viewership is highest) than again, a user-provided screenshot.
- funerr 3y agoMy thoughts exactly.
- ohgodplsno 3y agoDeArrow is made by the same person that made SponsorBlock. It's about the highest quality of user-uploaded content, and users mark the following: sponsors, promotions, exclusive access, subscribe callouts, video highlights, intermission, credits, recaps, jokes, as well as create custom chapters. Not only is the quality extremely high, users self-regulate: a user submission is first spread to a few random users to see if they approve of it, then more, until it spread throughout. So, bad submissions will go out the window. Are there some submissions like highlights that are just "good enough" ? Yes. Does it need to be perfect ? Absolutely not. Does it need to run through a black box of an AI model that's going to upload 5% of the time absolute crap ? Never. User submissions will always be better than an LLM (which isn't even appropriate for the context of a video.)
- Kiro 3y ago> User submissions will always be better than an LLM That statement will not age well.
- ohgodplsno 3y agoThat statement will age like beautiful, fine wine when your LLMs keep training on LLM generated data and get influenced by the very same creators putting in clickbait images, leading the LLM to believe it is the most appropriate part, etc.
- 3y ago
- DeathArrow 3y agoShould I send them a cease and desist letter for trademark infringement as this app looks a lot like my HN user name? :D
- globalreset 3y agoWhy would you be spending your personal time trying to help a big corporation do their job? Let it rot.
- hyperhopper 3y agoThis doesn't help YouTube: YouTube is doing fine and the average public doesn't care if their suggestions are all youtube faces and red arrows: they'll spend even more time on the site if that's the case. This is for the small niche of the public that wants and cares about sane upfront media.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Epskampie 3y agoYoutube already has quite an interesting clickbait detection mechanism. If the click ratio on a thumbnail is high, but the watch time low, it will be downranked as clickbait. https://www.socialvideoplaza.com/en/articles/what-is-clickbait-on-youtube https://www.socialvideoplaza.com/en/articles/what-is-clickba... This means if the thumb/title is a bit sensationalist, but the content is still good, it could stay up. This leads to the current situation where slightly annoying titles and thumbnails are used, but the really egrious stuff gets filtered.
- peterlk 3y agoYeah, ok. But I would really love it if content creators stopped putting kindergarten emotion faces on thumbnails. Replacing a doorknob will never require a level of emotion indicated by hands on cheeks eyes wide “Oh” face… So just please, please stop. I’ll even cave on shitty titles like “most people don’t know this” or “you’re doing X wrong” if it means that I can stop looking at people making stupid faces in every thumbnail
- littlecranky67 3y agoI'm already using the "Clickbait remover for youtube" which replaces the thumbnail with a randomly selected one from the video. I'll give this a try, though. Plus, I recommend using SponsorBlock extension (skips sponsors, but also has a "skip to highlight" feature) and Youtube enhancer.
- ronyfadel 3y agoCan't this be automated by having an LLM summarize the video's transcribed text into a concise, non-clickbait title?
- 0cVlTeIATBs 3y agoThis looks great; I'm only worried that this might change my habit of specifically avoiding clickbait, so I might no longer send that negative signal.
- permo-w 3y agosurely it's more important that the video itself is of good quality?
- foxbyte 3y agoYeah but don't worry too much about changing your habits, just continue to be selective and critical in your consumption. Remember that it's all about finding a balance between staying informed and maintaining your personal preferences, right?
- worldsavior 3y agoYou control your mind. You don't want clickbait? You don't need an extension. Control your own.
- ranting-moth 3y agoMost people are on autopilot most of the time.
- linster 3y agoYou’d be a highly effective addictions councillor, especially for physical dependence
- worldsavior 3y agoThe best method for stopping addictions is motivation. If you got enough motivation you can do anything. To get that motivation, you need reasons, and you have to find those reasons, and in this case, is that clickbaits waste your time. That's my method. And you probably could say "people sometimes can't see the reasons" - that's another issue, and there are different solutions to this, but it is a problem. Edit: live as you want, but I believe that the best way to you live life is to first control your life.