7 ms·

Unfortunately, this approach cannot solve the clickbait problem, because it is baked into the videos themselves. If someone is using clickbait for their videos,

Unfortunately, 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 ago
  Veritasium is a good example of this.
  - kruuuder 3y ago
    Yes, they also made a video about this specifically. Other examples are Rick Beato and LTT.
    - MaxMatti 3y ago
      With 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 ago
Here 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.
satvikpendem 3y ago
> the video itself is very likely to be low quality This is incorrect, lots of educational channels use clickbait because otherwise they simply won't be as successful and would not be able to sustain themselves. Veritasium does a video on exactly this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2xHZPH5Sng https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2xHZPH5Sng
- jxramos 3y ago
  3:01 they had to decrease the importance of subscribers That explains a lot of the experience recently, I was thinking about my old subscriptions and why they haven't made a poke in a while. I wonder can I make my browser redirect youtube.com to actually open https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions ?
  - jxramos 3y ago
    found a SO post on the subject here https://superuser.com/questions/351771/can-i-get-my-browser-to-automatically-redirect-on-some-pages https://superuser.com/questions/351771/can-i-get-my-browser-..., apparently firefox has an extension to support this workflow. Looks like a straightforward browser extension implementation too for a content script to inject this meta tag for select urls https://www.w3docs.com/snippets/html/how-to-redirect-a-web-page-in-html.html#how-to-redirect-to-another-url-2 https://www.w3docs.com/snippets/html/how-to-redirect-a-web-p...
  - spdif899 3y ago
    I use this extension to automatically redirect to subscriptions, on top of a host of other tweaks that clean up the site and make it more consistent. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/enhancer-for-youtube/ponfpcnoihfmfllpaingbgckeeldkhle https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/enhancer-for-youtu...
  - plewd 3y ago
    It's a really annoying direction for Youtube to have gone in. What they _don't_ want you to do is just watch a few channels that you subscribe to and leave the website, so they force all this other stuff you didn't ask for in hopes that you stay (which works, hence why they keep doing it).

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 ago
Veritasium is a good example of this.
- kruuuder 3y ago
  Yes, they also made a video about this specifically. Other examples are Rick Beato and LTT.
  - MaxMatti 3y ago
    With 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 ago

Here 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.

satvikpendem 3y ago

> the video itself is very likely to be low quality This is incorrect, lots of educational channels use clickbait because otherwise they simply won't be as successful and would not be able to sustain themselves. Veritasium does a video on exactly this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2xHZPH5Sng https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2xHZPH5Sng

jxramos 3y ago
3:01 they had to decrease the importance of subscribers That explains a lot of the experience recently, I was thinking about my old subscriptions and why they haven't made a poke in a while. I wonder can I make my browser redirect youtube.com to actually open https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions ?
- jxramos 3y ago
  found a SO post on the subject here https://superuser.com/questions/351771/can-i-get-my-browser-to-automatically-redirect-on-some-pages https://superuser.com/questions/351771/can-i-get-my-browser-..., apparently firefox has an extension to support this workflow. Looks like a straightforward browser extension implementation too for a content script to inject this meta tag for select urls https://www.w3docs.com/snippets/html/how-to-redirect-a-web-page-in-html.html#how-to-redirect-to-another-url-2 https://www.w3docs.com/snippets/html/how-to-redirect-a-web-p...
- spdif899 3y ago
  I use this extension to automatically redirect to subscriptions, on top of a host of other tweaks that clean up the site and make it more consistent. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/enhancer-for-youtube/ponfpcnoihfmfllpaingbgckeeldkhle https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/enhancer-for-youtu...
- plewd 3y ago
  It's a really annoying direction for Youtube to have gone in. What they _don't_ want you to do is just watch a few channels that you subscribe to and leave the website, so they force all this other stuff you didn't ask for in hopes that you stay (which works, hence why they keep doing it).