this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2024
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/19421887

DeArrow is an open source browser extension for crowdsourcing better titles and thumbnails on YouTube. The goal is to make titles accurate and reduce sensationalism. No more arrows, ridiculous faces, and no more clickbait.

"Clickbait" isn't the exception anymore, it's becoming the norm. Many have even started going through their entire backlog, changing old titles and thumbnails to be more attention grabbing and vague.

It's no one's fault. It's a system that creates a race to the bottom.

DeArrow hopes to stop this cycle. It's time to return to a more peaceful experience.

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[–] Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 11 points 2 months ago (8 children)

The problem I have with dearrow is that it's editorialising and arbitrary. It's not like removing ads which can be clearly identified and the user can make personal decisions, like no sponsors but self-promo is fine, or whatever.

No, there is one alternative title and one alternative thumbnail, and that's it, and often I have serious disagreements with the choices the community makes. There's a bias towards intervention, so if a title is fine according to me but someone else doesn't like it, then it gets changed. I found most of my votes were to restore the original title and thumb. Eventually I got tired of it and just uninstalled, and presumably so did other people with the same feeling, so the community continues to skew towards changing every video they encounter.

Also, the thumbnails and titles that creators choose tells me a lot about them, and I get rid of clickbait by not engaging with creators that do clickbait. Also, sometimes it's not clickbait, just people being creative. It seems like the whole thing is just an exercise in being the fun police by people that don't understand the creative process.

[–] thedirtyknapkin@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago (3 children)

yeah, I've got it set to off by default. i used it almost like a spoiler tag. click the button to see the answer to "THIS AMAZING DEVICE DOES WHAT????"

[–] Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Yeah, it's possible that wasn't an option back when I used it. I remember thinking that some sort of default off would be better. At the time I think it was either on by default and toggleable - I always toggled it - or it was just disabled and unwieldy to enable.

Edit: actually even better would be to have a short community written summary that could be more descriptive. Just like a popup or something. I don't need the title to disappear, just know if the video is worth my time.

[–] thedirtyknapkin@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

ooh yeah, a good tooltip on mouseover would be perfect.

there is quite a bit of granularity to the options these days if you haven't tried it in a bit. I was able to make it work more or less exactly how i wanted.

[–] Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 months ago

Oh cool, I might give it another look.

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