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.
The way some of the titles are changed is quite funny to me. It’s like if you saw a big scary looking ghost on Halloween and then you rip the sheet off and it’s just Huey, Dewey and Louie stacked on top of each other.
I Bought Ten of the WEIRDEST Phones EVER
to
Reviewing Old Phones with Alternative Form Factors
One of the best addons you can get. Period.
It’s like a paradigm shift when you browse YouTube after enabling it.
This plus using ublock to remove useless UI elements makes for a prime disenshittified YouTube experience.
- uBlock Origin
- DeArrow
- Sponsorblock
- Return YouTube Dislike
Or for everything built-in: Piped
I used this within smart tube for a while, but honestly I kind of missed some of the clockbait titles. There problem I faced was that it wasn’t clear when a title had been replaced or not, so when you did find a video with a relatively clockbait titles, it gave you a bit of a false sense of security. I also found that sometimes the crowd sourced titles were just boring, albeit accurate.
Maybe I’m just weird or maybe I’ve just been browsing YouTube for so long that I’m used to it, but for now it’s an addon I’ll skip, though I’m very glad it exists.
I turn it off and on to see which changed. An indicator would be nice. Maybe an icon that I can hover over to reveal the original thumbnail and title.
I get where you are coming from. If I follow a channel then I already get a feel of what the content will be even if the title or/thumbnail is clickbait. Also you lose part of the channel’s charm. Exaggerations can be really funny.
It works a lot better for the trending section for unknown channels.
The icon and hover to reveal previous title has been available in the extension for a long while.
I’ve been using this for a while now and the only thing I’ll say is that a lot of videos don’t have alternative titles, so since it’s all crowd sourced I feel that the best solution is to have more people using it.
Brilliant idea regardless.
