DeArrow - A Browser Extension for Better Titles and Thumbnails
dearrow.ajay.app
DeArrow is a browser extension for replacing titles and thumbnails on YouTube with community created accurate versions. No more clickbait.

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.

  • deathmetal27@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    2 months ago

    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.

    • Lucy :3@feddit.orgEnglish
      2·
      2 months ago
      • uBlock Origin
      • DeArrow
      • Sponsorblock
      • Return YouTube Dislike

      Or for everything built-in: Piped

    • zkfcfbzr@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      Using uBlock Origin to get rid of the Youtube Shorts section of the sub feed was amazing for me. Are there other things you block too?

      • deathmetal27@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        Here’s a non exhaustive list of things I’ve blocked:

        • The pill strip on top with a list of video topics (don’t know what the official term is.)
        • YouTube shorts suggestions.
        • Ads that are injected into the suggestions.
        • “Shorts remixing this video” section in the video descriptions.

        I’ll perhaps share my ublock filter list for YouTube later.

        Edit: My uBlock Origin filters:

        www.youtube.com##.ytd-rich-item-renderer.style-scope > .ytd-feed-nudge-renderer.style-scope
www.youtube.com###voice-search-button
www.youtube.com##ytd-rich-section-renderer.ytd-rich-grid-renderer.style-scope > .ytd-rich-section-renderer.style-scope
www.youtube.com##yt-related-chip-cloud-renderer.ytd-watch-next-secondary-results-renderer.style-scope
www.youtube.com##.ytd-ad-slot-renderer.style-scope
www.youtube.com##ytd-reel-shelf-renderer.ytd-item-section-renderer.style-scope:nth-of-type(1)
www.youtube.com##ytd-reel-shelf-renderer.ytd-item-section-renderer.style-scope:nth-of-type(2)
www.youtube.com##ytd-reel-shelf-renderer.ytd-structured-description-content-renderer.style-scope
        • Feathercrown@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          2 months ago

          The pill strip on top with a list of video topics

          There’s one reason not to block this: all the way on the right of that list is a “new to you” feed button, which is pretty neat to try sometimes.

          • deathmetal27@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            2 months ago

            Could you share the URL of that link? IMO, there should be a better way of presenting that than on the pill bar on the top.

            • Feathercrown@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1·
              2 months ago

              Unfortunately there’s no URL to go with that feature, it must be JS-activated. Same goes for the Recently Uploaded and Watched tabs which are new in that same vein.

  • Ilandar@aussie.zoneEnglish
    2·
    2 months ago

    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

    • MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      1·
      2 months ago

      Yeah the title change I don’t get in cases like that.

      I Bought Ten of the WEIRDEST Phones EVER

      Is a lot more descriptive of what the video is.

    • pyre@lemmy.worldEnglish
      12·
      2 months ago

      i dont think that’s a helpful change though. it’s supposed to remove clickbait, not translate to an alien language. alternative form factors? is this written by the Borg? you can call things weird, that’s not clickbait if it’s accurate.

  • Kushan@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    2 months ago

    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.

    • Frog@lemmy.caEnglish
      1·
      2 months ago

      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.

      • rowdyrockets@lemm.eeEnglish
        1·
        2 months ago

        The icon and hover to reveal previous title has been available in the extension for a long while.

  • Excrubulent@slrpnk.netEnglish
    1·
    2 months ago

    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.

    • __matthew__@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      I respectfully disagree. Any high quality creator is tangibly penalized by YouTube’s recommendation algorithm for not optimizing their titles and thumbnails. A rare few choose to take this penalty but I don’t blame the many quality creators who choose to take part in the game that YouTube has made for everyone.

      Yes, the alternate titles may not be perfect, but I’d take any random person’s attempt at a title over the hyper optimized ones any day because I’d rather make an informed decision to watch something even if there is some degree of inaccuracy than to make a completely uninformed decision based on what an algorithm predicted would most likely get me to click and get hooked on a video irregardless of my own will and whether I am satisfied at the end of watching it.

      • Excrubulent@slrpnk.netEnglish
        1·
        2 months ago

        There are people that do it tastefully and people that are creative and interesting. If they can’t be interesting and descriptive to some extent then they’re probably not people I want to engage with.

        And honestly, the titles were so bland they were almost snarky, and I never felt they were justified for the creators I watch. They were so laconic they were often barely informative anyway, because the flavour was gone. I think that’s because the people who have a good sense for editorialising aren’t going around writing aggressively literal titles all the time. The dearrow ecosystem is subject to algorithmic selection too, and it selects for boring.

        • __matthew__@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          2 months ago

          Fair. I guess in my case I’m actually looking for boring titles because I see reducing my engagement as a whole to the platform a good thing even if it means I don’t watch some genuinely interesting / informative content. Basically I am less likely to fall into a rabbit hole of watching “just one more video” by some creator I enjoy when I should be doing something else.

  • guy_threepwood@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    2 months ago

    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.

  • Blackmist@feddit.ukEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    When you browse Netflix, they use different thumbnails for the movies depending on the profile they’ve made for you. Even if it’s as blatant as “white person from the movie”/“black person from the movie”. If you ignore a movie for long enough, sometimes they even swap it out for a different image to trick you into watching it.

    I’m amazed that YouTube doesn’t try and do this somehow. Instead, every video somehow has the same stupid thumbnails of arrows, meaningless text and gormless faces, and I hate it.

    But then I block all ads anyway, so it may be that they’re actively trying to make me go away.

      • Omniraptor@lemm.eeEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        To be fair it’s not a mysterious “they”, it’s just an option available for channel owners to set alternative thumbnails and then check which does better. I don’t think YouTube does this by itself if the uploader doesn’t enable it