They're not trying to trick people into re-watching videos they've already seen. YouTube generally does a pretty good job of not recommending those videos anyway. They're simply testing which thumbnail/title brings the most traffic. It might seem petty but it makes a huge difference.
this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2024
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Yep, YouTube even has an A/B testing tool for automating this.
I loved old YouTube, these days i hardly go so maybe I'm not getting a good perspective but it seems every thumbnail is exactly the same, some brightly colored photo of a 20-something staring off camera with a comically open mouth. Am i missing something?
Not missing anything, that's just the current style that gets the most views. It'll eventually change to something different and everyone will adopt that new style for a while.
Yeah it's really fucking cringey and dumb but it does work. Like, those exact thumbnails somehow get more clicks and views. I don't get it, I don't think I ever will, but they're doing something right with this.
Yup, Scott Cramer recently did an interesting video that touches on this on his second channel, Scott is Struggling. Pretty cool if you're into that kinda meta game of YouTube.
I'd recommend DeArrow to get rid of this. I've set it to just pull a thumbnail from the middle of the videos, and the titles are community edited to remove the massively clickbaity ones (if the channel is big enough).
It even comes in ReVanced so you can remove them on mobile too.
Just posted it too, great minds think alike!
LTT posted a video this week about the new push YouTube made to A/B test thumbnails: https://youtu.be/lHIWMmVoA44
Yeah, i think they're testing what will drive click. I noticed channel like kurzgesagt will initially post it with very clickbaity thumbnail and title, then will swap to less clickbaity one. It's annoying but i do understand why they do this. Makes me appreciate those who don't join the enshittification race.
Yeah. I appreciate that they're trying to make their back catalog intelligible and searchable.
There's nothing worse than looking at a YouTube channel that posts a tremendous number of videos, and then every single one has a thumbnail that's completely meaningless oh wow you won't believe this oh my god they did that what happens next...
https://dearrow.ajay.app/ exactly fixes that.
It was created by SponsorBlock's developer: https://ajay.app/
this is a strange addon, it wants you to pay $1 for it, but say you can use it for free, then after it's intalled it says it's not activated by default, with an activate button that once pushed, says "You are successfully registered for free access. You will be notified when free access is granted."
how exactly will it do that if I wasn't asked anywhere for my email address or any other identifying information before I installed the firefox addon?
i get this guy wants to get paid, but this is silly
edit : 11 hrs later, a firefox page just spawned by itself with the message "Congrats! You now have free access to DeArrow :)" and now checking the addon all sorts of options have seemingly unlocked and are able to be adjusted
Yes, the model is a bit confusing, but for the comfort it brings, I just paid 1 buck for it and called it a day.
That was also a way to thank them for their work on SponsorBlock
If I had to guess I'd say that their other project, Sponserblock, got a little bit more popular than they were expecting and this is just to help alleviate server costs. Most of the API endpoints don't require any auth at all (the single one that does accepts a random UUID), so any checks must be locally done (maybe system time?). The extension and server back-end are licensed under GPLv3 and AGPL respectively and are also entirely self-hostable, so the code is out there to verify if you wish
I know YouTube will rate thumbnails and tell you how the thumbnail is doing. I believe they also uploaded a feature where you can upload multiple and it will attempt to change them to see which works best. I see this a lot with Minecraft YouTubers (mostly Grian). It seems to be less trying to trick previous viewers and more so getting the highest rating in the YouTube panel. I think it is partially bs, as there are times I'll scroll past a video not wanting to watch it at the exact moment and it seems like YouTube takes that as being a bad thumbnail.
Part of me wants to say "why are you following channels that play games with you?"
But after reading the comments it seems like this may be an issue with yt as a whole.
A simplified explanation is that early traction on a video determines whether or not the algorithm will recommend it. If you miss that initial window, you will never get as many views. As such, channels have to aggressively test and change the title and thumbnail to gain the attention before that window closes. And yes, I hate it
I seem to remember one youtuber saying that there was a new option to upload two different thumbnails and let some algorithm switch between them to see which does better.
It's called A/B testing and it's incredibly common, not just on YouTube, not just on the web, but literally everywhere.
Companies will release two slightly different versions of a product in two different regions and measure which sells better before rolling out further. Or they'll trial a change in a few areas before deciding if they want to make the change permanently.
BlockTube makes it possible to hide stuff you've already seen, among other things. Presumably it works by video ID, so thumbs and titles don't matter. If channels keep reuploading the same shit... just unsub, I guess.
There's a Youtube extension for community-created thumbnails and titles that overrides this nonsense. Donation highly encouraged but I think you can get it for free.
Predatory, desperate and user hostile. It's a great way to tell me you'd like me to unsubscribe (and I do).
As far as I know, it's simple A/B testing. They come up with several titles, thumbnails, test which one draws the most attention and switch to that one. YouTube is all about attention and this is the way to be successful.
There have been tools around to do that for some time. And I think it's part of YouTube itself, nowadays. I think it's called YouTube “Test & Compare”.
Yes. I hate it. The real reason isn't necessarily to scam you into rewatching the same videos, but I'm sure they don't mind that.
Second layer of enshittification: content creators actively enshittifying their own content, to throttle a perceived weakness in the enshittification system itself - the almighty algorithm.
This has even happening for years. I think Joe Scott was the first I noticed doing this.
Is that what’s going on?? There was a Kurzgesagt video that had one thumbnail on release, and then a completely different one a day or two later. I had no idea why they changed it.
I've seen it happen. It's a bit annoying because there was a music video an indie artist made that I really liked, and the creator kept changing the name of it and I couldn't find it and thought it got deleted or something!