this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2023
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The creators of SponsorBlock did it again, now we can crowdsource better titles and thumbnails as well. I just tried it with LinusTechTips who is a worst offender when it comes to clickbait and its really great.

Compare without DeArrow

and with the extension

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[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I'd like to know this as well. The extension looks super interesting, but how does it determine what to replace the thumbnail and title with?

[โ€“] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

It uses user submitted titles and thumbnails if they are available. If not, it uses a random frame from the video as a thumbnail and applies some rules to the title (like no caps etc.).

For example a LTT video from yesterday:

Original title: 'Only YOU can fix GPU pricing... Here's how!'

Replaced title: 'How to find a good deal on a used GPU'

And about the thumbnails, just take a look on YouTube. In general I mean ๐Ÿ˜„

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Like the existing "Clickbait Remover" addon, I believe it just removes formatting (caps lock, exclamation marks, other symbols and emojis) of the video title and swaps the custom thumbnail with either a thumbnail of the beginning, middle or end of the video (youtube provides thumbnails for various points in videos).

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

You can see in the video linked in the extension's website. It relies on people proposing and voting for different titles and thumbnails.