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Ask HN: Would you pay for a clickbait-less YouTube?

7 points by mattigames ↗ HN
Would you be willing to pay $2 a month for a clickbait-less YouTube? What I mean is a mobile app that is an alternative frontend for YT but where thumbnails are taken from the actual video (the most viewed part of the videos to be precise) and the title would be generated using AI (with some exceptions, eg music videos).

I already know a chrome and extension trying to do this but it's not that good mostly because the thumbnails are random not aiming for the most exemplary, and also Im more interested in apps rather than a chrome extension.

33 comments

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smoldesu
No, the current free alternatives to the YouTube frontend are too compelling to me.
rman666
Can you give some examples?
smoldesu
NewPipe is perfect for me: https://newpipe.net/
mattigames
I'm glad its perfect for you, but NewPipe doesn't have the option to change thumbnails, and by far the most annoying thing about YT right now are clickbait thumbnails, personally without this feature I don't even consider it a option to replace the official YT app, I'm trying to reach those who thing this feature its a priority (but perhaps are not willing to pay for it)
smoldesu
NewPipe has a manual option that just disables rendering of a thumbnail altogether, which is fine for me. No AI, no latency, no nothing. Apparently Invidious has this on their web client as well, as the "thin mode" checkbox that shrinks video boxes to a title only.

I'm not trying to rain on your parade, but personally I'm fine without AI stand-ins for clickbait thumbnails. Given how bad YouTube titles and descriptions are these days, you might have a hard time even finding a clickbait-free prompt in the first place.

KomoD
No, I would not.

Revanced already does this for the android app, various browser extensions do it for web.

mattigames
I don't see this feature in their website (https://revanced.net/all-features), its like an undocumented feature?
KomoD
That is not their website. https://revanced.app/patches?pkg=com.google.android.youtube

"Alternative thumbnails"

"Adds options to replace video thumbnails with still image captures of the video."

mattigames
Thumbnails it's just half the battle, generate non-clickbait titles its the other half, I think it's feasible with a little help of AI. But yeah they have a lot of features it seems.
rrr_oh_man
Can you kill the clickbait content, too? Especially anything with reaction faces.
mattigames
Yeah, I hate those too; and yeah could be, with so many facial gestures libraries maybe we can detect anyone doing silly faces for too long (e.g more than 10 seconds)
cruano
Right click, "Don't recommend channel"

After a week of doing that you can pretty easily get rid of the trash content.

paulcole
No I wouldn’t. YouTube is fine for me as it is and I mostly use it in the iPadOS or Apple TV apps.
hindsightbias
I’d pay more than premium if I could have anonymity too. I don’t want to have to use Adguard/vpn, I’d pay.

Charge $20 month, give them $14.

Would also pay for a less touch/context sensitive experience on ipad. I can’t scroll vids or touch anywhere in safari w/o selection being activated. Maddening UX.

philomath_mn
Best way to use YouTube is to turn off watch history which (mercifully) nukes the feed on the main page. All that is left is search and subscriptions which is ideal.
wruza
How do you find search ideal? I had to stop using it few years ago and instead search videos in google (sort of ironic) and other engines. Specifically I can’t make it search for an exact topic, it just shows generic popular results intermixed with an utterly degenerate content in 1:3 ratio.

Also, I cleared my history/likes again to break from yet another echo chamber and now my feed is in this limbo of average nonsense. Any view, like or sub leads to another chamber instantly. Feels like it’s time to abandon it for good, I’m not going through that again.

bruce511
So, I confess, I'm not sure what your goal is here.

You're not filtering out the click-bait content? You're just changing the thumbnail and title? But you still want to watch the video?

Um. Ok. Now you're wondering if this is valuable enough that others would pay for it?

For me personally, no. I tend to follow specific creators on YouTube, and their title & thumbnail don't matter to me.

I also watch a bunch of random content but a clickbaity yitle and thumbnail are useful signals in selecting what (not) to watch.

But good luck - there must be others out there who feel as you do. If you can find a few thousand of them, and they care enough to throw money at this problem, then you might have a nice little business.

mattigames
A lot just use clickbait titles because financially it makes a lot of sense, a few have even show the numbers from their videos and clickbaity thumbnails/titles always bring more views, so yeah its not a useful signal of quality because we live in a capitalist society and its in their best interest to make money regardless of the quality of their content; another commenter just told me about dearrow (https://dearrow.ajay.app/), a chrome extenstion that crowdsources better titles, that seems even like more effort than I was thinking, as my idea is to use AI, so there is defintely some interest in the feature, but perhaps dearrow already fills that need.
joshxyz
lol that sounds dehumanized and dystopian to me, but i dont have better ideas!!
joshxyz
e.g. can we start with mr beast videos, how do you declickbait the video titles? what are examples oc the outputs?
EspressoGPT
No. All these content creators, regardless if it is an online magazine or YouTubers, should forgo the clickbait by default...
mattigames
That's not gonna happen any time soon, clickbait content generates more clicks, i remember watching a video of someone lamenting that they had to resort to clickbait but he showed that clickbait thumbnails and titles always performed better, maybe next generations will be more resilient to it but I wouldn't hold my breath, so in the meantime if someone craves for a solution they need a different frontend for youtube.
cruano
I feel like you have to start dropping names here. Which creator does actually produce quality content AND uses clickbait thumbnails/titles ?

And don't you dare saying "Linus Tech Tips"

wruza
Is e.g. GothamChess quality content and/or clickbait by your standard? Ana Cramling?

Just from the top of my head.

carlosjobim
You know who might pay? People who already pay for YouTube Premium. So your tool needs to work for logged in users. I see all these YouTube tools that don't work while logged in, which is a shame.

Also, do not go charge less than $5 per month for any service. You don't want to deal with users that are cheaper than that, they are not worth the trouble.

red-iron-pine
isn't that the point of paying for it in the first place? to get an algo that doesn't suck and no interruptions?

plus content creators losing the ability to choose their own thumbnail feels unfair. it's like telling magazines they can't design their own cover, and will pull a random page (which could just as easily be an ad) to be the cover. I'm not sure how that would make it any better.

runjake
No, there's already free options[1] and since you'd be charging I figure Google wouldn't like that and would shut you down anyway.

1. Yet I pay for Premium for family, because it's less hassle.

wruza
Do you think it’s possible for a company to do it on a large enough scale to become useful? I think that this idea is only feasible via crowdsourcing like sponsorblock and dearrow.
v1l
I’m sorry to say but you’re trying to solve an imaginary problem.
rapfaria
Fight the eco-system for $2, with AI generated images, and filtering is more or less still done by myself?

No.