Very recently, Tom Scott and CGP Grey have started going through their entire backlog and changing titles and thumbnails to be more attention grabbing and vague. Channels doing things like this are a heavy inspiration for this extension.

It's not just the Linus Tech Tips or the Mr Beasts of the world doing algorithm optimized titles and thumbnails now. Even really great channels like Tom Scott, CGP Grey, and Kurzgesagt are falling for the trap now.

And I don't blame them! That's what's needed to survive on the platform these days. It's a race to the bottom.

DeArrow hopes to solve this. DeArrow puts everyone on a level playing field. There is no race to the bottom since no one is allowed to be algorithmically optimized. It pauses the race, and let's the true best videos rise to the top.

Edit: The update I talked about is now released, so this should be fixed :)

Thanks!

So, there are two ways thumbnail generation works. One is via asking the server for one, and one is via downloading part of the video locally. Right now it tries both and stops when the first one loads.

Next update, I am going to change that behavior to always only use the server one, and only try local generation if the server hasn't responded in some time.

I also noticed a bug where sometimes local generation downloads the video multiple times, which might be amplifying the issue.

So, hopefully this issue will be fixed in the next update and you can try again then! thanks!