May 11, 2024

Deshittification, what?

It’s a word I made up, but it comes from the more established term “enshittification.” But what is “enshittification” anyway? Well, who better to tell us than the person who coined the word,
Cory Efram Doctorow

Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a "two sided market", where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.

When a platform starts, it needs users, so it makes itself valuable to users. Think of Amazon: For many years, it operated at a loss, using its access to the capital markets to subsidize everything you bought. It sold goods below cost and shipped them below cost. It operated a clean and useful search. If you searched for a product, Amazon tried its damndest to put it at the top of the search results.
Source: The ‘Enshittification’ of TikTok by Cory Doctorow on Wired

So what is Deshittification again?

It’s the opposite of “enshittification.” In our context, it means taking a service or product and using various methods to make it better for your personal use. It’s a bit vague, but that’s the spirit of it.

We’ll explore these extensions and why they’re necessary to improve your experience.


Why bother? 🤔

You might be asking yourself: Why bother? Why do any of this? Why not just use YouTube as is, or maybe with just an ad blocker because the ads are so annoying?

I think this is a valid question, and my answer is: because you can do better! Yes, you really can! You might think it’s fine or not a big deal, but that’s exactly how people stagnate and get used to the way things are. In the short term, “it doesn’t matter,” but you’re only doing a disservice to your future self.

Do you really enjoy the current state of YouTube? Don’t you think it could be better?

If you agree that YouTube could be better, I invite you to read on. I’ll show you how to improve your experience, even if just by a little. Small changes add up. Even if you only leave with one new extension, that’s still a win.


uBlock Origin

I don’t have much to say about uBlock Origin beyond this: just get it. You already know what an ad blocker is and how important they are. uBlock Origin is simply the best one out there.

Unfortunately, an ad blocker isn’t enough. While YouTube’s ads are annoying, they are easy to block. The real problem lies within the videos themselves. If you’ve spent any time on YouTube, especially without being logged in or having an established feed1, you’ll be bombarded with “slop” content2, annoying thumbnails using dark patterns3, and clickbait titles.

Download

Firefox | Chrome Store


SponsorBlock

Even with an adblocker, you’re still forced to watch in-video advertisements, subscription reminders, and other unwanted segments. SponsorBlock is a crowdsourced solution to this problem.

It works because a community of users submits the start and end times of sponsored segments. Once a segment is submitted, anyone else using the extension will automatically skip it, saving them time and letting them enjoy content without interruption. These skips might only be a few seconds or a few minutes each, but they add up, returning valuable time to your day.

With SponsorBlock, you can sit back and enjoy videos without having to manually scrub past sponsors or other annoying segments like self-promotion or drawn-out end-cards.

Download

Firefox | Chrome Store


DeArrow

Made by the same developer as SponsorBlock, DeArrow is another crowdsourced extension that targets a different problem: clickbait. Many channels now use dark patterns3 - like exaggerated faces, misleading text, and bright arrows - to get you to click, regardless of the video’s actual quality.

DeArrow restores sanity to your feed by replacing these clickbait titles and thumbnails with useful, community-submitted alternatives. Users can submit a better, non-clickbait title and select a specific frame from the video to use as a new thumbnail. This lets you judge a video on its potential content, not on a creator’s ability to manipulate you.

Download

Firefox | Chrome Store


Return YouTube Dislike

Why use this?

As a viewer, you deserve to know a video’s dislike count, or at least a good estimate. The dislike count is a great indicator of public opinion and helps you quickly spot controversial videos, scams, or low-quality tutorials before you waste your time.

Without this extension, you are left to guess a video’s reception based on comments, which can be easily manipulated. A creator can delete negative feedback and pin positive comments, creating a false sense of consensus. The dislike count provides a crucial, at-a-glance metric for community sentiment.

So, why did this happen?

On November 10, 2021, YouTube removed public dislike counts from the platform. YouTube claimed the change was to combat “hate mobs,” but this reasoning is weak, as such groups can still coordinate dislikes.

The prevailing theory is that YouTube really made this change for its advertisers. Corporate ads often received massive numbers of dislikes for being genuinely bad. To protect its corporate partners from public backlash without them having to admit a poor reception, YouTube simply removed the feature for everyone.

This is the tweet the YouTube team posted at the time as their excuse.

YouTube has since made the announcement video in that tweet private, which alone suggests the change was forced on users and that YouTube knew it was unpopular.

You can see the unprivated video here: https://web.archive.org/web/20231211025033/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxOuG8jMIgI

Return YouTube Dislike brings this essential functionality back. It uses data from its users to create a highly accurate estimate of the dislike count, restoring a vital tool for navigating the platform.


Final Thoughts

Well, that’s it! Those are the extensions that I use to deshittify YouTube. They’re free, they’re open source, and they were made with ❤️ by passionate people.

If you have other suggestions for extensions that make YouTube better by cutting out more crap, feel free to check out my About Me page and contact me!

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Article Glossary and Sources

  1. Feed refers to the recommended YouTube videos on your homepage, whether logged in or not, which are entirely influenced by who you watch, subscribe to, or like based on an internal algorithm YouTube uses. ↩︎

  2. Slop has many meanings, but in this context, it means mass-produced content (usually low-quality and/or low-effort) that has very little value added. It usually follows an established “formula,” made to appeal to either the masses or the algorithm. ↩︎

  3. Dark Patterns - Here, the definition is a bit different. Essentially, video thumbnails or titles that exploit common cognitive biases. Most often seen with exaggerated gaping, surprised, shocked, or angry faces in YouTube thumbnails, sometimes with saturated colors, arrows, or other effects designed to trick you into clicking. ↩︎ ↩︎