May 11, 2024

TL;DR

In this article I’m going to show to you and explain to you why and which extensions to use to make your YouTube experince much better, although if you don’t care what I have to say, and you’ll like to get to the point and waste no time here are the extensions:

Table of contents

1. Deshittification, what

3. Why Bother?

2. uBblock Origin

3. SponsorBlock

4. DeArrow

5. ReturnYouTubeDislike

Deshittification, what?

It’s a word I made up, but it comes from a more established word “Enshittification.” But what is “Enshittification” anyway? Well, who better to tell us than the creator of that 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.

You can read the full article here: 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 a product and using various methods of any kind to make it better for personal use. A bit vague but that’s the idea and the spirit of it.

In this article, we’re going to discuss what, how, and why. What are these extensions? How did we get to this point? And why use them?


Why bother? 🤔

You might have been asking yourself this question: Why bother? Why do any of this? Why not just use YouTube as it is or maybe just with an ad blocker because ads are that annoying.

I think this is a very valid question, and my answer to that is: because you can do better! Yeah, you really can! You might think it’s fine, you might not think of it as a big deal, but that’s exactly how people stagnated and “get used to their ways.” 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 your answer is that you don’t enjoy the current state of YouTube and that it could be better, I invite you to read further and show you at the very least how you can improve your experience just by a tiny bit more. As the saying goes, many a mickle makes a muckle, and even if you just leave with one extension, it’s still something.


uBlock Origin

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

But unfortunately having an Ad Blocker isn’t enough because while YouTube ads are annoying but easy to block the real devil lies in the videos themselves. If you’ve spent any amount of time on YouTube especially if you’re not logged in or you don’t have an established feed1 you will be bombarded with slop2 content, annoying video thumbnails with dark patterns3 and clickbait titles.

Download

Firefox | Chrome Store


SponsorBlock

SponsorBlock is a crowdsourced browser extension that skips sponsor segments in YouTube videos. Well that’s pretty sweet but also kind of vague, what does this really mean and how does it work from point of view of a user of this extension? I think those are the most important questions that majority of people will have or be good to know.

How does it work?

The main idea is that users themselves will submit segments of the video that contain sponsored content (or other unwanted segments) using the extension. That way, any future person who has the extension installed and watches that video will be able to automatically skip the segment, saving them time. It could be 5 or 10 seconds or even a few minutes, but those add up. Back when I initially started using the extension and when it was new.

What does it really mean?

It basically means that after installing SponsorBlock (and maybe changing a few settings), you can sit back and enjoy your videos without having to manually skip sponsors or other annoying segments.

Good to have settings

SponsorBlock comes with pretty good default settings, but checking the settings of an extension never hurts and you might want to change some.


Setting Explanation
Interaction Reminder (Subscribe) Are you annoyed at YouTubers constantly or even casually reminding you to subscribe?
Endcards/Credits Most of the time, this will be patrons, so unless you’re subscribed to a creator on Patreon, it’s kind of pointless to keep it on.

A kind request

SponsorBlock is entirely possible because of its users, as it’s crowdsourced. The only other people (besides the developer) that are submitting segments are people like YOU! If you think the idea of SponsorBlock is cool, and if you find yourself having saved a lot of time using SponsorBlock (which you can see by clicking on the SponsorBlock icon), it’s only a good Samaritan to give back and pave the path for others after you, as others have done for you.

Download

Firefox | Chrome Store


DeArrow

This extension was made by the same person who made SponsorBlock, DeArrow is again a crowdsourced extension but instead for titles and thumbnails. Nowdays a lot of channels use dark patterns3 to get picked up by the ever changing algorithm.

So how does it work?

Well it’s basically the same way as SponsorBlock but this time you choose a point the video to be the thumbnail and you can write a different title for the video.

Download

Firefox | Chrome Store

Oh, but it costs money? Whaaat??

Yes and no!

What do I mean by this? Well, the extension heavily implies that you should donate and places restrictions if you don’t, so at first glance, it seems like you must pay to use it, but that’s not the case!

(But really do consider paying for it, even just $1, as stuff like this is run at a loss by passionate people)

So how do I use the extension without paying?

When you first install the extension, you will be greeted by a message asking you to purchase a key for $1 although you can actually purchase a key for any price to activate the extension or start a 6-hour trial. After the trial runs out, you will be asked to pay. However, if you pay close attention and scroll down, you will notice an “I can’t/don’t want to pay” option. If you choose this, you will be notified that you must wait 12 hours, and you will get free access forever.

Okay, but why am I asked to pay in the first place for an extension?

That’s a great question! The unfortunate truth is that projects like these operate at a loss because they prioritize people over profit. While we all love and support that, at the end of the day, hosting APIs and ever-growing databases for SponsorBlock and DeArrow costs money. Since money doesn’t grow on trees, the developers bear these costs.

But I invite you to think about this for a second. You and I have paid companies for services that have treated us poorly and may treat us even worse in the future. So, ask yourself: Isn’t it better to support a projects that not only improves your YouTube experience but also helps others?


Return YouTube Dislike

Why use this?

As a viewer, you deserve to know how many dislikes a video has, or at the very least, have a good estimation of how many. But as you will see in down below YouTube has taken our ability to see likes and we have to really on an extension to see them.

But why should you care how many dislikes a video has? Besides having the right to know, it’s a very good way to see things like public opinion, controversial videos, and most importantly, outright scams or pyramid schemes.

If you don’t have this extension, you can only rely on the comment section general opinion, but that’s not ideal as first you will need to read a considerable amount of comments, and even then, the top comments might be positive due to tampering such as manually deleting any negative comments and leaving alone positive ones and artificially boosting them through any means while the actual general opinion of the video is negative.

So why did this happen and why?

Back in March 29, 20214, YouTube announced that they were going to remove the ability to see how many dislikes a video has on November 10, 2021 (or December 13th if you were using the API)5. This was seen as a stupid decision by basically everyone Well, not really stupid if you know their actual intent instead of the one they portray to the public . The funny thing is that you can still dislike videos; the creator of the video can still see the dislikes in the analytics, and dislikes still negatively affect videos. Even before this change, the creator had the ability to disable the ability to see how many likes or dislikes a video has.

YouTube claimed the decision was because “hate mobs” could and/or were using it to suppress videos, but the fact is that the mob can still do it even after the change. The common guess for why YouTube really did this is because a lot of advertisers sometimes have their ads massively disliked because they’re genuinely bad ads Do you remember the Pepsi Ad or The Gillette Ad? . However, they also don’t want to hide their likes and dislikes because that would be an admission from them that they messed up and just look bad for the company if one of their ads, especially a popular one, is massively disliked Can’t have the shareholders see that 🙃 . So, they wanted the default behavior to be changed.

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

YouTube has privated the video in the tweet knowing how terrible it really is , but you can still watch it here. This alone should prove that this was a change forced upon users without their consideration, and they knew that it was unwanted.

How does it show dislikes if only the creator can see them?

Return YouTube Dislike uses this formula6:


$$ \text{RYD Dislike Count} = \left(\frac{\text{RYD Users Dislike Count}}{\text{RYD Users Like Count}}\right) \times \text{Public Like Count} $$


The true dislikes on any video after December 13th, 2021 is unknown unless the creator also uses the extension and provides the actual dislikes , and it’s only an educated guess, but most of the time the prediction is good enough.


Final Thoughts

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

If you have any other suggestions for extensions that will make YouTube better by getting rid of any additional 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 even for the niche word it is, but in this context, it means: Mass-produced content (usually low quality and/or low effort) that has very little va lue added. It usually follows an established “formula” of how to produce content, made to appeal to either masses or the algorithm. ↩︎

  3. Dark Patterns - Here, the definition is a bit different. Essentially, video thumbnails or even titles that exploit your common cognitive biases. Most commonly 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 on the thumbnail. ↩︎ ↩︎

  4. https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/104325801/testing-new-designs-for-the-like-and-dislike-buttons ↩︎

  5. https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/134791097/update-to-youtube-dislike-counts ↩︎

  6. https://github.com/Anarios/return-youtube-dislike/blob/main/Docs/FAQ.md ↩︎