It's getting ridiculous. There's one youtuber that swapped the thumbnail 4 times this week just to make people look at it again and think it was a different video. The worst part is that it sort of works, I keep looking at it then remembering I saw something very similar from the same channel name yesterday.

I hate this so damn much.

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[–] Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee 65 points 4 months ago (3 children)

They're not trying to trick people into re-watching videos they've already seen. YouTube generally does a pretty good job of not recommending those videos anyway. They're simply testing which thumbnail/title brings the most traffic. It might seem petty but it makes a huge difference.

[–] damium@programming.dev 19 points 4 months ago

Yep, YouTube even has an A/B testing tool for automating this.

[–] the_post_of_tom_joad@sh.itjust.works 9 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

I loved old YouTube, these days i hardly go so maybe I'm not getting a good perspective but it seems every thumbnail is exactly the same, some brightly colored photo of a 20-something staring off camera with a comically open mouth. Am i missing something?

[–] AsherahTheEnd@lemmy.world 4 points 4 months ago

Yeah it's really fucking cringey and dumb but it does work. Like, those exact thumbnails somehow get more clicks and views. I don't get it, I don't think I ever will, but they're doing something right with this.

[–] odigo2020@lemmy.zip 4 points 4 months ago

Not missing anything, that's just the current style that gets the most views. It'll eventually change to something different and everyone will adopt that new style for a while.

[–] odigo2020@lemmy.zip 4 points 4 months ago

Yup, Scott Cramer recently did an interesting video that touches on this on his second channel, Scott is Struggling. Pretty cool if you're into that kinda meta game of YouTube.