$h!tty Thumbnails on Linus Tech Tips - Honest Answers Ep. 5
Why Hacker News recommends it
Referenced in clickbait and YouTube-algorithm debates as a candid creator explanation of why good channels use poor thumbnails.
What it is
Linus Tech Tips addresses criticism of its clickbait-style thumbnails in an Honest Answers episode, explaining that the YouTube algorithm pushes creators toward them.
Recommended by 1 HN commenters across 1 different months, 2019 to 2023.
What Hacker News said
Recommends bilegeek · 2021-02 · on “United B772 at Denver on Feb 20th 2021, engine inlet separates from engine”
Here's the video where Linus goes into it: [this video] I'll give him credit for being straight about it.
Cites ortusdux · 2019-12 · on “Floatplane – Linus Tech Tips launches their own video hosting platform”
I've followed them for a while now on youtube and it has been interesting to watch them evolve their format, content, and presentation to appease youtube's algorithms. They have been pretty open [1] about how they don't like some of the changes they have had to make to stay popular on youtube. I hope they roll back some of the more annoying changes. It appears that the ugly thumbnails sadly still persist in on floatplane [2]. It would also gladly pay for a return to 5 minute videos vs the now standard 15+ min length that gets a middle youtube ad-break and increased revenue. [1] [this video] [2] [LINK]
Cites leoc · 2021-03 · on “Popular YouTubers who are building their own sites”
Sebastian and Linus Media Group seem to be pretty frank and open about a lot of this: see for instance [this video] on putting up gurning thumbnails and navigating the YT algorithm (and that whole playlist, including a revenue breakdown [LINK] ), the Gamers Nexus video on LTT's production process [LINK] and the coverage LTT regularly lavishes on its own production setup and process, from a nearly-12m video about the awkwardness of ingesting video from their new 12K cameras [LINK] to seemingly quite genuine fly-on-the-wall coverage of temporarily losing their data to a RAID failure [LINK] . Obviously you always have to take anyone's self-presentation with a grain of salt. But they're certainly not
Cites chrisan · 2022-02 · on “I tested four NVMe SSDs from four vendors – half lose FLUSH’d data on power loss”
He talks about the youtube algorithm being the primary driver for the shitty thumbnails [this video] vs his traditional one that got buried. Not sure about his other stuff you claim, I'm not a super big video guy for tech things (just let me skip and search ahead easily) but this came up with my friends a few years ago after people started noticing many videos from various creators going to this format of thumbnail.
Cites daemoens · 2022-07 · on “Severe thermal throttling discovered in Apple's M2 MacBook Pro”
They don't. They released a couple videos a few years ago and there was a significant decrease in viewership. Ultimately, theyre a company with almost 50 employees and everyone needs to be paid. Clickbait is annoying, but it's just that. Annoying. Their videos are still high quality and that's what actually matters. [this video]
Cites cube00 · 2022-09 · on “The Next Chapter for Learning on YouTube”
The way YouTube refuses to enforce their "misleading thumbnail" policy says it all about the content they want to encourage. Most creators (rightly or wrongly) justify because "everyone else does it, so we need to do it as well" [1] [1]: [this video]
Cites astura · 2022-09 · on “On Mr. Beast and being alone in a circle for 100 days”
How do you know if a channel has content worth consuming if you block it without watching it? Literally hundreds of good channels worth consuming have thumbnails like that. I find it off-putting too, but videos are severely punished for not having them. This is the channel mentioned in the sibling comment (Linus Tech Tips) - [this video]
Cites Nathan2055 · 2023-06 · on “DeArrow – Solving Clickbait on YouTube”
While I’m just as annoyed about the clickbait problem as everyone else, it is worth noting that it’s hard to blame it on the individual YouTubers. If you don’t follow whatever the algorithm demands that given week, you’re unlikely to get very many views at all. Even subscription notifications are fed into the algorithm now, and YouTube has been proven to be perfectly willing to not send out notifications for videos it seems unworthy. This even affects subscribers who turned the bell on, a feature that was supposedly released to mitigate the first time they implemented that change by supposedly offering an “always force notifications for this channel’s uploads” option, but YouTube’s guidance