YouTube will never "crack down" on these guys. They are their money-makes and can do whatever the fuck the want. Clickbait on huge channels is YouTube's bread and butter, even if people just click to comment that the creator sucks, that's still engagement and means there is more money in the ad bids.

I'll be even more cynical than that: I think this policy will be abused to suppress legitimate news/current events videos with a POV the oligarchs doesn't approve of (e.g. pro-Palestinian, pro-Adjuster, etc.).

Yes, which YT actively encourages people to do. So ultimately nothing really changes.

This will address extreme and obvious falsehoods but I still encounter clickbait of the more pedestrian kind everywhere I go. “You’re using your table saw WRONG” or “the 1 table saw trick 99% of people don’t know” etc.

I consider this clickbait: it creates a false sense of urgency and doesn’t convey any information in itself. What is this one trick? Oh I already knew that one, but I had to watch the video to realize that.

It wastes a lot of time and makes things harder to search for. And often these clickbait headlines are not in the video headline where YT can easily scan them, but in the thumbnail graphic in huge letters, where it’s probably harder to automate any moderation for.

I pay for YT premium but this aspect of the experience still feels ad-like and cheap.

Do comments first. There's so much spam that almost looks legit because of how many upvotes they have.

And maybe stop making comments help the video get more popular

"5 ways YouTube is cracking down on clickbait – #3 will make you shid and fard and cum your pants"

YouTube tried to crack down on clickbait, what happened next will shock you!

Thumbnail:

They're doing WHAT!?! --->

(⓿_⓿)

I feel a bit conflicted about that, do I want that extension to hide the terrible clickbaity titles and thumbnails? For me that's a good reason to not watch these videos in the first place

They either look like they need to shit or are eating an invisible popsicle

For years, every update YouTube has had has made the platform worse. I think its valid to doubt this will improve anything. That being said, I agree with you. Lemmy as a whole needs to calm down a bit and stop being so damn negative about everything.

Bait homosapien do not engage

I haven't seen any of the usual self-righteous "I only use self-hosted video services" comments in here yet though.

Misleading titles and thumbnails are against YouTube terms of service for as long as I can remember. Those are options to select when reporting videos.