Youtube's Recent "Experiments"

[Justine]

So I was on Twitter a couple days ago and apparently youtube decided to run an experiment where some people would see generated thumbnails for some channels instead of the thumbnails that the creator uploads with the video. Youtube got a ton of backlash for this and this isn't the first time they've experimented and received backlash; they made some users subscription feeds go based off interest instead of chronological order which stirred up a huge mess.

Is anyone else feeling put off by all of this? Cause, with these recent experiments, it seems that it would hurt the creators on their site (more so small creators) more than help.

 

[vMinti]

Oh wow. I didn't hear about them trying stuff with thumbnails before. It's so random, why would they do this? o.o

 

[Courtney Candice]

I never heard about this before, but a couple weeks ago My custom thumbnail kept changing to to a still photo from the video I’m not sure if those two are related or not.

 

[Looped Fruit]

I'm uploading a video now and Youtube no longer accepts brackets in the title. Youtube needs rehab, it's on drugs.

 

[UhoohExtra]

I hear they replaced custom thumbnails with auto generated thumbnails for 0.3 % of videos. Sounds 99.7% dumb? Nobody likes having their choices taken away from them. I prefer to make my own.

 

[Courtney Candice]

I hear they replaced custom thumbnails with auto generated thumbnails for 0.3 % of videos. Sounds 99.7% dumb? Nobody likes having their choices taken away from them. I prefer to make my own.

I feel like they also made the thumbnail size smaller, I’ve been using the exact thumbnail size ever since I was on YouTube and then all of sudden this past month it’s too big

 

[HiEnergy]

I just opened my channel page from a different computer (not logged into my YT account) for checking out my latest videos and guess what...
EVERY SINGLE THUMBNAIL WAS REPLACED BY AN AUTOGENERATED ONE!!!

Those are strange and offputting experiments indeed.
Google, I know you own YT, it's yours... but... please stop doing such things!

 

[UhoohExtra]

Yeh it's completely unnecessary. People can hover the thumbnail if they want to see a preview of the video footage. I checked mine using HiEnergy's method above. Mine are all still how I left left them. I notice a lot of your were replaced with just a random screenshot of your editing software.. not very appealing to click on.

 

[videoeditgr]

it might be a good way to eliminate clickbait thumbnails (maybe). Even as a punishment if user keeps thumbnailing irrelevant to the video. who knows...

 

[HiEnergy]

punishment if user keeps thumbnailing irrelevant to the video

My thumbnails usually consist of the video title (or a few words paraphrasing the video content) and some (often recognizable similar for videos belonging together) icons.
I consider my thumbnails at least that relevant that I don't deserve them being exchanged by an arbitrary frame of the linked video without any further notice.
If thumbnails were misleading or irrelevant, YT should show a notice (like they did when the monetization rules were changed some months ago or the direct messages were turned off recently), a possible wording could be like "You have an inacceptable number of misleading custom thumbnails - display of custom thumbnails is suppressed for your channel pending further notice."