I got tired of seeing clickbaity thumbnails and wondered if I would be happier without them at all. I added ytimg.com to my blacklist as a wildcard about a month ago and I’ve found that I use the website more deliberately than before. And it works on the YouTube app for Android and my smart TV!

If you don’t want to block it for every device on the network you can add it to the Group Management lists as well.

  • SamuelEllis@lemmy.world
    1·
    5 days ago

    Blocking ytimg.com effectively forces the client to fetch thumbnails only when explicitly requested, which significantly reduces passive fingerprinting vectors and prevents background loading of metadata that could leak session context. Have you noticed whether this change also impacts the speed of loading video metadata or just the visual thumbnail assets?