AI Killed the Video Star
You know the feeling, don't you? You open YouTube for something good to watch, and there it is, near the top: the fall of Rome in ten minutes. Calm voice, sweeping map, crisp captions. Two minutes in, it dawns on you. The voice never takes a breath. The pictures don't quite match the words. Every sentence sounds right, and not one of them sounds like anybody.
You click away. Next up: the same channel, or its twin. Nobody wrote that script; a language model did. Nobody read it out; a synthetic voice did. Nobody watched the result either, and why would they, with four more going up by tomorrow? Meanwhile, the woman who spent three weeks on her video about Roman aqueducts, because she loves the things, slides further down your page.
Sure, you can tell YouTube "Not interested", one video at a time. Knock yourself out. By the next morning there are new ones. I tried, I lost, and I started building Deslopifyer.
Every channel it hides, and why.
Deslopifyer is a Mac app that keeps AI-made videos off your YouTube Home page. It doesn't judge videos, it judges channels, the way you would. It checks YouTube's own AI label and what the newest videos actually say, makes up its mind once, and remembers. Your Subscriptions? Hands off; you chose those. And when it isn't sure, it hides nothing and hands you the call. Will it get some wrong? Of course. That's why every channel it hides comes with its reason, and one key brings it back. Oh, and what you watch is your business: it all happens on your Mac, and nothing about your viewing ever leaves it.
Not sure? Then it’s your call.
Generated work is perfect in a very particular way. Every edge the same, every copy identical, nothing worn, nothing chosen. Build a tool against that and make it look like that? Not on my watch. So I'm making Deslopifyer out of things you could pick up. Felt for the sidebar. A painted plank under the selected row. Wooden blocks for Hide, Show and Always Show, scanned from real materials, no two alike, each with the scuffs things get from being handled. When something moves, it moves like a puppet film, in a handful of held drawings rather than one perfect glide. If you know Pojďte pane, budeme si hrát, you'll recognise the duck on the icon.
The first time you open the app, that duck peeks over the edge of a card, like a puppet over the front of a stage, and waits with you for YouTube. The moment your first page connects, it ducks behind the card and never comes back. You'll see it once. I drew it anyway.
The duck, waiting with you for YouTube.
Remember when Mac apps were made like this? Delicious Library put a wooden bookshelf on your screen and made cataloguing your books a treat, and a whole generation of apps followed. Brent Simmons later named the other half of the craft: Mac-assed Mac apps, the ones that behave like a Mac in everything you touch. I want Deslopifyer to be both. Ambitious? Sure. That's what testers are for.
Deslopifyer isn't finished, and I'd love your help with all of it, not just the judging. You'll need a Mac on macOS 27 and YouTube in Safari, Chrome, Arc, Edge, Orion or Firefox. Use it the way you always watch YouTube, then poke at it. Did it confuse you, make you wait, break, look off? Help menu, Send Feedback, add a screenshot. Did it hide someone real, or wave a slop channel through? Right-click the channel, in the app or on YouTube, and choose Report Mistake. Nothing leaves your Mac until you press Send.
The menu bar: what was kept off your Home page.
Leave your email at apps.bottaro.me/deslopifyer and I'll invite you to the testers' page. From there, the app keeps itself up to date. And if you want to know more, you know the drill: buy me a beer.