Who Is ItalianBach.

ItalianBach is the online name of Isaac Smith, a creator Dexerto describes as a YouTube star, and in October 2026 he made an unusual case: get rid of custom thumbnails altogether.

Who ItalianBach is

Dexerto named him as Isaac ’ItalianBach’ Smith in an interview published on 28 October 2026, in which he set out what he would change about YouTube if he ran it for a day.

His channel on YouTube is @ItalianBach. People who run channels for a living will recognise the tools he wants gone.

What he wants YouTube to change

Dexerto reported that if he had the power of being YouTube’s chief executive for a day, he would get rid of custom thumbnails.

“The one rule that I would add is: no one can make and upload a thumbnail,” he told Dexerto. He pointed out that YouTube already picks three freeze frames from an uploaded video and suggests them as thumbnails. His version would stop there.

For a day, he said, it would be nice to see every uploaded video shown with just a freeze frame from that video. In his words, there would be “no clickbait involved, no fake thumbnail with loads of colours; it’s just like a complete freeze frame of that video so you know exactly what you’re going to be seeing.”

Where he stands on A/B testing

He told Dexerto he is not a fan of YouTube’s A/B testing on videos. He was not absolute about it: he said he “can see why certain creators enjoy it”.

That nuance matters. He is saying he would rather the packaging told the viewer exactly what the video is.

He is not the only critic of A/B testing

Dexerto set his comments beside those of the YouTuber MKBHD, who it says has criticised the feature a few times already. Dexerto reports that in September he said the tool is “not actually helping you make better videos”, and that it is about “helping you find which version of your video has the best retention”.

The two objections are different. MKBHD’s point, in the words Dexerto quotes, is that the tool finds the best-performing version rather than making the video better. ItalianBach’s is that designed packaging lets a video promise more than it delivers. Both land on the same place: the work that matters is the video, not the frame that sells it.

What a freeze-frame rule would mean in practice

It is worth taking the idea seriously for a moment, because it changes where the work happens. If the thumbnail had to be a real frame, the strongest image would have to exist in the footage itself. The planning would move from the design stage to the shoot.

That is a useful discipline even with custom thumbnails allowed. A team that plans the moment it wants on the thumbnail before it films has a better chance of an honest thumbnail and a better video, because the promise and the payoff were planned together.

Why a social team should pay attention

If your team treats the thumbnail as a production line of its own, designed, revised, tested and swapped, that is a reasonable response to how the platform works today. Nothing he said changes YouTube’s rules.

What his argument does is name the cost. A thumbnail that promises something the video does not deliver can win the click and lose the viewer. His freeze-frame idea is the extreme version of a test every team can run on its own packaging: would this thumbnail still work if it had to be a real frame from the video?

If the answer is no, the gap between the promise and the video is worth closing, whatever YouTube decides. That check belongs at the edit, and that is where NBK would put it, inside the video production and editing stage of a channel’s workflow.

What a brand should decide before it copies the idea

A brand channel is not going to stop uploading thumbnails because one creator would like YouTube to ban them. The useful decision is narrower:

1. Does every thumbnail show something that actually happens in the video?
2. Is anyone on the team testing packaging, and if so, does the winning version still match the content?
3. Would a viewer who clicked feel they got what they were promised?

Those three questions belong in the sign-off for every upload. They sit comfortably alongside the opposite school of thought, set out in how MrBeast makes YouTube thumbnails that get clicks: a thumbnail can be bold and still be honest.

What to watch

This is one creator’s wish, voiced in an interview, not a YouTube plan. Nothing in what he said suggests the platform is about to remove custom thumbnails or its testing tools. The useful signal is the argument itself, and how many creators with large audiences start making it.

Next step

If your channel’s thumbnails are winning clicks but the videos are losing viewers, the packaging and the content have drifted apart. If your team is posting regularly but still feels stuck, NBK can help find the constraint in the system.