Apparently Vanced was a patched YouTube app for Android, removing ads, adding a dark theme and YouTube Premium features (probably more ?). It was discontinued two weeks ago:
It also restored the dislike button and added support for sponsorblock (which can automatically skip sponsor segments, as well as intros, outros, "like and subscribe" reminders, non-music sections of music videos, and other fluff.)
The name comes from it being an "advanced" YouTube app, only without any "ad"s ;)
Oh, and you could disable the comments section!
All-in-all, it just made YouTube a much better experience.
It uses an alternative backend where videos pre-removal had their dislike counters archived, and anything post-removal uses dislike data from users with the extension to crowdsource a likely dislike counter.
(in theory, if 5% of viewers of a video are people that have the extension, and only 10% of those viewers hit the dislike button, chances are that's a good sample size to assume that this video should have a 10% dislike ratio, but in practice it's probably a bit more complicated/weighted)
If the signal you are picking up from downvotes is that the channel must be hated in some way you should watch fewer outrage-bait/drama channels and more learning/tutorial channels. Some tutorial videos are made so confusingly and poorly, or worse teach incorrect information altogether, that the only signal for people to know "This video is absolute bollocks and you shouldn't waste your time watching it" is when he gets downvote bombed by anyone watching it. It's a single to then check the comments section where you'll probably see some comment explaining all the problems/incorrect parts of the video with more likes than the video itself has often with a recommendation to a better video on the topic.
Sure - channels absolutely used to be downvote bombed because people were mad at the content creator for whatever reason they may have had. But for a good section of videos the downvotes only spoke about the quality of the video itself and nothing about the content creator.
"Dislike" doesn't mean hate, personally I've only downvoted YouTube videos when they were badly made, or badly presented to the extent that almost any other video on the topic would be better.
It's not about hate, it's a signal that the video is probably going to be a waste of time for the watcher.
Absolute nonsense. You've obviously never used Youtube for anything educational if you can't see the value of the dislike button.
This comment is loaded with 'well meaning virtue' but ultimately it does more harm than good. You're taking it away because some celebrity you like got sad because their video got disliked? Bloody hell.
Making better tools that will detect and manage downvote bombing and hate should be fairly simple if Youtube could be bothered by any of it.
Removing the absolutely needed and valid functionality that is normally used to signal the quality of the content, and save viewers' time, for all users and all cases, should not be the justified sacrifice, just in order to mitigate one bad way to use it.
There are a lot of clickbait and fraud videos on YouTube. Fake trailers for upcoming movies, videos that pretend to be e.g. a SNL sketch but are just a collage of pictures with a synthesized voiceover, gaming streamers pretending there’s a live event “just about to start” on games like Fortnite.
There’s also disturbing “children’s videos” made by AIs, and fake lifehack or cooking videos that promise things like “if you microwave popcorn with M&Ms you get chocolate covered popcorn”, some of which show dangerous things that have resulted in accidents (e.g. people getting burnt with exploding eggs and the like).
This is the part I missed in the original conversations.
If you redistribute a modified version of a company’s app, it’s going to be taken down. You can’t distribute another company’s work as your own.
The difference here appears to be that it’s a patcher, so they’re not distributing the proprietary app. Theoretically more robust against takedowns, but it also significantly limits the audience of who can go through all of the steps to do it.
I expect the real outcome is going to be a game of whack-a-mole as random people try to patch and distribute the app under different names. This isn’t actually a great situation because it sets an expectation among users that the app will always be changing names and distributors. Hackers love these situations because the door is now wide open for them to insert malicious code into a version and distribute it as the latest Revanced. Not good.
Vanced didn't redistribute a modified version of the Youtube app, they distributed a "manager" app which downloaded the official app's APKs and applied the patches at runtime. (edit: actually, I'm not 100% sure of that, since I've always used a rooted version which does apply patches at runtime, but I'm unsure about non-rooted.)
They were taken down for using a similar enough logo to Youtube that Google lawyered them into stopping that way, not for any kind of infringement in terms of software.
> They were taken down for using a similar enough logo to Youtube that Google lawyered them into stopping that way, not for any kind of infringement in terms of software.
Is there a source for this? Seems like they could have just changed the logo if that was the case, no?
> I expect the real outcome is going to be a game of whack-a-mole as random people try to patch and distribute the app under different names.
From their github org and an faq (I can't remember where I saw it), it seems they're planning on patching the YouTube app on your device, unlike what Vanced did.
And yes, it will be a game of whack-a-mole but since you can download individual versions of apps and only update when you want, I believe breakage will be quite limited.
Yandex Browser has text-reflow and used to support uBlock Origin [and other extensions] too. Now it no longer supports installing uBO. So Android currently has two browsers, each of which is half useful!
You are not wrong but the same can be said for PRC and USA companies. Mentioning that every time the products and services of these three countries are mentioned is not interesting.
>Or you know, paying a few bucks for the music via Premium subscription.
Or you know, not lecturing people off your high horse on giving their hard earned cash to your corporate overlords on top of their private data, and instead, letting them use the internet as they please.
A few bucks here and a few bucks there adds up significantly for those not on Bay Area wages and getting hit by rampant inflation and energy prices.
You can donate to the creators Patreon, PayPal or Crypto wallets, if you wish to support them.
If YouTube were a boot-strapped start-up in a garage, I would totally agree with your point, but instead Google-YouTube is a multi trillion dollar monopoly and I'm already giving them my private data they monetize, which is more than enough, there's no way I'm giving them my hard earned cash on top of my private data, while they engage in anti consumer behavior by removing the dislike button and using other dark patterns to squeeze view time out of small creators and "maximize engagement" out of their user base.
That's some serious mental gymnastic you have going there just to avoid paying musicians a few bucks to listen to their music.
Don't worry, pirates have gone through these mental gymnastics to feel better about their entitlement since the time Napster appeared.
Still doesn't change the fact that the author of that post refuses to pay a shitty 12 bucks per months to get access to all the music he wants and pay both the infrastructure provider and the musician performing the tracks. They could easily pay for Spotify, Deezer, Tidal, iTunes or any of the other services if "YouTube is such an evil monster monopoly". But it's not about that is it?
I wonder if you're so lenient when someone refuses to pay for your own companys services and just wants them for free.
That's some serious mental gymnastics there, too. I refuse to pay for YT premium because of the abusive relationship Alphabet/Google/YouTube has with my family, my devices, and me.
12 bucks is about two or three days of work where I live. I will do everything that is in my hands that won't get me arrested to save money and improve my quality of life. Google does the same, so why shouldn't I?
Look up how much YouTube and Spotify pay musicians. I'm not sure how little the others pay in comparison but I assume their cut is the industry standard.
Paying £12 a month doesn't bring back dislikes, doesn't remove sponsored segments and doesn't improve the comment section that is ripe with bots.
>I wonder if you're so lenient when someone refuses to pay for your own companys services and just wants them for free.
I wouldn't make my own companies DRM so easily breakable, are Google too poor or something?
It's not "a few bucks", it's like $12 a month, more than most streaming services, for the privilege of having it not pause the video when you lock the phone. Which it shouldn't be doing in the first place. Also this yet one more thing on top of the subscriptions you already have. Can't subscribe to all of them.
There are more features than that. You get music streaming ( usually in the $£$ 10 range), no ads and offline downloads. It's really not a bad deal, especially shared on the family plan.
Losing ads, sure, and it would be good to pay them something, but IDGAF about YouTube Music (I have Spotify for that) or their watered-down download function (which I'm pretty sure is locked to playing the download in their app). So the 50 SEK (5.32 USD) difference between Premium Lite and Premium would be purely to make it not pause.
The hosting of an unlimited number of videos of (almost) unlimited length at up to 8k resolution for an indefinite length of time is worth nothing to you? I'm incredibly grateful that there is such a vast video archive on the internet with such liberal terms for video uploading and playback.
And Google does revenue share with creaters. Heard of the YouTube partner program? Partners receive money per view from people who watch ads or have premium, and premium views are worth more.
I do pay that much for no ads and music streaming, but I'm not sure that giving Google more money in a monthly subscription on top of the money they generate from serving me ads is the best use of my funds. I pay that much because I hate YouTube ads. YMMV.
The most important part of Vanced is it allowed you to login to your account. NewPipe isn't an alternative to Vanced. It fills a completely different (more privacy-focused) niche.
It's at least 'profiteering' off of the current state of YouTube, where anyone that uses an ad-blocking mechanism (desktop or mobile) is effectively being subsidized by the premium subscribers and mobile users without adblock.
that is not same as profiteering. leeching maybe but "profiteering" is what brave does with replacing google ads with their own so that they show their ads and earn instead of google.
that is not what anyone with ad block is doing..
nothing in life is free. everyone knows that. you and me know that. we use adblock regardless of that knowledge. how is this argument used against vanced now since we have accepted the necessity for ublock orign?
I have a feeling that any piece of closed-source software that becomes important enough will inevitably be reverse engineered by highly motivated people. This is doubly so for Vanced: The original team took pains to not release the source, but it merely took a few weeks for someone else to reverse engineer the reverse engineered codebase.
I've worked on preserving a few games with decompilers long after the original creators have moved on. Anecdotally, the death of Flash all but killed off a couple of assorted communities that didn't have enough motivation to hack the binaries themselves.
My guess is the only software that can perpetually maintain a community is software where the source code is available to be modified.
I don't know much about the topic so forgive my ignorance, but aren't Android apps written in Java/JVM language?
Meaning decompilation should be really straightforward, I remember IntelliJ having a decompiler, many times I would accidental open a `class` file and it would suggest decompilation. This kind of code was still hard to read, but it was Java, not bytecode.
It's all relative, I'm sure, and I don't have any experience with decompilers other than this one: https://www.benf.org/other/cfr/, but, if you look at the change log there you will see that "really straightforward" is an unfortunately optimistic outlook. :)
Nah, java can be decompiled really really well. To the point that basically every app uses obfuscation to make the resulting code harder to comprehend.
Looks like their patches repo is public - I wonder if that'll lead the the adblocking technique being patched out quickly by Google? Either way happy to see this app revived, even as a premium subscriber - it provides functionality that makes YouTube much nicer to use
(Re)Vanced is an app, dealing with googles backend.
They can either change the youtube app, to break Vanced, but this can be mitigated by not upgrading the youtube app, until there are patches for the new version,... or they can change the backend, thus breaking all the older youtube clients, making everyone upgrade their clients "now", which is a pain in the ass for many people.
For many devices it wouldn't be "pain in the ass", it would be straight up impossible. There are millions of devices, like smart TVs, that are out of support and don't receive updates, substantially changing API would break them. It might happen at some point, but it would piss off many people.
What I've seen is reducing quality available for older versions/protocols - so yeah, it will stay play but you won't get the highest bitrates without upgrading.
The Re in ReVanced is for "Reverse Engineered" Vanced. ReVanced is going to be identical to the original Vanced, but later on (especially since it's open source) more patches/"plugins" will be available.
At first is different because to avoid the same issue as Vanced, it will not ship you patched version of YouTube App but it will ship a patcher.
That mean you'll must have installed YouTube because it will be companion or patch (I'm not sure if it will patch the YouTube app or be a service next to YouTube to apply Vanced feature at runtime)
I decided to be a translator for this project - that's the best contribution I can do as I know nothing about android - it seems like a good cause for the following reasons:
- I know of people who live in countries where YouTube Red isn't available, I pay for YouTube red myself and it's life changing. I want them to be able to experience this too in a way or another
- I feel like Google might have done the right thing in their eyes by forcing Vanced to shutdown, but I also think they didn't address the problem in its entirety. You can shut down 1 app - 10 more pop up. Maybe the strategy should be, introduce better features instead of taking them away and think about monetizing differently?
- I really can't stand Monday.com ads btw ;) they're everywhere even in my sleep.
My guess is YouTube is well aware of the fact that new ones are going to pop up. I'm guessing they did the math and realized that YouTube Vanced became big enough that it was worth shutting down and removing it from the limelight while minimizing the Streisand Effect.
> Maybe the strategy should be, introduce better features instead of taking them away and think about monetizing differently?
As a Vanced user, I do agree that the app is objectively superior than the YouTube app. Customizable toolbars, better dark mode, disabling thumbnails auto-playing, more video control options etc. But 99.99% of people used Vanced to get rid of ads without paying, and that isn't something YouTube can compete against. No amount of "good features" would've caused people to abandon Vanced and switch to vanilla YouTube (well, unless they reduced or removed ads, which would be detrimental to their business and creators).
Every Vanced user should've known that this was a fight club situation, where if Vanced got big enough it would have to die.
>No amount of "good features" would've caused people to abandon Vanced and switch to vanilla YouTube
Maybe for the majority of people, but surely I'm not the only one who would go back to Vanilla YouTube and pay for Premium if you could run Sponsorblock. I'm not paying 10 bucks a month to get rid of ads just to be bombarbed by "goofy" segways into mid-video commercials.
Sponsorblock - to me - is the killer feature of Vanced. It's crazy how much of a video is just stupid fluff that nobody has any use or need for.
codeberg might be a good candidate. Slightly tangentially, to facilitate mobility and cross-server collaboration and repo syncing, Gitea (which they're built on) is getting federation in place
But after Codebergs Terms of Use, "Forks, migrations and testing repos are considered as inactive when they don't contain unique contributions and are inactive for more than a month. They shouldn't be kept for a prolonged amount of time, and thus might be removed after notifying maintainers and providing a 90 days period to ask for preservation."
Also "You are legally responsible for your edits and contributions on the platform, so for your own protection you should exercise caution and avoid contributing any content that may result in criminal or civil liability under any applicable laws (e.g. copyright and patent infringements, but also things like age-restricted content without age confirmation). Both the German legislation and the legislation in your country of residence may be relevant here."
Codeberg is a registered organization and also has to act on copyright infringements...
Legal part: Very good point - I would have assumed from a first look-through of the repos that it's legally clear but IANAL nor German so it should be taken into consideration when choosing where to host.
Activity part: Given the popularity of the project and Codeberg seeming to be quite approachable, I would assume it would not be an issue.
And, a major point of federation is to facilitate a more traditional and decentralized workflow where a takedown at a single host is not too disruptive for the project.
Maybe not, but MS does follow the DMCA takedown process.
> "If the notice alleges that the entire contents of a repository infringe, or a package infringes, we will skip to Step 6 and disable the entire repository or package expeditiously." [0]
This is what was going on with some Grand Theft Auto mods[1] and youtube-dl [2]
So does everyone else. Only self-hosted gives you the ability to ignore DMCA takedowns because the same entity is taking liability for either not following a dmca or performing the actual copyright infringement.
In general, this is my position to most paying things. There's always some legitimate reason for me to not pay for anything. Honestly, I've done it all my life. I never paid for a single college textbook, for instance. If more people would make paid things that weren't also evil, then maybe they could have my money.
The interesting thing is that the more money you have, the easier this becomes. For instance, with low cash flow, you can't afford an occasional $86 SF parking ticket. But with high cash flow, you can do the math and know that if you can escape every 3 days downtown, you come out ahead just paying the ticket.
Same thing here. I'm happy to pay for Nebula. But I don't want to pay to a platform that is constantly criticized by all the creators publishing there.
Same. I was happy to pay for it a couple of years ago, but I recently cancelled a pretty long running premium subscription.
If they're not outright removing videos from people I subscribe to, or outright removing people entirely, they're creating an atmosphere where those who remain rigorously self-censor to preserve their clout and income streams. Most of the content that's left is uninteresting because it's too risky to discuss anything controversial, let alone express a controversial opinion. RIP.
I have plenty of very interesting stuff on my feed too. Even discussions of "controversial" topics. Other than bad-faith DMCA claims, I rarely see videos get taken down. Which leads me to wonder what type of content you're subscribing to.
Most of the time when I see complaints of "censorship" or "controversial" topics, it's a dog whistle for a very specific kind of speech.
Youtube's frequency of ads has become so extreme that I've just yesterday opted to pay 11€/month for YT Premium.
I had tried before disabling them with a Pihole or by blocking domains. It didn't work. Also, on a Samsung TV, you can't really install another front end.
There is a difference there in that the sponsorship money all goes to the content creator, rather than to YT who may or may not (at their whim) share a small portion with whoever posted the video (which is far from always the content creator).
They also aren't stalking you around everything you do on the Internet in the name of targetting.
No doubt. YouTube premium customers are just providing disposable income data to advertisers. They've segmented the market, it's only a matter of time before some manager looks at how much more valuable the premium group is and decides to show ads to them too because doing otherwise is leaving money on the table.
1. Get an Android TV device. This is not actually a TV, but a device that connects to your TV via HDMI. Prices vary, but it's not expensive.
2. Install SmartTubeNext on the Android TV. Now you have something better than YouTube Premium: This app supports SponsorBlock, which not only gets rid of YT ads, it also skips filler segments, self-promotion segments and sponsor segments.
3. You can also install a SponsorBlock browser extension.
I have a Sharp TV on my living room and the YT app crashes everytime a certain type of ad is played after the video starts. I don't know if its the video codec or if the TV is having a hard time going back to the original video. Out of nowhere a 5 second chocolate or cheese ad plays and the TV OS completely crashes.
Tried attaching an ARM SBC with Librelec but the state of the Youtube apps are extremely broken in a way that you need api keys from a google cloud account and that allows you to only play videos. Your subscriptions and everything are not imported. PS4 runs fine but I don't want to run a 100W console to watch YT videos.
Meanwhile I've found out that most of my favorite channels (mostly tech and retro stuff) are also uploading to Odyssey as a sort of backup strategy. That works very well for me.
It is a RockPro64. The stock image offered by Pine is borderline useless barebones without the store. Some complicated process involving connecting an usb-c cable and running ADB from Android SDK is necessary.
I also tried some Android distribution called Slash TV which seems to be kinda complete but the videos keep defaulting to 480p even after I set my preferences to high quality. It seems Slash TV is a one man's project and it hasn't received an upgrade in a while.
I was surprised how much of a nice product Librelec is but all the YT apps for Kodi (Youtube, Tubed) are in this broken state due to some API changes.
Yeah, I run LibreELEC on an x86 machine, but the connectivity to online providers is just not there. Netflix and Spotify are other two services with mostly broken plugins.
Oh, good point; I was thinking from the perspective that a Chromecast is cheap, but it looks like an Apple TV is only $180 which probably is close enough if you use it any decent amount.
With TVs it is especially important to look at the _software_ it comes with. If it is some locked-down piece which requires the blessing of the manufacturer to install anything on it, then I would stay away from such TVs.
It seems to me that Android TVs offer at least some degree of customization because it is possible to install apps there. But the value you get from them depends on whether you can get the root access and on other restrictions the manufacturer has imposed on it. So, in general it is not an ideal usage model.
In my opinion, a pure Linux TVs would be much better. For instance, running Kodi as a frontend with TVHeadend or minisatip as a backend. They would of course have plenty of possibilities to play other media and would be fully customizable, giving the customer a _choice_ to consider and utilize that capability. In my opinion, there is a reasonably sized market for such TVs.
Be warned, even if you can block ads in youtube apps, most TV brands (and Google) started putting ads in their home screen. Mine was alright for 2-3 years but early this year there was an update that started putting "Watch these cool stuff in Disney app" and it is not removable.
I rolled back the update for my home screen app, which works for now. I think you are able to use entirely different home screen apps but I didn't want to go that far yet. The moment I can't disable ads is the moment I will start using PI and using my TV as a dumb screen
I never connect my TVs to the internet because you can't trust the manufacturers to keep them up to date and secure. And they might install more ads as part of a system "update".
Security? Are they not behind a firewall? What security vector are exposed plugging them into the internet? I don't see Samsung and co letting their telemetry domains lapse. Privacy and annoying updates are something totally different though.
Host based content blockers have no future. Ad companies have been moving to first-party ad delivery in the past few years, and YouTube serves ads and videos from the same host.
Edit: nevermind, I've completely misread your comment to be about Pi-hole :)
There are lots of USB-IR remote receivers. The nicest, in my opinion, is the Flirc (flirc.tv) which has all the smarts in the USB dongle to convert IR remote signals into a simulated keyboard. It's reasonably cheap, too. I like using a TiVO remote, because their ergonomics are almost perfect.
To turn on and off a TV you need an HDMI port that supports CEC. The Pi does, so you just need to install cec-client.
As for OS, you should use the general purpose Linux distro that you are most familiar with. If in doubt, use Gunnar Wolf's Debian for Pi, which is as close as you can get to 100% Debian on a Pi.
I'm in the same boat. On desktop it's pretty easy to work around ads thanks to uBlock Origin and SponsorBlock. But on an Android TV it's becoming unbearable. It's like Youtube has come to torture and extortion to get our money so we can get a little bit of peace of mind.
You do realize that you are paying more than 11/month right? Google is also stealing your data. I don't know how you value yours, but mine is priceless.
I've been using YT premium family for over a year now - I watch a lot of youtube in the background while working, it's a fair price for me - worth more than Netflix for sure since I spend more time on it.
When I occasionally see YT on other peoples TV without it I'm shocked at how many ads they get. I'm not sure what's the alternative to YT but this insane ad spam might start driving people away to alternatives.
I use ublock origin + sponsorblock + ddg privacy extension, and haven't had ads on YouTube in years
Also you can just use invidious on mobile (and presumably on your TV) for the same experience (minus the sponsor / merch flogging skips which are fantasic)
I get YouTube Red with YouTube music, and for me it's more than worth it.
You're going to pay about $10 a month for music streaming anyway, and I watch YouTube so much. If I didn't have premium, I'd be wasting at least an hour per day on ads.
When you essentially have a monopoly position, and most of your product updates are to improve your own revenue and not to make the customer experience better because you simply don’t have to do that anymore, eventually people will try to revolt and create alternatives. Because of the network effect lock-in, this kind of creativity (patching the existing monopolist’s app rather than creating a whole new service) is one of the more accessible methods of trying to improve the product. I’m not making a judgment on whether or not it is right, but from a purely providing-the-best-product-to-the-user perspective, I am happy to see alternatives flourish.
The NFT had nothing to do with the takedown. According to the Vanced team, it was taken down because the logo they used was too similar to the official one.
Could anyone who is familiar with Java/Kotlin/Android explain how does this work?
I tried decompiling YouTube App on Android to remove the ads some time ago, but I failed to compile it back because some kind of security thing did not allow the app to start.
At least they didn't make the copyright mistakes this time. Perhaps it would be better if this version of Vanced stayed difficult to install to avoid spreading it too wide.
How can people actually believe that? Sure, a 'deleted-an-hour-after-posting' tweet is what made Google muster up all their lawyers to take down an app that millions used to circumvent paying for YouTube Premium and/or watch ads.
It was a stupid coincident. Google would've killed Vanced sooner or later.
Yeah, maybe at the piracy trademark comission on pirate island... For obvious reasons Vanced had no trademark on anything and thus can't sue for trademark infringements.
They could possibly sue for a copyright infringement, but for that they'd have to prove that they do in fact hold a copyright on whatever they're suing for. They'd have to prove that (whatever) indeed is either (a) an original work that's protected under copyright or (b) it's a derivative work that's protected under copyright.
Most common law jurisdictions give trademarks as a matter of law just for using something in commerce. I think Vanced could have legitimately sued to stop another product called "Vanced" from using that name. What "obvious reason" would prevent them from having had a trademark?
Copyright infringement is a much stronger claim at this point if they were actually upset. Vanced obviously had original code, so to the extent ReVanced copies that without permission, it would be infringing.
I wonder if they fixed the bug Vanced had where you set mobile video to 480p and it kept trying to play 1080p instead even when your connection wouldn't support it.
I hope they get a version without MicroG requirement again. I like having an additional YouTube app installed that’s logged out without immediately getting the ad-infested free version. I used NewPipe in the past for that but that is constantly buffering for me and I don’t have a lick of experience with Android development to resolve that.
You make it sound like either/or but Vanced was never just about getting rid of ads.
I pay for YouTube Premium but Vanced was still appealing because it removes other things I don't want, like posts in my home feed, Shorts, YouTube Originals and sponsored segments of videos.
Vanced is about giving the user what the user wants, instead of what YouTube wants the user to want.
Other than just removal of ads, the vanced app enhanced the usability - like being able to hide the shorts, being able to set the default video resolution and default speed.
Not to mention sponsorblock - not that i use it, but i can understand people who do.
It's a subpar service not worth the price they're charging. Sure there are no ads, but they still track the hell out of you. I might as well use this free improvement of YouTube's app.
So why use it if it's not worth it ? Or is the time you spend on it not worth 11$/month ? I'd guess that if you use it less than 11/month would be worth - you probably won't mind a couple of adds when you occasionally do watch it.
The problem is we don't like being extorted. We're not gonna pay for the "privilege" of not being shown ads. Especially since that'll make us even more valuable targets for advertisers, videos will still have paid promotion segments and Google will still be collecting information on us.
YouTube red doesn't have Sponsorblock, pure black dark theme, turn off cast buttons among other layout options. There's probably other stuff but these are some stuff I would love in addition to YTRed.
you will use the features you're allowed to use and nothing more...
you will buy into the walled garden and lose your account for mis-behaving...
you will work 9-5 and do overtime over the holidays...
Various features, as also mentioned by other commenters:
- Sponsorblock
- AMOLED dark mode
- Swipe controls
- Miniplayer
- Improved resolution control
- Dislike Button
No. If your business model is ads, I won't support you. I'll find a way to block your ads and I'll tell everyone who will listen how to do the same. I don't appreciate being brainwashed just so creators can get paid.
But... The point is exactly that the business model is either ads or you pay directly. Your response is that because there's the ad option ( which let's face it, the vast majority of people prefer), you wouldn't pay to remove ads? That doesn't really make any sense.
You can't rail against ad-based business models and not accept the only possible alternative.
> Your response is that because there's the ad option ( which let's face it, the vast majority of people prefer), you wouldn't pay to remove ads?
Yes, I'm not gonna pay to remove ads. Paying doesn't actually remove all ads, just YouTube's, it won't do a thing to the paid promotion segments in videos. Paying also makes my attention even more valuable to advertisers, I want it to have zero if not negative value. It also doesn't stop adtech's endless tracking and surveillance capitalism, it encourages it.
> You can't rail against ad-based business models and not accept the only possible alternative.
That's far from the only alternative. You can charge money for your work up front. You can make a patreon, I've seen plenty of YouTube creators doing this with considerable success.
How would be your business model without ads if you owned YouTube then?
As a video platform owner, you should pay creators, you should pay for all the server costs which is capable of 4k+ streaming, besides you serve all the music and pay royalties.
Maybe you didn't know this, but Google is stingy as fuck in terms of the portion of ad revenue they share with content creators. Most content creators just see youtube as a way to get exposure, then they turn around and monetize other ways like sponsors, patreon, product sales, etc.
Do you have an actual source? Some numbers? Because 1k views=$1 is pretty good for a clips channel[0], and YT Premium views have always payed more than ad-supported views[1,2]. It's generally not sustainable to only rely on Adsense but it's a piece of the pie that most creators couldn't make up for overnight if it disappeared.
But for REALLY small creators that don't think they deserve a patreon or want to sell merch. I ran a very niche live-stream for a while, and the most steady stream of income for my live streams was from Youtube Premium users.
Youtube premium does not block sponsors so even if you buy the subscription you sometimes end up with 2-5mins of ads in video. The only way to get rid of them on mobile is with Vanced
I absolutely would, but Youtube Premium isn't nearly on the level Vanced is. Its just better in anything and makes the whole experience much better. I used it once and could never go back to the normal youtube app honestly.
Youtube Premium is not available in my country. I should not have to endure two unskipable ads at the beginning and middle of a two minute video because of that.
Every time this discussion comes up on HN I get downvoted for being completely against adblock. It's crazy how far people will go to justify taking food off other people's plate. Usually the argument about tracking comes up. As if it's used for anything other than attempt to sell you products and services. Completely screw over small businesses and screw the content creators. On a venture capitalist forum. The hypocrisy is unreal.
> It's crazy how far people will go to justify taking food off other people's plate.
We don't have to justify it. We simply don't want to see ads. That's the end of it. The second they insist on showing us ads despite our preferences, their software becomes malware and will be blocked.
And nobody is "taking" anything off anyone's plate. They're the ones sending us free stuff bundled with ads. We're just deleting the noise. Just like ripping ads out of magazines and throwing them away.
Exactly. Because you know what's better than paid shit ? Free shit. Especially if it contributes to me not showing ads _and_ costing Google. I am happy to steal your precious, endlessly reproducible bytes.
Nope. "Piracy" is just copyright infringement. It is literally just copying bits, no theft of any kind is occurring. The only loss here is the corporation's artificial monopoly rights which shouldn't even exist anyway.
I am genuinely concerned that you feel bad. But do you know how much money poor people pay to watch ads + all the scam ads they get (and unfortunately lose money). Seriously, test it. (I used to live in 3rd world and now use adblock)...
> Completely screw over small businesses and screw the content creators. On a venture capitalist forum
Then please try to screw VCs (not innocent people in developing world that want to see something for 1GB data per month and they lose so much money for ads). Sure please bill the VCs.
Am I taking food off other people's plate when I manually skip ads in podcasts I'm listening to? Do people who change channels on TV when ads start steal? Is it theft to toss ad inserts from a newspaper straight into trash?
It's because modern advertising's purpose isn't to tell people about a product they already wanted but didn't know existed (which would be fine), it's to cause people to feel a sense of fear/loss/inadequacy that they previously didn't and then present the product as a solution, or associate a product with something people love in a manipulative way, because those types of ads are worlds more effective at driving sales. That's cancer capitalism and a lot of people with principles rightly refuse to be a part of it.
> modern advertising's purpose isn't to tell people about a product they already wanted but didn't know existed
Yes.
> it's to cause people to feel a sense of fear/loss/inadequacy that they previously didn't and then present the product as a solution
Maybe a bit.
But, these days I think the real reason is the corrupctive influence ad money buys. Major media platforms censor at the whim of their advertisers. Content providers also do so.
Completely agree. I've seen websites delete whole pages and heavily censor remaining ones because somebody complained to Google that their sensibilities were offended. Advertisers should not have this power.
TBH, I'm very puzzled: is YouTube really that much worth your time and effort? Some might claim it's a kind of movement, or sorta free software, but, to me, it all looks like simply simple piracy, which is a highway to vendor lock-in.
Pirates act as if they are in control of their decisions, but, in reality, the company is still in control. Piracy is incorporated into the business model as an accepted risk, and the company will do their best to control the risk. You're at the mercy of the company, especially when the company in question is large and multi-national.
Also, anything you do "on the platform" will only empower the platform, furthering their abuse and exploit on users. The company will only care about the number of users and the total amount of revenue, and the number of pirates will always be too small to impact their metric. So, for the company, you're just a user who refuses to leave the platform despite of the misuse.
The only proper way to react to any sabotage against user is to leave the platform, even temporarily. Now some people will obviously come up with "lifestyle" issues, but one should realize that the lifestyle in question is something formed by the company and their products. It's variable by nature, and nothing constant, and, actually, can be changed with a surprisingly small amount of effort. (e.g. domain block)
Thus, if you really dream of better internet, you should not be making/using things like this. It's all a wasted effort, which will get easily buried at a snap of someone's finger, leaving no legacy that can be succeeded by others.
https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/13/22975890/youtube-vanced-a...