ReVanced
github.com
github.com
https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/13/22975890/youtube-vanced-a...
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!
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.
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.
Bless the musicians, every one.
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?
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
As a useless button to click? I would assume youtube removed the actual functionality in the backend so what's the point of the button?
(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)
I've been using it since 1998, never felt the need to change to anything else.
But re-using a proprietary app and patching it is IMHO crossing the line.
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'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.
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.
/s of course
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 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.
> 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.
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.
> "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]
[0] https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/content-removal-polic...
[1] https://www.thegamer.com/taketwo-dmca-takedowns-gta-mods/
[2] https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/software/youtube-dl-re...
which would be bad if the repo had any copyrighted materials. But does it?
they can do it exceptionally slowly and specifically
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Edit: overlooked your comment and did not see you mentioned a smart TV.
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.
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.
They also aren't stalking you around everything you do on the Internet in the name of targetting.
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.
For starters, it supports sponsorblock which is even more adblocking. Secondly i think ux is miles better
You dont need root but you need to manually download and install it
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
This works very well.
Edit: nevermind, I've completely misread your comment to be about Pi-hole :)
Can it also turn on/off tv? I think HDMI allows that but not sure if Pi can do that
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.
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)
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 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.
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.
Both of these are Open Source Software.
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.
- decompile using apktool
- make changes
- recompile apk using apktool
- zipalign apk
- sign apk (using the apksigner.jar) with a certificate
Tools like uber-apk-signer really help to do the last three steps
more like, trademark mistakes. Patching and redistributing a proprietary app most definitely violates copyrights.
It was a stupid coincident. Google would've killed Vanced sooner or later.
Revanced patches the locally installed version, so hopefully that means they'll be in the clear
I wonder if the original "vanced" can now file a dispute over this project's name?
1. ReVanced has a disclaimer that they're not affiliated, which helps make sure people aren't confused.
2. The Vanced people probably are glad someone's continuing their efforts after they're no longer able to.
3. Vanced has been discontinued and taken down, so it's no longer "used in commerce", so I think the common law trademark should cease to exist.
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.
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.
(edited to remove incorrect statement)
You're not hurting YouTube by blocking ads, you're hurting the people who get ads from their videos.
Just pay for Youtube Premium - its no different than Spotify or Apple music price-wise and people shell out for that without thinking every month.
LinusTechTips made a video specifically about the issue of Vanced from the perspective of a user as well as a creator.
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.
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.
Replace "see ads" with "pay money." Pirates are thieves and content theft is piracy.
They do so hoping that I'm gonna look at the ads. I'm not obligated to make it happen.
> 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.
Yes, the hypocrisy is unreal.
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.
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.
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.
0: https://youtu.be/aaoVlFVqYuk?t=20
1: https://www.dailydot.com/upstream/totalbiscuit-youtube-red-p...
2: https://twitter.com/LinusTech/status/1486935690315112455?s=2...
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.