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:
https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/13/22975890/youtube-vanced-a...
https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/13/22975890/youtube-vanced-a...
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.
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.
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.
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?