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Vanced: YouTube adblocker for Android

vancedapp.com

211–220 of 360 posts

Re: Vanced: YouTube adblocker for Android

#211

Asking this question in good faith and in the interest of a productive discussion: Can someone give me their reasoning for why to use this over just paying for YouTube premium? They're providing a service that you value and spend enough time on to warrant looking for a way to not have to view ads, and if everyone were to start using Vanced overnight, YouTube wouldn't be able to justify staying up indefinitely. It fee…

The same reason we all use(d) The Pirate Bay. Information deserves to be free, remember? We can distribute videos for free, you remember that, right? We can also pay content creators, who get ripped off by YouTube anyway. Ask them about that. Are you suggesting that HackerNews readers should also remove their adblockers? That we are bound by a Kantian moral obligation to be subjected to enticement and manipulation fo…

> (Personally, I don’t watch videos, and prefer to simply read books from the library, which somehow exists without the “support” of advertisers...)

Depending on what kind of library you're referencing: those books were purchased, and sometimes/often at more than consumer retail.

Re: Vanced: YouTube adblocker for Android

#212
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel content on the internet was free for so long, people just feel entitled to it. Now everyone is anti-ad, with most not being able to support an argument as to why targeted ads are bad (like any human at Google cares how user 1839028934 watches vtubers for 8 hours a day), but they still feel entitled to consume content for free.

Why would a "human" need to care? The algorithms which do things with your data you don't know are far worse.

>The algorithms which do things with your data you don't know are far worse.

I'd love an example.

Re: Vanced: YouTube adblocker for Android

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best way to support creators actually is to support them directly. Youtube takes half the ad revenue, and ad revenue generally doesn't pay much anyways.

If this were actually true creators would have paywalls. Fact of the matter is that YouTube and the visibility benefits the average creator tremendously. Only once you’re super popular like joe Rogan are you in a position to do better by yourself.

Many creators do a two-tier system where they release some free stuff and offer a paid Patreon or whatever.

It's not any different than game demos.

Re: Vanced: YouTube adblocker for Android

#214

Asking this question in good faith and in the interest of a productive discussion: Can someone give me their reasoning for why to use this over just paying for YouTube premium? They're providing a service that you value and spend enough time on to warrant looking for a way to not have to view ads, and if everyone were to start using Vanced overnight, YouTube wouldn't be able to justify staying up indefinitely. It fee…

I dislike Google's censorship. So I don't want them to make more money to engage in more censorship.

Why don't you completely avoid its services then?

Re: Vanced: YouTube adblocker for Android

#215

Asking this question in good faith and in the interest of a productive discussion: Can someone give me their reasoning for why to use this over just paying for YouTube premium? They're providing a service that you value and spend enough time on to warrant looking for a way to not have to view ads, and if everyone were to start using Vanced overnight, YouTube wouldn't be able to justify staying up indefinitely. It fee…

[deleted]

Re: Vanced: YouTube adblocker for Android

#216

Asking this question in good faith and in the interest of a productive discussion: Can someone give me their reasoning for why to use this over just paying for YouTube premium? They're providing a service that you value and spend enough time on to warrant looking for a way to not have to view ads, and if everyone were to start using Vanced overnight, YouTube wouldn't be able to justify staying up indefinitely. It fee…

- Because Youtube is run by a company that has money pouring out of every orifice; they don't need any more of yours. - Because Youtube is built on copyright infringment; giving it money is exactly like paying for an account on any piracy site to help keep it running. - Because even where there isn't infringment, Youtube has a broken compensation model you should consider not paying into. - If Youtube died, it would…

> Youtube[...] has money pouring out of every orifice; they don't need any more of yours.

I'm mostly concerned with money going to the content creators. If you're not watching ads and not paying for Premium, they get nothing.

> Youtube is built on copyright infringment

I think this is a [citation needed] kind of thing, I'd assume that original content and fair use content is the vast majority of their revenue. But I don't know that for sure either.

> If Youtube died, it would probably only be a good thing anyway for the whole video ecosystem.

Long term, I could see this being the case. Short term, I think a lot of creators would be displaced as they tried to figure out how to make it work in a YouTube-less world. People with large audiences would probably survive fine, but I'm not sure if some of my favorite > If you really want to donate money or help, pick some worthy cause, like kids with cancer or something

I don't look at this as charity, I look at it as providing an economic incentive to continue getting content from creators I like. But this is a "but there are starving kids in Africa!" kind of argument anyway, which doesn't really hold up if you try to scrutinize everything that way.

Re: Vanced: YouTube adblocker for Android

#217
post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My main consideration is for content creators, especially since the ad revenue is passed through to them. Any concern I have about YouTube not being able to sustain itself does not come from a place of caring about Google's livelihood. I also have a whole laundry list of complaints and gripes about YouTube and Google as a whole. But I'm probably not going to get much productive engagement from them airing those here,…

I would argue that the ethical thing to do in this case is used Vanced/blockers and then support the content creators directly. (I happen to pay for YT Premium now, but I understand and sympathize with objections to it and used Vanced before I switched to an iOS device). In fact, in that case, the creators see more of the money, and they get data indicating what stuff people will and won't pay for. That $15/mo. YT Pr…

This doesn't touch on how easy it is for the YouTube monopoly to never pass ad revenue to users and how it's in their favor to keep revenue information as opaque as possible. If it were a competitive market, perhaps blocking ads would be the bigger problem at play for creators trying to recover revenue through it, but that's just not the case even though OP is content dismissing the much more interesting discussion as "bad faith" or "unproductive".

Re: Vanced: YouTube adblocker for Android

#219

Asking this question in good faith and in the interest of a productive discussion: Can someone give me their reasoning for why to use this over just paying for YouTube premium? They're providing a service that you value and spend enough time on to warrant looking for a way to not have to view ads, and if everyone were to start using Vanced overnight, YouTube wouldn't be able to justify staying up indefinitely. It fee…

1/ I want free shit. 2/ I hate ads. 3/ Google not making money from ads makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. 4/ I also run and contribute to Sponsorblock because fuck your VPN ad. Nobody "values the service" of YouTube, that's bullshit HN founder talk seeping on every other subject. The reality is, there's no other source of videos (everyone is on youtube because everyone is on youtube), ads are a scourge, and th…

I'm with you on 2 & 3, but I don't align with 1 at all. Perhaps that's because I'm fortunate enough to have the expendable income to afford it, so it's easier for me to justify the cost.

But it's fair to say that "value the service" is kinda bullshit, I'm mostly talking about valuing the content, and paying for the service that makes it possible. I'd follow the content though, if it moved to a service with more agreeable terms.

Re: Vanced: YouTube adblocker for Android

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Because Youtube is run by a company that has money pouring out of every orifice; they don't need any more of yours. - Because Youtube is built on copyright infringment; giving it money is exactly like paying for an account on any piracy site to help keep it running. - Because even where there isn't infringment, Youtube has a broken compensation model you should consider not paying into. - If Youtube died, it would…

> Youtube[...] has money pouring out of every orifice; they don't need any more of yours. I'm mostly concerned with money going to the content creators. If you're not watching ads and not paying for Premium, they get nothing. > Youtube is built on copyright infringment I think this is a [citation needed] kind of thing, I'd assume that original content and fair use content is the vast majority of their revenue. But I…

>I'm mostly concerned with money going to the content creators.

This doesn't really hold up when you gloss over his discussion of the broken YouTube compensation model. Even though it's not salient to your biases or original conjecture to bring up that YouTube's compensation system is harmful for most creators, it seems unproductive to put your head in the sand about the issue and keep claiming that you want to see money go to content creators you support.

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