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Vanced has been discontinued

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Re: Vanced has been discontinued

#291

That's disappointing. I was in awe on how much better an alternative modded app was, when compared to the official one from Google, which supposedly has the "best" developers working on it.

> supposedly has the "best" developers working on it.

they are the "best" at satisfying the corporate demands of google, rather than consumer's demand.

Vanced is very much focused on improving the user experience. Sad to see it go - i hope they leave behind a way for others to do this very same mod in a way that google cannot cease and desist.

Re: Vanced has been discontinued

#292

Surprised it took so long to be honest. It was so good and unlike with other youtube alternative clients, you basically had almost 1:1 feature parity over the official app. Plus you had the option to disable almost all the recent UI changes easily and a sponsorblock integration. It was much much more of a threat to Google than newpipe or less "normie" friendly alt clients, and it was getting too popular for it's own…

I'm surprised they did not have a plan for this. I thought Vanced would be based in a more "rebel" country like Russia, which is what Sci-Hub does. A Cease and Desist letter from Google would be meaningless there. Were they trying to pull this off in the USA, or other Western countries?

Russia would not have been ideal just based on current events though...

Re: Vanced has been discontinued

#293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, how did I just find out about Sponsorblock? That makes this news even sadder. :(

I draw the line before sponserblock. At that point you are taking money directly from the content creators, not YT or other platforms. I held out on blocking ads for some time, until it became impractical to avoid drive-by attacks other ways and the amount of stalking involved got _really_ creepy. If sponsor segments irritate me enough that I'd consider sponsorblock then I choose between paying for the content direct…

Isn't that a contradictory argument that it's okay to "take money" from platforms but not content creators? They are both service providers with the objective to earn revenue.

However, I do not believe that blocking ads is taking money from providers. I think if your business model involves displaying ads, you must factor in the cases where consumers are not interested in said ads. Otherwise where do we draw the line? What if the consumer is letting the ad shows but not watching it? Will we mandate eye tracking? What if the consumer is mentally tuned out? Will we mandate brain implants? What if the consumer takes a principled stance of never purchasing anything they see in an ad? Will we mandate consumers mandatorily convert a certain percentage of ads that are shown to them? It's gonna delve into absurdity and a consequential threat to human well being. I wish society could just reach a common ground that it's a fundamental right that people are allowed to block ads by whatever means they see fit.

Re: Vanced has been discontinued

#294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YouTube Music isn't available in my country. It is literally impossible to pay to remove ads for the 95 million people here.

I may be wrong, but I think Youtube Premium should still be available in countries without YTM, but at half the price since you don't get the music half.

YouTube Premium is also not available.

Re: Vanced has been discontinued

#295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly YouTube should have a way to disable shorts in app. They're trying to pull an Instagram and stomp on TikTok's grounds, but it doesn't feel like it's working and it feels like how Instagram went from being a simple photo sharing tool to being a bloated mess with four major interfaces in one.

You say you don't feel like it's working, but that might just be because you're no longer part of the new generation and have a different expectation of what "video content" is. Like it or not, the Tiktok format is very popular, and while a large part of it is the recommendation algo, Google isn't exactly a slouch in that area. I have it on good authority that Shorts is both experiencing steady growth and is the fast…

I feel like it's objectively not working and this is coming from someone who's spent a good amount of time on both TikTok and YouTube Shorts. TikTok has an actual community of original content creators and people trying to remix content that other's have made using sounds, duets, and stitches. YouTube is mostly reposted TikTok content (which loses context due to the lack of sounds, duets, etc.) and clip aggregators who just repost clips from popular memes/viral videos/TV shows. They aren't even in the same ballpark in terms of quality.

Re: Vanced has been discontinued

#296
post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is in the bait and switch tactic they employ. They started by offering the service for free and without ads till there were no good competitors. And then they switched to showing obscene amount of ads. Most users and a good bunch of creators are unhappy about the way they ruin the viewing experience. If YouTube declared their true intentions at the beginning, we wouldn't be yearning for competent alter…

YouTube has been running ads from the start and specifically video ads for 15 years. They've been paying creators via revenue share of those ads for 14 years. Something like 95% of the growth of that site has happened after the switch to video ads. The argument that it was a bait and switch seems pretty hard to justify.

This is a bit disingenuous because the ads from 15 years ago are very different from the ads today. Additionally, YouTube didn't even have ads (of any form) for the first few years and once they did roll them out, it was only given to specific creators who applied to be YouTube partners or people who were part of a network like Machinima or Maker Studio.

Today, there are pre-rolls, post-rolls, unskippables, multiple ads in a single ad segment, mid-rolls, etc. That's significantly more than the ads from years ago. Also, ads often supports copyright claimants instead of the actual content creators.

Re: Vanced has been discontinued

#297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, they only deserve to be sued in your ethical system. To me, adding features that I can't even get if I pay isn't unethical, it's commendable.

I'm a NewPipe user. I just think distributing a cracked version of somebody else's app calls for being sued.

I'm glad everyone doesn't think the way you do.

Re: Vanced has been discontinued

#298
post #132
post #62

For those who have the ability to do so, please make an Archive of all the Vanced Versions before the download links are taken down https://mirror.codebucket.de/vanced/

Vanced was proprietary, it's too bad for users but I won't shed a tear for its developers and would actually advise against doing anything that keeps it living. The very fact that there is a need to get apk archives before the links die is an artifact of being proprietary and would not have been an issue with Libre Software. The only way that makes sense for all of us as a democratic society is to keep control, and t…

They had to keep it so, otherwise the exploits they used to modify the app would have been right in the open and countered immediately. They did keep its package manager open-source. It's the same with cracked Spotify builds, the famous xManager is open-source but the cracked builds it summons aren't.

Re: Vanced has been discontinued

#299

NewPipe [1] is an open-source alternative, although latest versions of Vanced will supposedly keep working for the foreseeable future [2]. [1]: https://newpipe.net/ [2]: https://nitter.net/YTVanced/status/1503055442506915846#m

A great issue for me with NewPipe is the fact that it does not support signing into an account. The developers claim it's a feature that will not be implemented. Without the great music recommendation system I might as well just listen to my Jellyfin song collection. What value does YouTube even have without recommendations?

That's strange, I take steps to explicitly avoid its recommendations.

Re: Vanced has been discontinued

#300

NewPipe [1] is an open-source alternative, although latest versions of Vanced will supposedly keep working for the foreseeable future [2]. [1]: https://newpipe.net/ [2]: https://nitter.net/YTVanced/status/1503055442506915846#m

A great issue for me with NewPipe is the fact that it does not support signing into an account. The developers claim it's a feature that will not be implemented. Without the great music recommendation system I might as well just listen to my Jellyfin song collection. What value does YouTube even have without recommendations?

Each person uses it differently. I hate YT recommendations, they just promote whatever pays better, including low quality and simply incorrect content ("science"). All I'm using for years is a flat list of channels. I've been able to remove more from the list, then I add, and still use youtube as a substitute of a TV.

Lack of sign in in NewPipe was a positive change for me.

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