Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Vanced: YouTube adblocker for Android

vancedapp.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 360 posts

Re: Vanced: YouTube adblocker for Android

#271

Post by bdlowery »

Nextgrid wrote: post #259
bdlowery wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me too. That’s why I pay $12 for YouTube premium. That’s like, what, 30 cents a day per month? Paying for things is not hard.

I have a problem with paying for something that has been a basic capability of every computer made in the last 20 years. Not to mention, the obvious issue that paying for YT Premium requires you to provide valid personal details to Google (for payment processing) and remain logged in. That's way more tracking potential compared to Vanced/NewPipe/Invidious/etc.

Google doesn't care about you as much as you think.

Re: Vanced: YouTube adblocker for Android

#272

Post by traspler »

wbobeirne wrote: post #18

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 don‘t use Vanced but something similar for iOS. I actually do pay for YT Premium but what the app also gives me is SponsorBlock, so thanks the other viewers flagging sections in videos, it will also skip baked-in ad slots. As I have YT Premium and assumed that the creators get paid for their baked-in spot according to their reach (channel size, engagement, etc) and not how many people don‘t skip that section of the video, I don‘t feel bad but frustrated that I have to go so far to simply watch videos without getting constantly bombarded with ads. If my assumption is wrong I would be grateful to get more info on how these baked-in ad spots are arranged.

Re: Vanced: YouTube adblocker for Android

#274

Post by bduerst »

Nextgrid wrote: post #253
bduerst wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because the demand for subscription content is magnitudes less than ad-subsidized free content. Even if you made a hybrid model, the content isn't that interchangeable. The type of customer who pays for a subscription is going to consume vastly different content than the freemium customer.

> the demand for subscription content is magnitudes less than ad-subsidized free content. A lot of ad-subsidized content only "works" because by the time the user realizes that the content is subpar it's already too late and they've "paid" and can't take their money back. This wouldn't work in a scenario where an explicit action needs to be taken (to agree to pay a fee) before consuming the content, and/or where due…

>A lot of ad-subsidized content only "works" because by the time the user realizes that the content is subpar it's already too late and they've "paid" and can't take their money back.

Citation needed, because this sounds more like preference projection of someone who prefers subscription content than the majority of actual ad-subsidized content consumers. Again, the type of customer who pays for a subscription is going to consume vastly different content than the freemium customer.

Re: Vanced: YouTube adblocker for Android

#275

Post by Root_Denied »

wbobeirne wrote: post #216
kazinator wrote: post #57

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…

>>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.

I read it more as being a historical record kind of thing. Early days when youtube was first getting content it was a repository for all sorts of copyrighted content - music, movies (clip 1 of 20 style due to upload limits), scans of entire books and comics being put up. It was really the wild west of "throw every piece of media at the wall and see what sticks" in terms of what was on there.

There's a fair argument to be made that youtube gained a lot of visibility as a platform in hosting that content and outcompeted places like vimeo, metacafe, etc., as a result.

It was the acquisition by Google that provided the resources and talent to start building out automated systems to detect media and issue a strike (as well as pay the CDN fees and build the hosting network for such a load). Youtube today doesn't rely on copyright infringement for sure, but it certainly took advantage of it in when it was first starting out.

Re: Vanced: YouTube adblocker for Android

#276

Post by whyoh »

BipolarCapybara wrote: post #29
xwx wrote: post #8

Vanced is pretty good. It seems like it's just the official YouTube app but with premium for free. Newpipe is another ad-free YouTube app. https://newpipe.net/ It's FOSS and doesn't use your Google account, or any of the YouTube APIs. You can still manage subscriptions but you have to import them manually.

In my expierience New Pipe is lacking. The fact you have to reimport the subscriptions manually is very tedious, besides I've found New Pipe breaks often and it won't let me load videos. It's pretty cool for listening to music while the screen is off, but I wouldn't recommend it as a daily Youtube driver.

>The fact you have to reimport the subscriptions manually is very tedious

Why not just use RSS for Youtube updates? Or do you not use RSS at all?

Re: Vanced: YouTube adblocker for Android

#278

Post by datagram »

Taway_vncd wrote: post #132
endisneigh wrote: post #19

Funny how people want content but don’t want to support content creators via ads or paying for YouTube Premium. The internet in a nutshell. Ironically if people weren’t so avoidant of paying for digital content, ads, and the subsequent tracking, would’ve never emerged.

There was a time before ads on the internet, and there was content there. Great content even. I would love to see what people create when they do it just because they want to, on their own terms and their own time, rather than chasing what will be self-sustainable or profitable. This still exists in some places. Archive of Our Own is a great example. SCP is another. Wikipedia and StackOverflow too, for this website's…

Serving content at the scale of the modern internet costs money. Archive of Our Own costs over $200,000 a year to run: https://www.transformativeworks.org/otw-finance-2021-budget-...

StackOverflow definitely has ads as well as an enterprise offering, and Hacker News regularly advertises jobs for YCombinator companies and it itself effectively a giant YCombinator ad.

Re: Vanced: YouTube adblocker for Android

#279

Post by nonbirithm »

Two things about adblock that I've noticed:

1. Apps like Vanced are probably going to become necessary once first-party tracking and ads start being adopted. YouTube has proven that if there's enough incentive, DNS-based adblocking like pi-hole can be rendered useless. But the fact that Vanced is a reverse-engineered application means that the barrier to entry for contributing is significantly higher than if a runtime more open to extensibility were used, like the browser's. A hypothetical shift to WASM applications might end up becoming another step in such an arms race.

2. AdBlock is likely the only reason I've spent hundreds more hours on YouTube that I wouldn't have if I were forced to watch ads. I consider ads a waste of time like many people, but my degree of distaste for them has led me to reflexively back out of any service where adblock is not an option. An example of this is Twitch, where the ads are directly injected into the video stream. As a result, I don't use Twitch. I have to wonder how many hours of time this has saved me in the long run, because I have a susceptibility to some of the content their algorithm recommends me. If every known adblock method is ultimately defeated in some hypothetical timeline, I'm reasonably certain that my distaste for ads will win out against my addiction to browsing article headlines. I have to wonder where all my newly restored attention away from the Internet would go in that case, and if I would ultimately turn out to be a happier person.

Re: Vanced: YouTube adblocker for Android

#280

Post by FabHK »

EMIRELADERO wrote: post #260
gtirloni wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this is essentially a rehash of the "what constitutes unauthorized access to unsecured resources?" debate Youtube's Terms of Service[0] specifically say: ``` The following restrictions apply to your use of the Service. You are not allowed to: ... 2. circumvent, disable, fraudulently engage with, or otherwise interfere with any part of the Service (or attempt to do any of these things), including security-related fe…

Since at no point in time am I forced to read nor agree to those terms, I don't think they can be used as an argument.

First time you go to YouTube (at least in Europe), it shows a cookie banner containing a link to the ToS. (Try it from a private mode browser window.)
Post reply on HN