News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Vanced has been discontinued by indigodaddy on Sunday March 13, 2022 @07:21PM (#30666788)
I pay for YTM, so haven’t ever tried any of these Adblocking things for YT. I think $10/mo is pretty decent for a music service and also the removal of all ads from YT (which includes their fairly decent library of free movies that would be ad-supported without YTM/YTP)
Re:Vanced has been discontinued by rahidz on Sunday March 13, 2022 @07:25PM (#30666820)
I also pay for Youtube Music/YT, but I exclusively use Vanced on my phone, as it integrates with Sponsorblock, locks in a set quality setting (unlike the actual YT app which keeps kicking me to 480p when it feels like it), removes a lot of the cruft on the home page, and as of recently shows downvotes.
Re:Vanced has been discontinued by eins1234 on Sunday March 13, 2022 @07:44PM (#30666950)
Wow, how did I just find out about Sponsorblock? That makes this news even sadder. :(
Re:Vanced has been discontinued by MMS21 on Sunday March 13, 2022 @08:08PM (#30667087)
SponsorBlock is it’s own thing separate of Vanced.

https://sponsor.ajay.app/

Re:Vanced has been discontinued by eins1234 on Sunday March 13, 2022 @08:35PM (#30667263)
Yep, I know. I was just lamenting the loss of the ability to use it in Vanced. Maybe I'll try the Youtube mobile website + Firefox.
Re:Vanced has been discontinued by btdmaster on Monday March 14, 2022 @03:59AM (#30669605)
Re:Vanced has been discontinued by dspillett on Sunday March 13, 2022 @09:02PM (#30667412)
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 directly (if a sponsor-free version is available that way) or just not consuming it (at least not from that source).

Re:Vanced has been discontinued by Zircom on Sunday March 13, 2022 @10:45PM (#30668019)
Sponsorblock looks pretty harmless as far as affecting creators getting paid, it doesn't seem to do anything that can't be replicated by hitting your right arrow key a couple times so weird place to draw the line in my opinion. Pretty sure sponsors can't tell if people fast forwarded through the sponsored section.
Re:Vanced has been discontinued by TeeTwoLee on Monday March 14, 2022 @04:34AM (#30669819)
YouTube allows you to see the view drop-off at every second, so the creator of the video can see people skipping the sponsor section.

I’m guessing that sponsors probably look at click through or view count. I believe sponsors that care about views will ask to see this chart in the future if they don’t ask for it now.

Re:Vanced has been discontinued by 4ggr0 on Monday March 14, 2022 @02:27AM (#30669118)
I am on YouTube since around 2009. I have never, ever bought something a YTer mentioned in a sponsored segment.

They get paid just for talking about the products, what's the difference if I skip the segment manually, or if a plugin does it automatically?

Re:Vanced has been discontinued by addandsubtract on Monday March 14, 2022 @09:29AM (#30672170)
IMO, quality wise, sponsored segments advertise better products than the YT ads. In most cases, they are tied to the video/creator and the creator talks and advertises them because they themselves use it. They feel a lot more organic and targeted than anything the YT algo ever showed me.
Re:Vanced has been discontinued by 4ggr0 on Monday March 14, 2022 @10:20AM (#30672757)
Well, another problem that I have is that I watch a lot of videos from US-based creators.

For me as a european, quite a lot of physical items which are being sponsored are not available in my country, so the ads for these are essentially useless.

The rest of the ads are VPNs(which I already got), various SaaS which I have absolutely no use for or things I already know (and don't want).

Online ads are already annoying and useless to me, but sponsored segments are even worse.

At least I don't feel bad for skipping these segments because AFAIK, creators just have to integrate these segments into the videos, that's it. The advertisers can't know if I've seen the segment so the creator gets paid the same, doesn't matter if I watch or skip it.

Re:Vanced has been discontinued by potamic on Monday March 14, 2022 @03:12AM (#30669321)
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 by dspillett on Monday March 14, 2022 @04:39AM (#30669856)
> 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

On just that, yes.

But at least sponsor spots are just that, payment for advertising. They are not directly part of the global stalking networks. I don't object to advertising as a way of paying for things, I object to being followed around in everything I do.

Re:Vanced has been discontinued by Gareth321 on Monday March 14, 2022 @05:11AM (#30670097)
It's a grey area. YouTube, for example, pays content creators out of their subscription revenue from YouTube Premium. When I watch a video, they're receiving some of this money, even if I skip their ads.

Further, if I manually skip the ads, how is that functionally different to automatically skipping the ads? What if I turn off audio or avert my eyes? Are you arguing that I should have my eyes and ears glued to the screen when the ads are playing?

Re:Vanced has been discontinued by Underphil on Sunday March 13, 2022 @11:29PM (#30668248)
How is that taking money from the creators? They still get paid, and I don't have to watch a presentation about some garbage I'll never buy.
Re:Vanced has been discontinued by dspillett on Monday March 14, 2022 @07:35AM (#30671156)
> How is that taking money from the creators?

Long term if no one buys the sponsorships will fall off.

> I'll never buy

Of course if you know with absolutely 100% certainty that you'll never buy or mention to others (you might not need/want a WidgitotronAsAService, but maybe someone you know asks about them later) anything ever mentioned in a sponsor spot, then no there is no loss (and I envy your clairvoyance).

I consider it a politeness to the content creators to not automatically skip the sponsor slots. I do manually ship the ones I've heard a few times already, but you never know if the next one might have some relevance. Unlike stalky ads, the sponsor slots have some chance of being relevant to what I'm thinking about while watching that particular clip.

Re:Vanced has been discontinued by Underphil on Tuesday March 15, 2022 @05:18AM (#30683200)
I don't understand your argument. Me not watching the sponsors doesn't affect any of the other viewers of that video. People clearly DO support the sponsors, and that's fine. I don't and never have, not from a moral position but that I've never seen one that resonates in any way with me. When I say I skip them, I usually stick around long enough to hear the name of the product being peddled.
Re:Vanced has been discontinued by znowcone on Monday March 14, 2022 @09:41AM (#30672307)
I understand what you're trying to say but after watching the 972658th Raid Shadow Legends ad I just mash the right arrow as soon as I sense a segue to some sponsor because the chance that there's a good product behind a YT ad is around .3% and that's just not worth my time or attention
Re:Vanced has been discontinued by 2OEH8eoCRo0 on Sunday March 13, 2022 @08:10PM (#30667101)
Enabled the YouTube app to check it out and it's still trash. Quickly disabled.

It's not about the money- it's about respecting the user. The app is so full of garbage I won't pay for it. The day they shut down NewPipe is the day I just stop using YouTube on my phone and tv.

Re:Vanced has been discontinued by zachberger on Sunday March 13, 2022 @09:51PM (#30667695)
> it's still trash > The app is so full of garbage

Can you elaborate?

Re:Vanced has been discontinued by 2OEH8eoCRo0 on Sunday March 13, 2022 @10:39PM (#30667983)
It's just a conveyor belt of bs. I can't disable comments, chat, etc. I don't care about uploading shorts. I'm tired of constant redesigns or moving things around. I just want to see videos related to what I search for or channels I'm subscribed to.

I instantly feel like I'm capital to be maximized rather than a respected user when I open YouTube.

Edit: While typing this they felt the need to use a push notification for some breaking news video. Add it to the pile of bullshit.

Re:Vanced has been discontinued by ehsankia on Monday March 14, 2022 @02:58AM (#30669258)
> I can't disable comments, chat, etc.

Comments under video are just a thin 50px tall bar, just don't click on it? Just like you don't have to scroll down on the web. Just fullscreen and watch your video.

> I don't care about uploading shorts

Then don't press the shorts button?

> I'm tired of constant redesigns or moving things around

I don't think youtube gets that much redesign. On android, the biggest recent changes are dark mode (optional), making comment section smaller actually, and the chip filtering system.

> I just want to see videos related to what I search for

Then use the search button, it does just that

> or channels I'm subscribed to.

There's a tab dedicated to subscriptions, and it only shows chronological order of videos from your subscriptions, nothing else. You can also filter by a specific channel, or by tags such as (today, unwatched, etc).

> a push notification for some breaking news video

All notifications can easy be blocked, either at the app or OS level. Takes 3 clicks.

Re:Vanced has been discontinued by brailsafe on Monday March 14, 2022 @07:18PM (#30679817)
Saying something like "just don't click on it" to someone who has opinions about a dopamine farming enterprise is like putting a cake in front of a morbidly obese person and telling them "just don't eat it", or putting some victimhood story in front of a redditor and telling them "don't re-assure them it wasn't their fault and they're not alone". You may be right, but it's not very effective is it?
Re:Vanced has been discontinued by 2OEH8eoCRo0 on Monday March 14, 2022 @10:00AM (#30672538)
I'll stick with NewPipe or nothing.
Re:Vanced has been discontinued by Nextgrid on Monday March 14, 2022 @02:54AM (#30669241)
It's designed for "growth and engagement" as opposed to being a tool to serve the user. Dark & addictive patterns, etc. Not to mention that it's still a privacy nightmare even if you pay for Premium.
Re:Vanced has been discontinued by lfkdev on Sunday March 13, 2022 @09:46PM (#30667663)
So you have sponsorblocking and the dislike addon in your Premium version? No. Thats the problem, vanced was even better than Premium YouTube. I have no problems with paying 10$, but it will still be worse than Vanced :(
Re:Vanced has been discontinued by heavyset_go on Sunday March 13, 2022 @08:21PM (#30667161)
YTM cannibalized Google Music, and replaced it with a service with less features. I don't see $10/mo for a lesser product as a good deal at all.
Re:Vanced has been discontinued by indigodaddy on Sunday March 13, 2022 @08:58PM (#30667389)
I agree it’s not close to as good as GPM was, but the YTP package still holds enough value for me overall..
Re:Vanced has been discontinued by jyrkesh on Monday March 14, 2022 @01:23AM (#30668784)
Bums me out too...I've been so so disappointed by every change between GPM and YTP/YTM, but I can't pull myself away for anything else. Plexamp is fantastic, but it's not enough catalog for me (yet?), and Family is just too good of a value.
Re:Vanced has been discontinued by ehsankia on Monday March 14, 2022 @02:58AM (#30669264)
I'm curious what features did GPM have that YTM doesn't have?
Re:Vanced has been discontinued by Steltek on Monday March 14, 2022 @09:20AM (#30672087)
GPM had podcast integration. Being a cloud service, it synced state to all my devices.

Until last month, kids could not use YTM. With the family plan, this was basically a DOS for years (or setup new kids accounts and lie about their age).

IMO, GPM's recommendations were much better.

We kept the family plan because of YTP and my wife and I still had access to music.

Re:Vanced has been discontinued by ehsankia on Monday March 14, 2022 @12:49PM (#30674736)
I guess if you're a very casual podcast listener, and with the lack of proper migration path it can be confusing, but a dedicated Podcast app makes a lot more sense than the half-assed "podcast is music" integration that GPM had. If you've never tried it, a real podcast app is orders of magnitude better. Speed controls, feed management, silence trimming, auto download, archiving, etc.

The lack of kids support is very true. The free tier also was quite trash for a long time, and the lack of desktop casting. Most of these have been since fixed though and at this point I would say YTM has feature parity.

Recommendation is always hard to discuss as it's very subjective. That being said, YTM has great playlists. It automatically clusters your music into 7 playlists which is describes with 4-5 artist names. There's discovery, replay and new release mixes which are great too.

Overall, I agree GPM got shut down way too soon, but at this point YTM has made a lot of progress vs what it was 2 years ago.

Re:Vanced has been discontinued by izacus on Monday March 14, 2022 @09:23AM (#30672115)
> GPM had podcast integration. Being a cloud service, it synced state to all my devices.

Wasn't that just moved to Google Podcasts? (Although, something like PocketCasts IMO is a better service.)

Re:Vanced has been discontinued by Steltek on Monday March 14, 2022 @09:29AM (#30672169)
I had no idea that existed. From my perspective, the feature vanished into thin air. I wasn't a heavy podcast listener so this was kind of a Google Reader situation; I simply stopped listening to podcasts.
Re:Vanced has been discontinued by izacus on Monday March 14, 2022 @11:35AM (#30673658)
Google being Google in their product behavior ^^
Re:Vanced has been discontinued by spartanatreyu on Sunday March 13, 2022 @08:02PM (#30667053)
It's $15 a month here.

I don't think I can happily pay $0.50 every day just to be able to keep listening to the news after I push the lock button on my phone.

I'd be happy to support youtube if they actually supported their community and content creators, but right now, my opinion on youtube itself is that it's hostile to anyone who needs to use it.

Re:Vanced has been discontinued by sen on Sunday March 13, 2022 @08:16PM (#30667139)
> I'd be happy to support youtube if they actually supported their community and content creators

YouTube Premium does support creators, 55% of your subscription gets split among the creators you watch. The more you watch a specific creator, the more they get from your subscription. I've seen some creators say they get more from Premium users than from ad-watching users.

Re:Vanced has been discontinued by heavyset_go on Sunday March 13, 2022 @08:24PM (#30667182)
Google keeping 45% of subscription revenue is even worse than the 15% to 30% of app subscription revenue they keep.

For reference, Bandcamp pays creators 85% to 90% of the revenue they generate.

Re:Vanced has been discontinued by sumedh on Sunday March 13, 2022 @08:40PM (#30667295)
I am guessing Youtube's bandwidth cost will be higher compared to Bandcamp but that probably does not justify keeping 45% of the revenue.
Re:Vanced has been discontinued by Drew_ on Sunday March 13, 2022 @11:21PM (#30668203)
YouTube Premium offers a number of features on top of ad-free viewing including access to an entire music streaming service. It's actually a marvel that only 45% covers this.
Re:Vanced has been discontinued by spartanatreyu on Monday March 14, 2022 @08:51PM (#30680502)
They could give 100% of their subscriptions to content creators and I still wouldn't call youtube a supporting environment.

Examples of youtube's hostility include removing dislikes to please ad companies under the guise of user safety, terrible account recovery processes and allowing copyright bots to shutdown channels by spamming claims because youtube has placed the onus of proof on copyright creators, and not the ones actually making the claims.

Re:Vanced has been discontinued by old_man_jenkins on Sunday March 13, 2022 @08:21PM (#30667163)
While YouTube still keeps a lot of your money when you pay for premium, you actually contribute more towards a creator if you watch with premium rather than ads[0].

[0] https://youtu.be/-zt57TWkTF4?t=408 (Timestamp 6:50)

Re:Vanced has been discontinued by monetus on Sunday March 13, 2022 @08:32PM (#30667240)
VLC fills that need for me. Paste the YouTube URL into vlc and stream as audio, then turn off your screen. It even chromecasts.
Re:Vanced has been discontinued by joshstrange on Monday March 14, 2022 @12:57PM (#30674873)
I watch very little YouTube, probably <1h/mo on average but I continue to pay their $15 just so I don't have to see an ad. On desktop I can adblock but on mobile it sucks. I hate casting video (Chromecast) at a friends house and having to see an ad. For that alone I'll pay their stupid fee.
Re:Vanced has been discontinued by charcircuit on Sunday March 13, 2022 @08:57PM (#30667381)
It's not just ad blocking. There is a black theme which makes the background black instead of dark gray which is nice on an OLED phone. It also has the same brightness / volume controls as new pipe where you can just slide your finger on the video to change the volume instead of having to use the volume rocker. YouTube already gets money from me from taking 30% from all my superchat / membership payments.
Re:Vanced has been discontinued by freddie_mercury on Sunday March 13, 2022 @08:29PM (#30667222)
YouTube Music isn't available in my country. It is literally impossible to pay to remove ads for the 95 million people here.
Re:Vanced has been discontinued by ehsankia on Monday March 14, 2022 @02:59AM (#30669266)
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.
Re:Vanced has been discontinued by freddie_mercury on Monday March 14, 2022 @03:14AM (#30669333)
YouTube Premium is also not available.
Re:Vanced has been discontinued by nisegami on Monday March 14, 2022 @07:55AM (#30671331)
I've always used Vanced despite having YouTube Premium because the official YouTube app doesn't enable most of the Premium features for me without using a VPN.
Re:Vanced has been discontinued by deworms on Sunday March 13, 2022 @08:02PM (#30667056)
Financially supporting Google is the last thing I want to do. I'd rather flush the money down the toilet than pay for Youtube.
Re:Vanced has been discontinued by mdoms on Sunday March 13, 2022 @08:43PM (#30667313)
How about financially supporting the people whose content you consume?
Re:Vanced has been discontinued by omginternets on Sunday March 13, 2022 @10:49PM (#30668041)
You’re implying that giving money to Alphabet is a good way of doing that. I don’t think that’s even remotely true.
Re:Vanced has been discontinued by sreevisakh on Sunday March 13, 2022 @09:02PM (#30667421)
Content creators should create a patreon account or similar. YouTube is notorious for pulling the rug from under the creators. There is no shame in not wanting to fund it.
Re:Vanced has been discontinued by mdoms on Sunday March 13, 2022 @09:46PM (#30667667)
Many content creators do have Patreon accounts and I even support a few of them. But frankly I'm not going to subscribe to Patreon for more than a tiny fraction of the dozens of creators I watch on Youtube. I'd go broke.
Re:Vanced has been discontinued by bduerst on Monday March 14, 2022 @12:37PM (#30674563)
The fact your question is downvoted really speaks to the motives of content consumers.
Re:Vanced has been discontinued by indigodaddy on Sunday March 13, 2022 @09:01PM (#30667404)
Valid statement. Especially considering the multiple $5 subscriptions that a lot of Twitch consumers shell out at those they watch, $10/mo to support _everyone_ you watch on YT plus getting the no ads and YTM isn’t really that bigga deal..
Re:Vanced has been discontinued by deworms on Monday March 14, 2022 @04:36AM (#30669832)
Still a hard no, why would I pay when I get it all for free.
Re:Vanced has been discontinued by tcfhgj on Sunday March 13, 2022 @08:22PM (#30667169)
Same
Re:Vanced has been discontinued by benbristow on Sunday March 13, 2022 @09:07PM (#30667442)
I signed up for it via an Indian VPN. Well worth the (£1.30) $1.70 a month - in the UK directly it's a bit of a rip-off IMHO.
Re:Vanced has been discontinued by unixhero on Monday March 14, 2022 @02:40AM (#30669176)
Careful, maybe they will flag your account or something.
Re:Vanced has been discontinued by LeoPanthera on Sunday March 13, 2022 @08:39PM (#30667291)
And it's worth remembering that some/most of that money goes to the creators of the videos you watch.
Re:Vanced has been discontinued by benhurmarcel on Monday March 14, 2022 @05:40AM (#30670303)
It's $12/month, not $10.