Vanced: YouTube adblocker for Android
vancedapp.com
vancedapp.com
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.
Anyway, personally I've moved my YouTube account to a dummy account.
The only times it's not working is because YouTube changed something and you need to download a new version which works pretty good with the appropriate repo in F-Droid.
I just added the repo to F-Droid: https://newpipe.net/FAQ/tutorials/install-add-fdroid-repo/
Why not just use RSS for Youtube updates? Or do you not use RSS at all?
Venced has sponsor block by default.
The standout features are ad- and sponsorblock.
In either case NewPipe has picture-in-picture playback and audio only playback. Not sure what else I'm missing from Premium.
I use google spread sheet script to manage a bunch subscriptions into different private playlists accessible via sharelinks in Newpipe. Allows me to keep things in sync with youtube account on other devices.
They started (for me) in the version that addressed the youtube change then the last two did nothing to fix them (for me) I used NewPipe for years many hours a day on multiple tablets and this recent issues are the only ones that's a showstopper - I'm on Vanced until the next update.
Advanced but without the ads = ~~ad~~vanced
SkyTube is a minimalistic Youtube Android client that can avoid ads when casting: https://github.com/SkyTubeTeam/SkyTube
For those of you using Android TV, I highly recommend SmartTubeNext, a Youtube client with no ads, and includes SponsorBlock[1]: https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTubeNext
I know there are some minimally sketchy kodi like distro images out there, I forgot their names at the moment..
Actually, I've considered installing an older version of Firefox and disabling updates. But I feel that might pose security risks, and if at some point there's a novel virus requiring updating, I'm afraid the shock might be too big, as compared to a little shock every few months. Still considering what's wise here...
Stay up to date or use the browser in a very safe environment in a way which does not have access to or use any of your personal information including accounts/passwords/etc.
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.
Maybe if ads were somehow banned and services would only exist on a subscription driven basis, we'd have have more content worth buying and less clickbaity stuff.
Why ban ads though? Fundamentally after you encounter a site that has ads once you can simply choose not to go back if the content isn’t good enough to justify seeing the ads, right?
Generally people like the content but don’t want the ads and aren’t willing to pay for subscription. News sites are the best examples of this.
Like newspapers. They had ads. So also had their digital versions. And hey. It was a fad. It would pass. A lot of execs did not take it seriously.
Why invest in a payment system for these few strange people online.
I won't be forced to watch ads or use a UI I dislike though.
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.
One fact does not nullify the other. I'm still allowed to hate ads while I support content creators.
It's not any different than game demos.
https://twitter.com/LinusTech/status/1486918784401088515?s=2...
Yeah, that's how they pay for the infrastructure. Imagine that.
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 audience... Or this website, indeed
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.
However, YouTube content goes through waves, at the moment burnt-in ads are pretty significant in longer form content and fairly annoying to skip through. This might get way worse and it's not the fault of pirates, YouTube policy or as simple as content creator greed (unless they are shilling a scam I suppose). I predict in the coming years we'll start to see some creators making noise about Premium's payouts changing or being unfair, not unlike the ongoing conversation about Spotify and other music services.
If he made this exclusively for Windows no one would have paid for it. But since he's made it for Mac, he's racked in hundreds of thousands of dollars.
I did the Patreon thing for a year and a bit. Small time "content creator", kind of a weird scenario - I felt the guy was both struggling financially yet didn't want to do basic things so people could tip him more. Brilliant videos though.
I don't support Google.
I would also gladly pay for YouTube Premium if they used purchase power parity matching. 12$/10€ for a digital content delivery service is not the same for the US, UK or Croatia.
If it cost 5€ monthly for YouTube Premium without YouTube Music, I'd be fine with that.
YT infrastructure costs money, content creation costs money. Everything costs money. You're getting it for free by watching ads. If you don't like it, pay for YT premium.
That is such a basic restriction that free YouTube places upon itself that ruins my main use case - listening to a couple of videos on my commute to and from work.
I don't want "all of the these features", I want background play, like it used to have.
I don't consume a lot, and a couple of the creators who are my "dailys" don't monetise with ads anyway. I also watch occasional YT on my TV via chromecast with the "full advertising experience" enabled.
The thing that irks me is that background play used to be part of the standard Youtube app (as far as I recall anyway), and now it's been taken away in what feels like a strong shepherding hand towards subscription - which annoys me enough to look for alternatives. (eg. I'm working towards migrating off gmail having been on the grandfathered free custom domain thing long enough to take free for granted).
If I see content I appreciate and then – for whatever reason – decide I'd like to support the creator, I'll probably just donate to their Patreon where they'll actually see most of the money I send their way.
If I pay for YouTube Premium and then I watch a video that wastes my time, I definitely do not want to send money to that creator but Premium will unavoidably do just that.
Why pay for games when you can pirate them? Why pay for the New York Times when you can read all their articles on archive.is? Are you saying you would prefer if YouTube locked everything down with DRM?
And I don't really buy the "I'll just support their Patreon" argument that a lot of people are using in this thread. Ignoring the obvious issue that you're depending on people to go out of their way to give the creator money, unless there's some kind of micropayment solution most creators just go from making some amount of money to making no money. A bigger cut of $0 is still $0.
But even so, YouTube videos are categorically different from video games in that merely by watching them once you consume their value. For video games one presumably may read reviews, play at a friend's house, etc before deciding to spend money on them.
Your Patreon counter-argument presupposes a conclusion though; that the creators deserve anything in the first place. For content I'm not willing to pay for, and which is offered to me for free, creators do not by default deserve any greater than $0!
It is up to them to convince folks to pay them for their content, and if they choose to host their content on YouTube they have made their own decision. Not all creators probably know that YouTube will offer their content for free without any advertisement-supported content, but that's their problem. There are video hosting options which do indeed require folks to pay for access, but YouTube is not that.
And as a side note, I'm a living counter-example to your $0 example, as I have myself donated to creators that published free content on YouTube in hopes that they will continue to produce it.
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.
There is a reason phrase like microtargetting exists. When a political group is able to target individuals using their platform, that's not okay.
It gets worse though, government surveillance is one thing, it's another when Corporations give them full access to their data. Or did we forget Snowden already?
I'd love an example.
At least you started off with by far your worst example. The alternative to credit scores is only the wealthy getting loans, full stop. Any alternative would require a human being combing your finances for hours, which would obviously substantially raise the cost of loaning money.
Besides that: I don't care about someone losing money because they actually have to sit down a human to verify data which is relevant. This is what humans are good for and if it cost you, you can put it on a bill.
I became anti-ad. I absolutely cannot browse the web normally without having uBlock Origin installed. Websites that place intrusive ads are responsible for this.
> they still feel entitled to consume content for free
Yes, and I agree with you. But even if YouTube became a paid service, Google would still find a way to track you and continue its shady privacy practices. There's some entitlement, but there's definitely some principles at work, too. YouTube is the last Google service that I use (beside Android...), and the earlier it implodes the better.
My mother told me about ads on Snapchat and I asked her: "Would you be willing to pay $2/months to not get any ads?". The answer is obviously "No".
We can all agree the web would be a more sustainable place if services were paid, but as you said: now we feel entitled to it.
Another way would be to charge for every photo you upload. Those that share more pay more, which would make sense.
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.
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 to laws/regulation the customer has the possibility to demand their money back if they've been misled.
The truth is that a lot of content on the internet isn't worth paying for.
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.
No - I'm referring to clickbait, chumboxes or low-quality articles whose primary purpose is to show ads - the content itself is only there to lure you into seeing ads and is universally hated even by freemium customers.
I suspect that there's a huge amount of content like this which subsidizes the platforms, ad networks and various middlemen.
People have the right to not be watched, no matter how "anonymous" it is. Why do you have a problem with that?
>Why do you have a problem with that?
Why do you have the problem with simply paying? Or simply not using any websites that have ads? Speak with you 'wallet' (in this case, view impression) if you will.
Never said I do.
You, however, seem to have a problem with the idea that not wanting to be tracked and watched is a legitimate desire. Why is that?
Targeted ads are a) that same manipulation but on steroids, and b) the result of privacy-damaging, pervasive, surveillance capitalism. I am against these things as a matter of principle.
For the record, I do pay for YouTube Premium, as well as the ad-free Hulu plan (rather than the ad-supported plan), etc. If I am given the option to pay to remove ads, for a price I consider reasonable based on the value I get, I will pay it. Most websites, however, either do not present this option at all, or require something ridiculous like a $20/mo subscription when the perceived value I get from it is an order of magnitude lower.
I recently clicked a link to an article at The Guardian, and, in their bid for donations, told me that this was the 18th article I've read in the past year. I wish more sites would do this, but I believe that my consumption of any particular news source is similar to that. I am certainly not going to pay for a double-digit monthly subscription for any site where I read just 2 (or even 5 or 10) articles per month; that does not feel like a fair exchange to me. I would be fine paying for articles a la carte (say, 5 or 10 cents each), but of course micropayments seems to be a dead concept these days (for reasons I understand and sympathize with).
Would love to see what would happen if YouTube went behind a paywall - even a low figure like $1.99 a month to view anything at all.
How would this change consumption habits, how would this change producing habits.
The idea is older than the 1993. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_wants_to_be_free
when it comes to the vast majority of the content on youtube, it was created by someone other than google with the expectation that it would be free.
There is now an expectation that people should be able to find and listen to any song they want on youtube (to a lesser extent movies and TV shows too), but that has less to do with how people feel about the internet and more about our broken copyright system and that most of that content used to be broadcast to the public.
If youtube were behind a paywall most people wouldn't spend as much time (if any) watching youtube videos and far fewer people would bother creating content for it. That'd be a losing situation for Google since they need the public's eyes on ads and a steady stream of data to mine from both content creators and viewers.
YouTube et al. are free. That's the whole point! The only reason anyone uses them is because they are free, as in free beer. If I crack open an incognito tab and go to YouTube, they serve me a page of videos, I click on one, and it starts playing. I didn't agree to anything, I never said "oh, but I agree I'll watch the ads/let the ads play/download the ads" in order to be allowed to watch the YouTube video. (armchair lawyers will make murmurs about "Terms of Service" and "End User License Agreements", which may in some cases technically be true in a legalese sense, but are clear cases of trying to weasel out of what's right in front of our faces, which is that these platforms are free).
YouTubes business model is to give things away for free and HOPE that they can advertise to you enough that it will be worth it. This is, in general, the business model of "the internet". The thing is, we've been at it for so long, that the businesses folks are starting to become entitled. It's been 25+ years and so many people have gotten in on this game (low level content creators are quite numerous) that now the opinion of the tastemakers is shifting to one of "yeah I am entitled to get paid for my work, and since I get paid when people look at the ads I facilitate, I am thusly entitled to have my audience look at my ads so I can get paid." It's a train of thought that seems to make sense, but all the creators are forgetting that that's not how their business model actually works, and that's not the deal any of us in any conscious way have agreed to.
I have a story I wrote a while ago that I feel captures what we're seeing with business people becoming entitled to owning our eyeballs, devices, and attention:
----------
By 2027 we live in a world were in every town there's a pizza place with a huge sign atop reading "FREE PIZZA". You park your car and queue in line for the order window; when your time comes you ask for a pepperoni pizza and you're handed a pepperoni pizza, no cash required. However, you're also handed a 3 inch thick stack of flyers advertising for random business and schemes. Well, you didn't ask for a phone books worth of paper, so you move to throw them into the garbage. Before you can you're stopped by an employee who gasps "what are you doing?!"
As though in answer to a question like 'why are you breathing', you reply "I'm throwing away these extra papers; they're very heavy."
"But don't you know that if people throw away the advertisements, we can't afford to give away the pizza?" moans the employee.
Feeling irritated, you respond "Well, it's my pizza now so I'm going to throw these away." You do, and with that you walk to your car and drive home.
The frustrated employee would, by 2030, move to management, where the business would seek to have customers sign papers saying that they can be hand-fed pizza by restaurant staff as long as that customer agrees, under penalty of death and enforced by on-site police, to sit with their eyes held open and stare into monitors showing advertisements on loop. Later in 2035, this nameless employee would receive a promotion to VP after coordinating a team of lawyers who successfully lobbied the US congress to legislate allowing the term "FREE PIZZA" to describe the process of "contractually and punitively enforced assisted hand-feeding in panoptic advertising environments".
Meanwhile in 2028, Europe would rule in favor of selling Pizza for $2 a slice.
I am served this when going to YouTube, which I have to agree to:
"Before you continue to YouTube
Google uses cookies and data to: Deliver and maintain services, like tracking outages and protecting against spam, fraud and abuse Measure audience engagement and site statistics to understand how our services are used If you agree, we’ll also use cookies and data: Improve the quality of our services and develop new ones Deliver and measure the effectiveness of ads Show personalised content, depending on your settings Show personalised or generic ads, depending on your settings, on Google and across the web For non-personalised content and ads, what you see may be influenced by things like the content that you’re currently viewing and your location (ad serving is based on general location). Personalised content and ads can be based on those things and your activity, like Google searches and videos that you watch on YouTube. Personalised content and ads include things like more relevant results and recommendations, a customised YouTube homepage, and ads that are tailored to your interests. Click 'Customise' to review options, including controls to reject the use of cookies for personalisation and information about browser-level controls to reject some or all cookies for other uses. You can also visit g.co/privacytools at any time. Privacy Policy • Terms of Service"
That's just small pieces of data about you, adding up, that can be requested by potential future governments which turned into totalitarianism.
The less data about us stored somewhere, the safer.
This is what is fundamentally wrong with the "targeted" part in "targeted ads".
At least you’re honest
I would like others to reciprocate by not caring about me more than I care about them.
So I can treat them as things. And I do care for the things I enjoy in life when I want them to stay or improve. Not because of the person behind (because, you are right, they don’t know me and I don’t know them) but because I care about what their work bring to my life.
The fact that someone is being able to make a decent revenue for this work is a nice externality that I like. But having great knowledge / content freely accessible is what I care.
However I’m not paying for YouTube Premium because I care about the content and not the platform. It wouldn’t make a difference for me if I had to use another platform.
Platforms should be subcontractors of the content producers. I don’t want to pay for the hosting platform but give my money to the content I love. And that a part of that money is used to provide hosting shouldn’t be my business.
I also use Hyperweb, so all YouTube links in safari open in Musi automatically.
2. So I can have access to a worse player ? Which is already impressive given how bad Spotify is.
3. youtube-dl.
4. Giving 0.000005$ to a creator for me watching 20 minutes of video is still Google rent-seeking
5. Fair enough. But then I'm trading one browser extensions that might track me (but that doesn't) for the certainty that Google will absolutely track me to vomit out more shitty AI recommended playlists. Not sure it's worth the tradeoff.
I should note that I've had Youtube premium on all the accounts in my household for a few years now, so it's possible things have changed since. My guess is that it would have only changed in the direction of "more ads" though, not less.
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 for Google’s balance sheet? Will we get kicked out of Capitalism if we don’t acquiesce and watch the ads?
I guess I’m an amoral Bad Boy. Antinomian. A rebel, with strange views on religion, morality, information, and economics - heretical, unspeakable views, that I shall not utter here.
PS: I’m concerned about exposing my mind to advertisements. The risk to the computer, which is but a tool of the mind, is entirely secondary.
Outside of a purely P2P system like Peertube, how would you distribute videos for free? Are there not server costs?
Depending on what kind of library you're referencing: those books were purchased, and sometimes/often at more than consumer retail.
> if everyone were to start using Vanced overnight, YouTube wouldn't be able to justify staying up indefinitely.
How likely is this though? For example despite adblockers already being widely available, it seems that a significant portion of internet users if not most don't actually use them.
- 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 probably only be a good thing anyway for the whole video ecosystem.
- If you really want to donate money or help, pick some worthy cause, like kids with cancer or something; the Googles of this world don't need your charity.
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 < 50k subscriber channels would stick around. But these are all guesses.
> 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.
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.
But like I said, I don't know specifics to strongly hold that view and publicly argue it. _That_ would be putting my head in the sand. I need to read up a bit more and see what content creators are saying about Premium. I was hoping that prompting this discussion would lead me to some more good info on that.
To be clear, you went as far to omit it from your mostly dismissive response despite your contradictory view underlying your original assumptions, you didn't simply take a stance of uncertainty.
> I have a bit more research I want to do before I take strong public stances on it
>I don't know specifics to strongly hold that view and publicly argue it.
You took a strong public stance on its negative externalities already and that the Premium model is actually a solution before knowing specifics about even how views are broken down into ad revenue, this doesn't hold up.
You're putting your head in the sand about arguments that don't seem salient to your original conjecture. You seem to only want only additional info to disprove your biases - not prove them, and YouTube has an incentive to keep that information private.
>I was hoping that prompting this discussion would lead me to some more good info on that.
This doesn't hold up given the above points about misrepresenting your original strong public stances and providing no information as to why your biases are correct.
How does that compare to just donating directly?
> I haven't personally seen any content creators explicitly dissuade people from paying for Premium.
If they were to do that anywhere in YouTube, you'd think that would be some kind of TOS violation.
It's definitely less effective than monetizing creators directly, I think that's the best option when it's available, and you have the time, energy, and motivation to do it. But if I watch just 2 or 3 videos from somebody but don't seek to support them outside of the platform, I prefer that they get _something_ for the value provided rather than nothing. I'll admit that I'm a bit lazy and it's convenient to have YouTube directly transform my views into dollars for them.
> If they were to do that anywhere in YouTube, you'd think that would be some kind of TOS violation.
I highly doubt that. Just search for videos about de-monetization or the dislike count removal, people make videos criticizing the YouTube platform all the time. But I'd be happy to be proven wrong if there's some special language around their paid subscription specifically.
> 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.
My account was blocked until I was able to produce proof that my address was effectively in South America, so I had to spend all the time there with a blocked account.
When I came back to Germany I tried contacting customer support again to unlock the account and I had to deal with a couple phone calls and emails, costing me time.
I never want to have such an ordeal to remove some ads.
I'm sure most are aware just how well Google will be regardless of whether they bypass ads or not.
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, so I targeted my question to the HN audience.
Youtube could communicated the number of blocked ads, and lost revenue, to the content creators. Content creators could either push the Patreon route (this seems required for any remotely controversial topic), or encourage watchers to disable ad blocking for their videos.
The best solution I've found to this is to support content creators directly. Subscribe to their Patreon, Liberapay, GoFundMes, etc. Most YouTubers who sincerely try to make a living from their content already do this. Or just disable adblock for a video or two.
It's not productive or in good faith discussion to flip the focus of an examination of negative externalities on those individuals avoiding ads once that is brought up, but again, the largest contributing problem actors are not what you care to talk about.
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 Premium budget could easily go to supporting content creators.
Content creators are screwed, long term, if they continue to rely on ad revenue, because both the ad companies and the platforms have incentives to keep the content creators' cuts as low as possible. Creators need revenue sources not under external control.
There's no need to add insult to injury and pay them.
I personally find categorical imperative arguments to be ridiculous. almost anything could be bad if everyone did them all the time.
the reality is that adblocking, torrenting, and similar workarounds are used by a small subset of technically savvy users. most people just don't care enough to configure any of these tools (or even switch to a browser where they are on by default!). Google is not going to run out of ad revenue any time soon.
I don't feel any obligation to allow Google to use my own device and internet connection to serve me ad content that I don't wish to see. Google doesn't seem to care very much either; the most they do is reorganize APIs every so often to break these kinds of workarounds. I'm not sure that's even intentional tbh. content creators have reacted by embedding ads in the content itself. this is usually more tolerable than the preroll ads, so I don't really mind.
I do agree there is a cost to adblocking and torrenting, but it's not the one you identified. when I pay for content or view associated ads, I am voting for more of that type of content to exist in the future. when I don't pay or block ads, I am throwing away my vote. for most throwaway content, I don't really care. but I find a way to pay for stuff I do care about, or at least disable adblock while I'm consuming it.
Btw..... This is in good faith but...... If everyone started using electric cars at once, the traffic jam would be unimaginable!!!! To me, individuals aren't thinking of the negative externalities :(( (especially to private oil monopolies)
I'm sorry, GGP.
That was actually my #1 reason for using an ad blocker: to prevent ads from trying to exploit security vulnerabilities and hijacking my web browser. It's exceptionally rare, for sure, but I've had ads on legitimate web pages forward me to an advertising site with no input from me.
These days, though, the web is god damn near unusable without an ad blocker, especially on mobile. So much bandwidth (That I'm PAYING for! Data isn't free!) is wasted on content I don't want. I've seen a page have TWO ad videos playing at once, taking up well over 40% of my screen.
Advertisers can cry me a god damn river. If they didn't make ads so damn intrusive, I wouldn't need a blocker. I don't even care about trackers, at least they make my ads relevant so I'm not seeing ads for Tampax.
Now if only there was an easy way to block the god damn "WE USE COOKIES!" alerts.
The Chrome extension store has you covered!
I am using one called "I don't care about cookies" and I rarely see them these days.
Given the overhwelming negative response to how cable priced and bundled channels, and the simplicity that competitors like Netflix have, I'm not sure users would prefer that.
The core issue for me is that what YouTube provides isn't valuable enough by itself for a monthly payment.
They don't produce their own content like Netflix, they are at best a video distribution platform, I can pay to creators I watch via Patreon but to YouTube itself, that's complicated, they would have to get a very low share of the creator revenue to start to feel convincing.
That's disingenuous because you're omitting the other half of the transaction: You are choosing, voluntarily, to consume the content that they are offering on their website. The implied arrangement is that you watch the ads (at least the first five seconds until the skip button appears) in exchange for them doing all the work of collecting, hosting, and delivering that content to you.
Now obviously the financial value involved is de minimis in the case of a YouTube video, but nevertheless you're taking service and declining the payment.
The actual offense is so vanishingly small that they basically don't care enough to do anything about it, but let's be honest about what's really happening here. They're not just sending ads to you for no reason without your consent.
The transactional relationship morality being posited is more appropriate for relatively equal parties, or for the stronger party to give the the weaker party. For the weaker parties to owe stringent obligations to the cosmically stronger party creates a positive feedback loop of oppression. You might reply, but that's how the economy works. You have now advanced one step in your understanding.
And they are choosing, voluntarily, to serve you videos unbundled from advertisements.
Regardless, there is a loss, and they'll respond to it when it becomes significant enough.
edit: uBlock Origin has over 10,000,000 users, according to the chrome web store. I can only imagine something will change soon, or there's some serious technical debt holding things back.
Yes, just like it's less of a monetary loss for you to install an ad blocker than subscribe to YouTube Premium!
What if the delivered content is subpar?
I have watched ads (ie paid with my attention).
How do I get my money back?
Those strong words would need a real, clear contract between google and the user.
"We serve you a video and we track everything you do, allmost wherever you go online"
I haven't seen it spelled out by google like this and surely this is genral knowledge around here, but most people still don't have a clue about the general concept.
In either case, even if the ads are blocked, you still pay with your data, by being tracked what you watch and when you watch it - and in combination with always online smartphone controlled by google - with whom you watch.
In other words, if it would be only about ads or no ads and just the service, I would agree. But this is not the case, so I also have zero question about moral with this one. It is more about self defense of your attention.
So yes, we need other payment models than advertisement. But I doubt this can come from google, no matter how much I would pay them, for a single service.
YouTube Premium
this is essentially a rehash of the "what constitutes unauthorized access to unsecured resources?" debate. my personal opinion is that access cannot be unauthorized when the authN/authZ mechanism does not exist at all. others may disagree.
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 features or features that (a) prevent or restrict the copying or other use of Content or (b) limit the use of the Service or Content;
```
It's not a matter of "disagreeing" on what is allowed or not. If you don't agree with the ToS, you're free to not use the service. Let's not fool ourselves here.
In contract law, you have to sign up to the contract. One side can not just assert that the other side agreed to some terms unless they can show that this happened.
Let's not fool ourselves here
Surely, some ToS are poorly written. Still, the owners of the service decided that those were the rules they want to play by. If they go against some law in a certain country, I'm sure a court would invalidate them in specific cases. Do you have reason to believe Youtube's ToS is unethical or shouldn't carry moral weight (specially the #2 paragraph I quoted)?
> But the majority of companies (web or otherwise) have excessive and dense TOS to which the average person cannot give informed consent to anyways.
YT's ToS seems pretty straightforward. Do you think the paragraph I quoted which talked about obstructing the service is written in excessive legalese? Was it unclear somehow?
Now, i'm sure that if everyone did suddenly download Vanced and Youtube's largest profit funnel, mobile devices, ceased to exist, they could quickly whip up a system that does all it can to block video views without an attestation ticket vended when the ad server thinks you've watched the ad(s). At that point it'd be pretty clear cut that watching without any sort of indirect or direct payment is not allowed.
Morally, if you really get that much value out of YouTube, you probably should be paying for Premium even if you use Vanced or newpipe, if just to resist YT's shorts feature or other features that don't improve the quality of the main video experience. Premium views payout much more money per view to content creators than any ad would, especially if you have otherwise never bought something by clicking or engaging with the ad.
That's clearly not the case. A better model is that Google has tried to limit your options to "either do business with us or don't watch popular media", with only partial success because a lot of people don't like either option. I think the truth of this model is betrayed by the fact that Google has not (yet) embedded the ad in to the same video stream as the content. They have not really tried to out-block ublock because they'd rather you steal youtube videos than support a different platform.
I don't like the ads either, so I pay for YT Premium. I want to support the creators that I watch, and I don't want to suffer ads.
That I get YT music included and save on not having to subscribe to Spotify is a little bonus.
Yet Google, like Microsoft back in the day when piracy of Windows was rampant, would rather adblock users still use their site. They have the means to make it close-to impossible to watch YouTube with an adblocker, but they chose not to.
Clearly they believe that adblock users still provide net-positive value to them.
Clearly they believe that shoplifters still provide net-positive value to them.
Which is obviously bs, just because they don't stop you from doing it doesn't make it a net positive from them. It could just as likely mean that the time and effort to stop it is more expensive than the losses they would incur.
They are offering you a service with two options to pay for the service. Either by watching ads or paying a subscription. You are choosing to consume the content without paying.
1. The parent commenter seems to be quite candid and sincere, so I don't think the word disingenuous applies here.
2. YouTube has decided NOT to obligate all users to view ads in order to retrieve content from their servers. The public needs to accept NO Terms of Service to curl a video down from their servers.
3. There is no such "implied arrangement" when it comes to YouTube's servers which YouTube provides to the public. Yes, some such arrangement is clear when using youtube.com or the official YouTube application. That distinction is critical here.
Also as some side-commentary from a utilitarian perspective, since this discussion seems to have a distinct moral slant. If one opts to view YouTube with ads – instead of without them – is that action increasing or decreasing the net human well-being in the world? Given that no laws are broken and no crime has occurred, this seems to be the last remaining question we must answer.
And it seems quite clear to me that the alternate world where video-bandwidth is NOT purchased with human attention spent on advertisements seems to be, in nearly all ways, an improvement on what we have today.
You have to enable it manually and it works amazingly well.
Linus from LTT recently raised this point.
Content creators are facilitating the business model of Google and most big business on the internet, which is that they give things away for free (yes free, I don't have to do anything or sign any contracts to watch a YouTube video) and they hope that advertisers will pay for the chance at their ad to be seen by people watching. Nowhere in there does the audience get a say, nor is the audience asked for their consent, nor is the audience forced into any kind of actual contract that the audience clearly understands.
Content creators, having lived in this world created by Ad-tech for so long, have grown entitled to the eyeballs, the attention, and the time of their audience. The train of thought goes like this:
"I'm entitled to be paid for my work. I get paid when my audience watches ads. Hence I am entitled to have my audience watch ads."
But that isn't true at all! They're entitled to be paid by the advertiser according to whatever terms that creator has with that advertiser. The creator though has no agreement and no terms with the audience so NO, the audience has no obligation to do anything for the content creator.
If content creators aren't comfy with this situation, they can try to actually build an agreement with their audience, where the costs and the payments are clearly laid out. That's hard to do so few do it, but that's the actual, ethical thing to do instead of complain that users aren't watching ads; if watching ads was actually ethically required then lowering the volume or looking away when an ad plays would be decried as piracy, and while I'm sure that'll happen once eye-tracking starts being built into the mobile app, it'll be as stupid to complain about then as it is now.
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 there's very little _actually worth the time_ on YouTube.
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.
It replaces some enhancements that are normally done via browser extentions and I personally find it extremely handy to be able to copy with a timestamp, set a video on infinite repeat, restrict video bandwidth on a finer scale (the native app removing this baffles me), set a default playback speed and reenabling tap to seek (another baffling change).
I happily support creators and alternative platforms (Nebula, Floatplane) via direct channels, and personally I don't find the service or youtube as a platform worthy of support.
So now, yes, I get a better YouTube experience by removing ads on my mobile device; but, I'm now paying Google money so they can make money off my viewing habits.
Increasing a video view count entices the video producer to create more. More content = more views from users who see ads.
To be frank with you I sleep really well knowing I'm not directly contributing money towards tech giants getting even more powerful while at the same time not completely alienating myself from popular culture.
That's not to say that there aren't better ways to make that living than ad revenue. I much prefer direct monetization.
- YouTube Music is trash. I was an inside early adopter and all of my feedback was ignored. I originally subscribed for Google Play Music (which was pretty good) but I switched back to my own collecting.
- They removed email subscription notices.
- YouTube Originals were awful. They took some of my favourite creators to make slightly better content that I can no longer share with my friends. Not to mention that you were never notified of these videos because they were completely different from normal videos in all of the YouTube UIs. (Thankfully went back on this, but I had left by that point).
- Videos always play at 360p on my 4k monitor. I need to manually up the quality at least 90% of the time. My internet is fantastic and I never see a stutter after raising the quality.
- The recommendations are always awful. I don't use them often but when I do it is all things that I have already watched.
- They keep trying to turn auto-play back on. (Although to be fair this isn't new).
- It still has ads! They just promote the Premium content (that I don't want) instead of other ads. Sure, less obtrusive but still annoying. Just let me use the damn service I have been paying for for years.
I understand the argument that I shouldn't be using the service if I'm not paying for it. In fact I don't use an adblocker on most sites because of this belief (I just back out of obnoxious sites). However 1. I've paid enough that I consider it fair for years of future viewing and 2. costing YouTube money is actually beneficial to me, because if it were to fold the content would move somewhere better.
To me YouTube is a great example of the cost of forever quadratic growth. They had a good product, it was profitable with ads or profitable if people payed for Premium. But they need to keep sucking more value from users otherwise their shareholders get angry. But I've been sucked dry and I'm quitting.
At the end of the day, you just have to put in the legwork to make things optimal for your use case, because they'll never care about you anyway.
I doubt this. Youtube provides google with a lot more than a means a push ads. It gives them massive amounts of data about the viewers and the content creators to mine for their own use. They collect that data if you view ads on the platform or not.
The official YouTube app also sometimes just decides that 480p is enough for everybody and refuses to play any higher resolution until I force-close the app from the Android settings multiple times. Since using NewPipe I have never experienced a video playing in another resolution than the highest available.
Plus, since Google/Alphabet is doing everything they can to funnel as much money away from the EU via various tax avoidance systems, I don't feel any shame. I try to donate to the creators via various channels, if one is available.
The purpose of these apps (including Vanced) is not solely to get past ad-block; Vanced (and NewPipe, and Piped, and Invidious) do far more than just give an ad-free viewing experience -- they provide a breadth of quality of life features on top of usually being more privacy-friendly.
The frustrating thing about this is that we can avoid these questions if commenters would just click the link and read.
I primarily use NewPipe. I enjoy the benefit of not having ads, but more than that, I enjoy the simplicity and the drastically lower system resource usage.
Given the above, it seems pretty darn obvious why the GP thinks that the real selling point of the app is to block ads. If this had been submitted as "Vanced: YouTube app with an AMOLED black theme", do you think it would be at the top of the frontpage?
That's exactly the point! YT Premium just give more data points to Google to track (by thing to your IRL identity) and don't get rid of all ads.
I use newpipe though.
a) Live with ads, thinking that's the norm or not giving it much thought, or, b) Subscribe to Youtube Premium without considering the possibility of ways around it.
So, realistically speaking, the probability of everyone starting to use Vance overnight is almost zero.
I also used to feel the same: why can't people just use adblockers!? Then I realized that me and the type of people I normally interact with != the general public, atleast in terms of tech-savviness and/or curiousity.
There is almost no way someone could break the monopoly by making a better video sharing platform, not even Google could do it, that's why they bought a rapidly growing market leader instead of making their own failed copycat (Google Plus, anyone?).
So there is absolutely no connection between this reality and the "fair world" fantasy you describe, that could maybe apply to copyright, torrenting etc., but not adblocking on monopolistic platforms. The amount of money and ads views you generate for Google is a monopoly rent, it bears no relation to the value of the platform or its operating costs in a competitive market, or any other justifiable and "fair" income.
Ads in software are just a case of a computer not doing what you have asked it to do. It has always been ok to ignore ads - putting them on computers does not make them special in any way.
This is just my parenting, and I can imagine that other people want their children to value other things - and I might change things as they get older so they can understand how the ads work. Right now, they are not ready for that.
Good. I find the idea of Google having an effective monopoly on video streaming disgraceful.
I have given YouTube money via memberships as they take a 30% cut.
YT Premium only makes the problem worse by still allowing native ads and requiring you to log in using an account that is tied to your real world identity (for payment processing).
You just end up giving more data points to Google to track and don't get rid of all ads.
"YouTube files bankruptcy and closes it's doors because people aren't willing to watch advertisements and executives could think of no other source of revenue to keep the doors open."
That's never going to happen, because the executives would be fired for incompetency. If advertising suddenly becomes a non-viable revenue stream, YouTube (and internet video hosting in general) is not going to disappear.
In fact, I ACTIVELY WISH we would drop the advertising model, and I will not support it if I have any alternative. It is a poison on the world and a giant economic waste. The world would be much the better place if YouTube (and the internet in general) gave up on advertising entirely.
Honestly if YT goes kaput I'll just use digital radio. No skin off my back.
NewPipe is open-source and the interface makes more sense to me.
I think Vanced preserves Chromecast compatibility (correct me if I'm wrong) which NewPipe can't do.
https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/releases
Vanced appears to be a cracked/modified version of the official YouTube app.
Also I tried to find something similar to put on my iPad and my god it's annoying. iOS allows you to sideload app if you have a dev cert (not too sure on the details) but you have to renew the cert every 7 days or so, so you need to keep a server app running in the network to automatically renew the cert for you.
I'm not sure which way you meant it, but to be unambiguous: That's way worse.
For a year now I have been using YT exclusively on desktop, until I learned about Vanced recently. It has be a godsend as I can finally watch videos on mobile.
Edit: after having a look I prefer NewPipe still.
I don't what other sites you browse, but like I said, you can't avoid it on reddit. Here's a highly upvoted post [1] currently on the front page of /r/pcmasterrace
https://old.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/szcq7m/browsi...
Paying for things is not hard.
Except when you don't have a money allocation for a premium service
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.
There's no benefit to me to have Google (or anyone else) stalk me so why let them do it?
If you're looking for a Linux / Windows equivalent, try Freetube. To me, they're essentially the same app for different platforms.
I can do this on desktop with browser extensions, but there's no equivalent solution on mobile.