15 ms·

Vanced Discontinuation

200 points by chagaif 5y ago

H8crilA 5y ago
> The main source of income for youtube isn't ads. YouTube revolves around the merchandise and YouTube Premium subscriptions. Lol. You can open Alphabet's 10-Q or 10-K and find out in a matter of seconds how untrue this is. Reminds me of the famous "Senator, we run ads <suppressed smile>" by Zuckerberg.
- LewisVerstappen 5y ago
  > Reminds me of the famous "Senator, we run ads <suppressed smile>" by Zuckerberg. Why? Zuckerberg wasn’t lying when he said Facebook makes their money from ads though.
  - HWR_14 5y ago
    Indeed. IIRC, there were quite a few issues with his testimony obfuscating things. But he was pretty blunt about the business model. I thought the point of the clip was how out of touch the Senator asking was.
  - yunohn 5y ago
    Yes, and H8crilA is saying YouTube also exists off ads revenue.
  - paxys 5y ago
    Exactly. Zuckerberg wasn't even smiling when he said that, just incredulous that the US Senator who has summoned him to DC and is questioning him in front of millions of Americans doesn't know the first thing about what he is saying.
- RealityVoid 5y ago
  You seem to ignore that the incredibly annoying ads are a prime reason people even buy premium in the first place.
- ZephyrBlu 5y ago
  They're referring to creators, not the platform. For creators it's absolutely true that merch brings in more revenue than ads, and I assume by premium subscriptions they mean channel membership. I also assume English isn't the author's native language because there are some small grammatical and structural quirks like this platform vs creators thing. It's very readable though!
  - rryan 5y ago
    That makes no sense. Why is "YouTube Premium" capitalized?
    - ZephyrBlu 5y ago
      YouTube Premium is an actual product, but as far as I'm aware it doesn't generate much revenue for creators which I why I assumed they meant channel membership. https://www.youtube.com/premium https://www.youtube.com/premium
      - dragonwriter 5y ago
        > but as far as I'm aware it doesn't generate much revenue for creators I’ve heard that per viewer it brings in a lot more than the per viewer ads revenue from non-Premium viewers. Not sure what the typical viewer numbers for each are; probably depends on the channel a lot.
      - dmix 5y ago
        Offtopic but I bought YouTube Premium a few months ago and it's 100% worth the money. YouTube ads are aggressive and it turns out I used YouTube all the time. I didn't really notice until I started paying for it how much time I spent having to wait for ads to end or skipping them. Now I get angry every time I end up in YouTube via incognito when using social media and an ad plays.
        jthrowsitaway 5y ago
        uBlock origin will fix this (assuming you're using Chrome or Firefox.)
bhaak 5y ago
> The vanced team will "NEVER" make its source code public. Making the source code available on the internet can cause serious complications for us. How would Google have acted if the source code was open source from the beginning?
- Shared404 5y ago
  My understanding is that Vanced was a patching of the official Youtube App, so already on somewhat shaky ground. If Vanced took advantage of vulnerabilities in the Youtube App, or the source code could point to them, I could see Google reacting poorly to start out with - though afaik (not a lawyer, also not your lawyer) it's legal to distribute source for a patch for a proprietary program and instructions to apply it.
  - kadoban 5y ago
    I'm not a lawyer either, but: I'd worry that something Vanced was doing was technically in violation of DMCA, or at least could be argued to be in violation by someone with several billion dollars.
  - Anunayj 5y ago
    IANAL, but I do not think patching a app violates any copyright at all, as long as you distribute the patches and download the app clientside. A very good example of this would be Bukkit (which itself is licensed under GPL) , which patches Minecraft Server JARs to provide a stable modding API to work it. Infact the story itself has quite a interesting turn, so it turned out sometime later Mojang decided to "buy" Bukkit. (aka pay it's lead developers to give up their copyright), and what they (incorrectly) supposed from this was, that they would be allowed to distribute direct bukkit binaries (afterall they own minecraft), that was until one of the Bukkit contributers decided to DMCA the website. I'm unsure what the current situation around this is, and how they sorted everything out in the end. [1] https://twitter.com/jeb_/status/502380018216206336 https://twitter.com/jeb_/status/502380018216206336
endisneigh 5y ago
> Some users believe that Google had sent cease & desist letter because the Vanced Team had posted NFT to earn money out of the vanced project. The Vanced NFT was never sold in the end. Besides, it was done as a joke and nothing more. Says everything you need to know about NFTs
- simulate-me 5y ago
  What does this say about NFTs exactly?
  - klodolph 5y ago
    That they’re schemes to make money that don’t withstand scrutiny or solve problems better than the alternatives.
  - IMTDb 5y ago
    > What does this say about NFTs exactly? "it was done as a joke and nothing more." can pretty much describe NFTs
    - lucb1e 5y ago
      A joke that somehow a lot of people seem to fall for? And you take their actual money rather than, at the latest after payment, revealing it was just a joke and refunding the money?
- mkdirp 5y ago
  All stuff they posted prior to shutting down pointed to this NFT not being a joke to be honest. Seems like their claim that it was a joke is more about damage control than it being true.
  - lucb1e 5y ago
    I didn't use vanced before since the open source newpipe fulfilled all my needs, so this is the first I heard of vanced doing some cryptobro token stuff. So without knowing more than just what is written in the OP: when I read in the same paragraph that "we didn't get to the point of selling" and "besides, it's just a prank bro"... yeah, clearly. Could be true, I suppose it doesn't really matter now, but I'm not convinced. I also read it as trying to save some reputation.
charcircuit 5y ago
>The vanced team will "NEVER" make its source code public. Making the source code available on the internet can cause serious complications for us. There shouldn't be issues as long as you are sharing them as patches unless they didn't own the rights to the code they added.
kayson 5y ago
I'm really sad I missed the boat on Vanced by one day. I'd heard about it for a long time and randomly decided to finally start using it only to find all the download links had been removed the day before. Youtube ads have become horrendously annoying. Does anyone know if the apks can be found on any archive site?
- silentsea90 5y ago
  Do you subscribe to anything on the internet? Perhaps Spotify, your internet connection, Netflix? Have you considered their premium offering, or do you think YT should be free and without ads?
  - DocG 5y ago
    How does your comment help? YT premium still doesn't give all the Vance's features. I can buy premium and still use Vanced for features that YouTube does not offer. Or maybe I don't support YouTube adding ads to unmonetized videos? Or is it my way to fight back, how they roll over small creators to trolls?
    - drusepth 5y ago
      I'd never heard of Vanced before today. What features did they offer that YT Premium doesn't?
      - spartanatreyu 5y ago
        Dislikes are a pretty big feature. Also sponsorblock which is a must for some people. And picture-in-picture mode was great. I could watch the news while seeing how close an uber was to me without having to switch apps.
        charcircuit 5y ago
        btw the regular YouTube app has picture in picture. Without premium you can't use it on "music videos."
squarefoot 5y ago
> Vanced is discontinued for "legal reasons" as vanced was infringing the logo and branding of the original YouTube app as the logo resembles the original logo in a similar way and was used without taking prior permission from Google for using the branding. Huh?!? That was the only reason behind the C&D letter and they killed the product when a simple logo redesign could have solved the issue? Or the C&D letter would have voided any attempt to do that? Something doesn't add up.
- toxicFork 5y ago
  NDA?
  - 3np 5y ago
    Why would they sign one? A gag-order does not seem super likely, but more-so than an NDA.
  - stjohnswarts 5y ago
    More likely just legal threats to say "this is the opening shot, but these are the cruise missiles we have aimed at your bank account and life in general". Lawyers don't care, they will destroy you and your loved ones (edit: obviously not physically but legally and financially) and sleep like a baby at night.
- DocG 5y ago
  Seems legit. I think they think it's a warning shot, they are now on Google's list. This letter is a "nice" way of saying - guys well you are now on our list and shut down or well force you to shut down. Smart play, rather end on a high note, without months and months of C&Do letters and axety and stress. Learn and move on.
  - netsharc 5y ago
    It could be that Google says they're infringing on the logo design, and Google demanded that they stop distributing the app due to this. "We were also asked to remove all links for the distribution of any vanced apps that led to the decision of discontinuation." Whatever the second half of that sentence may mean in plain English, the whole article is hard to parse.
Aaargh20318 5y ago
> Vanced is discontinued for "legal reasons" as vanced was infringing the logo and branding of the original YouTube app as the logo resembles the original logo in a similar way and was used without taking prior permission from Google for using the branding So if this is the actual reason, shutting down completely seems a bit of an overreaction. Why not just get a new logo and rebrand the app ?
- that_guy_iain 5y ago
  Because Google probably had more than just your logo looks like ours.
- bradleybuda 5y ago
  It’s a get-rich-quick scheme, not a get-rich-by-putting-in-a-little-bit-of-work-when-presented-with-adversity scheme.
- derefr 5y ago
  My impression is that they aren’t legally allowed to reuse any of the source code that was ever used in vanced. But if they create a new thing as a new team and claim that it shares nothing with vanced; and, critically, they never release the source code from the original vanced (which presumably hasn’t been subpoenaed); then they can reuse the source code, because nobody will know the difference. This, presumably, would be what they mean by “complications” if they release Vance’s code: it’ll retroactively prove that their new """unrelated""" project is actually related after all.
  - UncleMeat 5y ago
    > because nobody will know the difference Bytecode inspection is a thing. It isn't too hard to know if two apks share a large amount of source.
    - kasabali 5y ago
      Bytecode inspection works both ways in this case. Vanced itself is based on decompiled bytecode of original Youtube app. Another team can build on top of Vanced app just like Vanced devs built on top of Youtube app. So we wouldn't necessarily say whether it is using a hypothetical "source code" leaked by Vanced team or not by bytecode inspection (nor would it matter much).
DonBarredora 5y ago
>The vanced team will "NEVER" make its source code public. Making the source code available on the internet can cause serious complications for us. What would those complicatiosn be?
- post_break 5y ago
  Someone else could make a better version of it. But if I had to guess, they are using some internal tools or hacks to make it work the way it does.
  - grishka 5y ago
    Top-secret internal tools like jadx, apktool, the Android SDK, and a text editor? This is all I used to build my patched version of Instagram.
    - kapildev 5y ago
      1.How many hours did it take you to make the patched versions? 2. If you wanted to open source how you patched Instagram, how would you avoid lawsuit?
      - grishka 5y ago
        1. I didn't count, but probably less than 24 2. I don't keep my sources closed, I did publish them on xda-developers[1], but they've changed things around a lot since then and the links in my post broke. I need to reupload them somewhere. I avoid lawsuits by not being related to the US in any way whatsoever. And either way I don't think patching someone else's code is illegal, especially since no DRM is circumvented in the process. Making "get an official apk first" the first step, instead of distributing decompiled smali files, probably also helps. [1] https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/app-mod-4-4-instagram-without-ads-and-annoyances.3927066/ https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/app-mod-4-4-instagram-wit...
      - Nextgrid 5y ago
        > If you wanted to open source how you patched Instagram, how would you avoid lawsuit? Operate as if you were operating an underground drug marketplace or worse. If those technologies are able to thwart international law enforcement investigations, they're definitely strong enough to protect you from Facebook, not to mention that nobody will burn a zero-day to make Big Advertising happy when that zero-day can be better used to take down multimillion-dollar drug marketplaces (or worse). If clearnet infrastructure is needed, put it in a country that gives the middle finger to the US. Being located there is also a huge bonus. Alternatively, support copyright reforms and campaigns for privacy laws and their enforcement (which is currently lacking when it comes to the GDPR), so that such projects become unnecessary. In the meantime, don't use such services as much as possible.
Ftuuky 5y ago
Time to move into NewPipe, I guess
the_common_man 5y ago
NFT being a joke is such a lie
- manuelabeledo 5y ago
  Isn’t it? Outside its niche, where do you hear of NFT if it’s not to make fun of it?
  - meibo 5y ago
    I believe the person you're replying to is referring to the vanced team claiming that their NFT offer was a joke, not the concept of NFTs.
jrm4 5y ago
Broadly, I think it would be a mistake to read this with the idea that you're going to get the truth out of it. This smells very much like CYA spin. Not mad at all of course, do what you gotta.
- kebab 5y ago
  They're saying here that YouTube makes most of their money through merchandise, and not ads. Which just isn't true.
ethanpil 5y ago
Perhaps this was a Quash-then-Hire and while Vanced is gone the developers are now Googlers with some NDA agreement...
chagaif 5y ago
Here's a link to the post in the official Telegram channel it was posted in: https://t.me/Vanced/207 https://t.me/Vanced/207
moneywoes 5y ago
Dumb question, could they just not change the logo?
- OmegaDungeon 5y ago
  That's the reason this write up doesn't make any sense because they did do that, the old logo was just the YouTube logo with a gradient and a line, the new logo is much closer to NewPipe's and they dropped the YouTube from "YouTube Vanced"
- arlcode 5y ago
  Google probably said something like: "For now we ask you to not use our Logo and trademarks anymore and if you comply by shutting the project down, we are happy to leave it at that. If however you decide to continue we will come after you for the numerous other issues this project has such as the fact that it is an unauthorized modification of our official youtube app, primarily used to deprive us and our partners of income. It's your choice" Google lined up their troops and fired a warning shot. Vanced recognized their unwinnable position and surrendered.
4oo4 5y ago
So they couldn't just redesign the logo/app to be dissimilar enough from YouTube? I really want to know what these "complications" are, this is the sketchiest way I've seen someone refuse to open source something. > The vanced team will "NEVER" make its source code public. Making the source code available on the internet can cause serious complications for us.
- neurostimulant 5y ago
  They basically decompiled youtube's apk, modify and and repackaging it as Vanced, so off course they can't release their "source code" because it's not theirs (except the modified parts).
  - 4oo4 5y ago
    Makes sense, that's basically asking for trouble.
rryan 5y ago
> The main source of income for youtube isn't ads. YouTube revolves around the merchandise and YouTube Premium subscriptions. > If you are talking about creators who are not earning money for using vanced, you should know they won't make millions out of those ads. ... right. Feel free to keep telling yourselves that.
- kebab 5y ago
  Last I heard YouTube makes 20 billion in ad revenue, and creators get like 45% of that
loxias 5y ago
This part jumped out at me: > The vanced team will "NEVER" make its source code public. Making the source code available on the internet can cause serious complications for us. ??? Anyone have any idea (or even guesses) as to what that's about? Does the source contain a murder confession?
- sodality2 5y ago
  The trademark issue probably was resolved with "shut down and don't release source, and we won't sue you for your past violations"
  - jesprenj 5y ago
    Either that, or they will continue with Vanced under another unrelated name, possibly with sponsors and monetized, and do not want any competition.
roastedpeacock 5y ago
Not an attorney, but I suspect two mistakes the YouTube Vanced team did with the project is having "YouTube" in the name (Could be considered as a false association and trademark violation by Google or YouTube), and redistributing complete APKs that were modified YouTube APKs that would be under copyright. I have not looked into the inner works of this, but on device patching of APK DEX classes from a set of patches is possible. Would not require root as long as it generates a patched APK and installs that using the standard PackageInstaller. That is probably a less risky proposition then distributing modified APKs themselves.
- chakkepolja 5y ago
  Wouldn't patches still be considered derivative work?
  - ntauthority 5y ago
    One could argue it does, one could also argue it does not. If a company wants a quick takedown of something it feels 'isn't right', having to rely on something like that with limited precedent (and a high risk of setting the wrong precedent for them) is a lot more difficult, so you're more likely to not get C&D'd/sued over such - but if you then do something that is easier to sue over, like trademark infringement or more outright copyright infringement, you're likely getting hit for one of those whenever a company 'disliking you' notices instead of them trying the 'hard' arguments.
- franga2000 5y ago
  Yeah binary patching would basically solve this issue and wouldn't be any more of a hassle for the user than vanced already was. For a similar example, see the way most alternative Minecraft servers download and patch official binaries on first start (they started doing this due to getting a bunch of DMCA takedowns a few years ago). With a bit of effort, Vanced could even have the download page perform the patching and signing in JS/wasm, then include the privkey in the app so it could download, patch and sign new copies of itself on the fly. Or, for better security, have a web service that signs any APK that matches a set of hashes. Clients patch the APK locally, then send it in to get signed - everyone now has byte-identical APKs, but Vanced severs never technically distributed Google's binaries.
cuteboy19 5y ago
> The vanced team will "NEVER" make its source code public. Making the source code available on the internet can cause serious complications for us. is it possible that Vanced actually contained Malware/Cryptominers and therefore they dont want to open source it?
chakintosh 5y ago
They killed it themselves when they tried to profit off of what is basically piracy with some NFT bullshit. That was utterly moronic.
- JellyYelly 5y ago
  You should read the article, it says they didn't even sell the NFT and wasn't part of the C&D.
- shabier 5y ago
  Agreed. I think a smarter approach would've been to release the patches and other changes separately, and had the official YT app be patched locally. This, however, could probably not work on non-root devices.
asimpletune 5y ago
It sounds like they're making it really clear that they've "killed" the project, probably so they can just start another one that doesn't have the same issues. I wouldn't be surprised if they just form a new LLC, and transfer the old code as IP between the two, tweaking the offending assets and calling it a day.
- stemc43 5y ago
  that would be amazing. i really hope to not have to use firefox mobile with ublock.
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    Check out Invidious.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  I don't understand why it has to be an LLC. They're doing that pisses off a major company & industry, relating to copyright & computers, in a country where copyright and computer-related laws are just as insane as the idea of doing this in the open. If they want to continue this (which I'd argue is a bad idea given they've presumably been discovered), the way to do so is to operate entirely in the underground (using Tor or other anonymization systems) and host any required infrastructure in a country that doesn't care - Russia comes to mind, even more so given the recent events. The mere fact that they received a C&D and it had leverage over them already suggests a massive failure. Why was there a place to send a C&D to begin with? The proper legal department contact for such a project is /dev/null, so something failed big time if that C&D found its way somewhere else.
kebab 5y ago
Won't the APK just be released on one of the apk mirror sites? Isn't every version already hosted on these sites?
- ryankrage77 5y ago
  Yes, you can continue to use Vanced for now, if you already have a working APK or can procure one. But with no updates coming, it's only a matter of time before YouTube make breaking changes and it stops working. I would guess 6 months to a year, based on how often I've needed to update in the past.

200 points by chagaif 5y ago

> The main source of income for youtube isn't ads. YouTube revolves around the merchandise and YouTube Premium subscriptions. Lol. You can open Alphabet's 10-Q or 10-K and find out in a matter of seconds how untrue this is. Reminds me of the famous "Senator, we run ads <suppressed smile>" by Zuckerberg.

LewisVerstappen 5y ago
> Reminds me of the famous "Senator, we run ads <suppressed smile>" by Zuckerberg. Why? Zuckerberg wasn’t lying when he said Facebook makes their money from ads though.
- HWR_14 5y ago
  Indeed. IIRC, there were quite a few issues with his testimony obfuscating things. But he was pretty blunt about the business model. I thought the point of the clip was how out of touch the Senator asking was.
- yunohn 5y ago
  Yes, and H8crilA is saying YouTube also exists off ads revenue.
- paxys 5y ago
  Exactly. Zuckerberg wasn't even smiling when he said that, just incredulous that the US Senator who has summoned him to DC and is questioning him in front of millions of Americans doesn't know the first thing about what he is saying.
RealityVoid 5y ago
You seem to ignore that the incredibly annoying ads are a prime reason people even buy premium in the first place.
ZephyrBlu 5y ago
They're referring to creators, not the platform. For creators it's absolutely true that merch brings in more revenue than ads, and I assume by premium subscriptions they mean channel membership. I also assume English isn't the author's native language because there are some small grammatical and structural quirks like this platform vs creators thing. It's very readable though!
- rryan 5y ago
  That makes no sense. Why is "YouTube Premium" capitalized?
  - ZephyrBlu 5y ago
    YouTube Premium is an actual product, but as far as I'm aware it doesn't generate much revenue for creators which I why I assumed they meant channel membership. https://www.youtube.com/premium https://www.youtube.com/premium
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > but as far as I'm aware it doesn't generate much revenue for creators I’ve heard that per viewer it brings in a lot more than the per viewer ads revenue from non-Premium viewers. Not sure what the typical viewer numbers for each are; probably depends on the channel a lot.
    - dmix 5y ago
      Offtopic but I bought YouTube Premium a few months ago and it's 100% worth the money. YouTube ads are aggressive and it turns out I used YouTube all the time. I didn't really notice until I started paying for it how much time I spent having to wait for ads to end or skipping them. Now I get angry every time I end up in YouTube via incognito when using social media and an ad plays.
      - jthrowsitaway 5y ago
        uBlock origin will fix this (assuming you're using Chrome or Firefox.)

bhaak 5y ago

> The vanced team will "NEVER" make its source code public. Making the source code available on the internet can cause serious complications for us. How would Google have acted if the source code was open source from the beginning?

Shared404 5y ago
My understanding is that Vanced was a patching of the official Youtube App, so already on somewhat shaky ground. If Vanced took advantage of vulnerabilities in the Youtube App, or the source code could point to them, I could see Google reacting poorly to start out with - though afaik (not a lawyer, also not your lawyer) it's legal to distribute source for a patch for a proprietary program and instructions to apply it.
- kadoban 5y ago
  I'm not a lawyer either, but: I'd worry that something Vanced was doing was technically in violation of DMCA, or at least could be argued to be in violation by someone with several billion dollars.
- Anunayj 5y ago
  IANAL, but I do not think patching a app violates any copyright at all, as long as you distribute the patches and download the app clientside. A very good example of this would be Bukkit (which itself is licensed under GPL) , which patches Minecraft Server JARs to provide a stable modding API to work it. Infact the story itself has quite a interesting turn, so it turned out sometime later Mojang decided to "buy" Bukkit. (aka pay it's lead developers to give up their copyright), and what they (incorrectly) supposed from this was, that they would be allowed to distribute direct bukkit binaries (afterall they own minecraft), that was until one of the Bukkit contributers decided to DMCA the website. I'm unsure what the current situation around this is, and how they sorted everything out in the end. [1] https://twitter.com/jeb_/status/502380018216206336 https://twitter.com/jeb_/status/502380018216206336

endisneigh 5y ago

> Some users believe that Google had sent cease & desist letter because the Vanced Team had posted NFT to earn money out of the vanced project. The Vanced NFT was never sold in the end. Besides, it was done as a joke and nothing more. Says everything you need to know about NFTs

simulate-me 5y ago
What does this say about NFTs exactly?
- klodolph 5y ago
  That they’re schemes to make money that don’t withstand scrutiny or solve problems better than the alternatives.
- IMTDb 5y ago
  > What does this say about NFTs exactly? "it was done as a joke and nothing more." can pretty much describe NFTs
  - lucb1e 5y ago
    A joke that somehow a lot of people seem to fall for? And you take their actual money rather than, at the latest after payment, revealing it was just a joke and refunding the money?
mkdirp 5y ago
All stuff they posted prior to shutting down pointed to this NFT not being a joke to be honest. Seems like their claim that it was a joke is more about damage control than it being true.
- lucb1e 5y ago
  I didn't use vanced before since the open source newpipe fulfilled all my needs, so this is the first I heard of vanced doing some cryptobro token stuff. So without knowing more than just what is written in the OP: when I read in the same paragraph that "we didn't get to the point of selling" and "besides, it's just a prank bro"... yeah, clearly. Could be true, I suppose it doesn't really matter now, but I'm not convinced. I also read it as trying to save some reputation.

charcircuit 5y ago

>The vanced team will "NEVER" make its source code public. Making the source code available on the internet can cause serious complications for us. There shouldn't be issues as long as you are sharing them as patches unless they didn't own the rights to the code they added.

kayson 5y ago

I'm really sad I missed the boat on Vanced by one day. I'd heard about it for a long time and randomly decided to finally start using it only to find all the download links had been removed the day before. Youtube ads have become horrendously annoying. Does anyone know if the apks can be found on any archive site?

silentsea90 5y ago
Do you subscribe to anything on the internet? Perhaps Spotify, your internet connection, Netflix? Have you considered their premium offering, or do you think YT should be free and without ads?
- DocG 5y ago
  How does your comment help? YT premium still doesn't give all the Vance's features. I can buy premium and still use Vanced for features that YouTube does not offer. Or maybe I don't support YouTube adding ads to unmonetized videos? Or is it my way to fight back, how they roll over small creators to trolls?
  - drusepth 5y ago
    I'd never heard of Vanced before today. What features did they offer that YT Premium doesn't?
    - spartanatreyu 5y ago
      Dislikes are a pretty big feature. Also sponsorblock which is a must for some people. And picture-in-picture mode was great. I could watch the news while seeing how close an uber was to me without having to switch apps.
      - charcircuit 5y ago
        btw the regular YouTube app has picture in picture. Without premium you can't use it on "music videos."

squarefoot 5y ago

> Vanced is discontinued for "legal reasons" as vanced was infringing the logo and branding of the original YouTube app as the logo resembles the original logo in a similar way and was used without taking prior permission from Google for using the branding. Huh?!? That was the only reason behind the C&D letter and they killed the product when a simple logo redesign could have solved the issue? Or the C&D letter would have voided any attempt to do that? Something doesn't add up.

toxicFork 5y ago
NDA?
- 3np 5y ago
  Why would they sign one? A gag-order does not seem super likely, but more-so than an NDA.
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  More likely just legal threats to say "this is the opening shot, but these are the cruise missiles we have aimed at your bank account and life in general". Lawyers don't care, they will destroy you and your loved ones (edit: obviously not physically but legally and financially) and sleep like a baby at night.
DocG 5y ago
Seems legit. I think they think it's a warning shot, they are now on Google's list. This letter is a "nice" way of saying - guys well you are now on our list and shut down or well force you to shut down. Smart play, rather end on a high note, without months and months of C&Do letters and axety and stress. Learn and move on.
- netsharc 5y ago
  It could be that Google says they're infringing on the logo design, and Google demanded that they stop distributing the app due to this. "We were also asked to remove all links for the distribution of any vanced apps that led to the decision of discontinuation." Whatever the second half of that sentence may mean in plain English, the whole article is hard to parse.

Aaargh20318 5y ago

> Vanced is discontinued for "legal reasons" as vanced was infringing the logo and branding of the original YouTube app as the logo resembles the original logo in a similar way and was used without taking prior permission from Google for using the branding So if this is the actual reason, shutting down completely seems a bit of an overreaction. Why not just get a new logo and rebrand the app ?

that_guy_iain 5y ago
Because Google probably had more than just your logo looks like ours.
bradleybuda 5y ago
It’s a get-rich-quick scheme, not a get-rich-by-putting-in-a-little-bit-of-work-when-presented-with-adversity scheme.
derefr 5y ago
My impression is that they aren’t legally allowed to reuse any of the source code that was ever used in vanced. But if they create a new thing as a new team and claim that it shares nothing with vanced; and, critically, they never release the source code from the original vanced (which presumably hasn’t been subpoenaed); then they can reuse the source code, because nobody will know the difference. This, presumably, would be what they mean by “complications” if they release Vance’s code: it’ll retroactively prove that their new """unrelated""" project is actually related after all.
- UncleMeat 5y ago
  > because nobody will know the difference Bytecode inspection is a thing. It isn't too hard to know if two apks share a large amount of source.
  - kasabali 5y ago
    Bytecode inspection works both ways in this case. Vanced itself is based on decompiled bytecode of original Youtube app. Another team can build on top of Vanced app just like Vanced devs built on top of Youtube app. So we wouldn't necessarily say whether it is using a hypothetical "source code" leaked by Vanced team or not by bytecode inspection (nor would it matter much).

DonBarredora 5y ago

>The vanced team will "NEVER" make its source code public. Making the source code available on the internet can cause serious complications for us. What would those complicatiosn be?

post_break 5y ago
Someone else could make a better version of it. But if I had to guess, they are using some internal tools or hacks to make it work the way it does.
- grishka 5y ago
  Top-secret internal tools like jadx, apktool, the Android SDK, and a text editor? This is all I used to build my patched version of Instagram.
  - kapildev 5y ago
    1.How many hours did it take you to make the patched versions? 2. If you wanted to open source how you patched Instagram, how would you avoid lawsuit?
    - grishka 5y ago
      1. I didn't count, but probably less than 24 2. I don't keep my sources closed, I did publish them on xda-developers[1], but they've changed things around a lot since then and the links in my post broke. I need to reupload them somewhere. I avoid lawsuits by not being related to the US in any way whatsoever. And either way I don't think patching someone else's code is illegal, especially since no DRM is circumvented in the process. Making "get an official apk first" the first step, instead of distributing decompiled smali files, probably also helps. [1] https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/app-mod-4-4-instagram-without-ads-and-annoyances.3927066/ https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/app-mod-4-4-instagram-wit...
    - Nextgrid 5y ago
      > If you wanted to open source how you patched Instagram, how would you avoid lawsuit? Operate as if you were operating an underground drug marketplace or worse. If those technologies are able to thwart international law enforcement investigations, they're definitely strong enough to protect you from Facebook, not to mention that nobody will burn a zero-day to make Big Advertising happy when that zero-day can be better used to take down multimillion-dollar drug marketplaces (or worse). If clearnet infrastructure is needed, put it in a country that gives the middle finger to the US. Being located there is also a huge bonus. Alternatively, support copyright reforms and campaigns for privacy laws and their enforcement (which is currently lacking when it comes to the GDPR), so that such projects become unnecessary. In the meantime, don't use such services as much as possible.

Ftuuky 5y ago

Time to move into NewPipe, I guess

the_common_man 5y ago

NFT being a joke is such a lie

manuelabeledo 5y ago
Isn’t it? Outside its niche, where do you hear of NFT if it’s not to make fun of it?
- meibo 5y ago
  I believe the person you're replying to is referring to the vanced team claiming that their NFT offer was a joke, not the concept of NFTs.

jrm4 5y ago

Broadly, I think it would be a mistake to read this with the idea that you're going to get the truth out of it. This smells very much like CYA spin. Not mad at all of course, do what you gotta.

kebab 5y ago
They're saying here that YouTube makes most of their money through merchandise, and not ads. Which just isn't true.

ethanpil 5y ago

Perhaps this was a Quash-then-Hire and while Vanced is gone the developers are now Googlers with some NDA agreement...

chagaif 5y ago

Here's a link to the post in the official Telegram channel it was posted in: https://t.me/Vanced/207 https://t.me/Vanced/207

moneywoes 5y ago

Dumb question, could they just not change the logo?

OmegaDungeon 5y ago
That's the reason this write up doesn't make any sense because they did do that, the old logo was just the YouTube logo with a gradient and a line, the new logo is much closer to NewPipe's and they dropped the YouTube from "YouTube Vanced"
arlcode 5y ago
Google probably said something like: "For now we ask you to not use our Logo and trademarks anymore and if you comply by shutting the project down, we are happy to leave it at that. If however you decide to continue we will come after you for the numerous other issues this project has such as the fact that it is an unauthorized modification of our official youtube app, primarily used to deprive us and our partners of income. It's your choice" Google lined up their troops and fired a warning shot. Vanced recognized their unwinnable position and surrendered.

4oo4 5y ago

So they couldn't just redesign the logo/app to be dissimilar enough from YouTube? I really want to know what these "complications" are, this is the sketchiest way I've seen someone refuse to open source something. > The vanced team will "NEVER" make its source code public. Making the source code available on the internet can cause serious complications for us.

neurostimulant 5y ago
They basically decompiled youtube's apk, modify and and repackaging it as Vanced, so off course they can't release their "source code" because it's not theirs (except the modified parts).
- 4oo4 5y ago
  Makes sense, that's basically asking for trouble.

rryan 5y ago

> The main source of income for youtube isn't ads. YouTube revolves around the merchandise and YouTube Premium subscriptions. > If you are talking about creators who are not earning money for using vanced, you should know they won't make millions out of those ads. ... right. Feel free to keep telling yourselves that.

kebab 5y ago
Last I heard YouTube makes 20 billion in ad revenue, and creators get like 45% of that

loxias 5y ago

This part jumped out at me: > The vanced team will "NEVER" make its source code public. Making the source code available on the internet can cause serious complications for us. ??? Anyone have any idea (or even guesses) as to what that's about? Does the source contain a murder confession?

sodality2 5y ago
The trademark issue probably was resolved with "shut down and don't release source, and we won't sue you for your past violations"
- jesprenj 5y ago
  Either that, or they will continue with Vanced under another unrelated name, possibly with sponsors and monetized, and do not want any competition.

roastedpeacock 5y ago

Not an attorney, but I suspect two mistakes the YouTube Vanced team did with the project is having "YouTube" in the name (Could be considered as a false association and trademark violation by Google or YouTube), and redistributing complete APKs that were modified YouTube APKs that would be under copyright. I have not looked into the inner works of this, but on device patching of APK DEX classes from a set of patches is possible. Would not require root as long as it generates a patched APK and installs that using the standard PackageInstaller. That is probably a less risky proposition then distributing modified APKs themselves.

chakkepolja 5y ago
Wouldn't patches still be considered derivative work?
- ntauthority 5y ago
  One could argue it does, one could also argue it does not. If a company wants a quick takedown of something it feels 'isn't right', having to rely on something like that with limited precedent (and a high risk of setting the wrong precedent for them) is a lot more difficult, so you're more likely to not get C&D'd/sued over such - but if you then do something that is easier to sue over, like trademark infringement or more outright copyright infringement, you're likely getting hit for one of those whenever a company 'disliking you' notices instead of them trying the 'hard' arguments.
franga2000 5y ago
Yeah binary patching would basically solve this issue and wouldn't be any more of a hassle for the user than vanced already was. For a similar example, see the way most alternative Minecraft servers download and patch official binaries on first start (they started doing this due to getting a bunch of DMCA takedowns a few years ago). With a bit of effort, Vanced could even have the download page perform the patching and signing in JS/wasm, then include the privkey in the app so it could download, patch and sign new copies of itself on the fly. Or, for better security, have a web service that signs any APK that matches a set of hashes. Clients patch the APK locally, then send it in to get signed - everyone now has byte-identical APKs, but Vanced severs never technically distributed Google's binaries.

cuteboy19 5y ago

> The vanced team will "NEVER" make its source code public. Making the source code available on the internet can cause serious complications for us. is it possible that Vanced actually contained Malware/Cryptominers and therefore they dont want to open source it?

chakintosh 5y ago

They killed it themselves when they tried to profit off of what is basically piracy with some NFT bullshit. That was utterly moronic.

JellyYelly 5y ago
You should read the article, it says they didn't even sell the NFT and wasn't part of the C&D.
shabier 5y ago
Agreed. I think a smarter approach would've been to release the patches and other changes separately, and had the official YT app be patched locally. This, however, could probably not work on non-root devices.

asimpletune 5y ago

It sounds like they're making it really clear that they've "killed" the project, probably so they can just start another one that doesn't have the same issues. I wouldn't be surprised if they just form a new LLC, and transfer the old code as IP between the two, tweaking the offending assets and calling it a day.

stemc43 5y ago
that would be amazing. i really hope to not have to use firefox mobile with ublock.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  Check out Invidious.
Nextgrid 5y ago
I don't understand why it has to be an LLC. They're doing that pisses off a major company & industry, relating to copyright & computers, in a country where copyright and computer-related laws are just as insane as the idea of doing this in the open. If they want to continue this (which I'd argue is a bad idea given they've presumably been discovered), the way to do so is to operate entirely in the underground (using Tor or other anonymization systems) and host any required infrastructure in a country that doesn't care - Russia comes to mind, even more so given the recent events. The mere fact that they received a C&D and it had leverage over them already suggests a massive failure. Why was there a place to send a C&D to begin with? The proper legal department contact for such a project is /dev/null, so something failed big time if that C&D found its way somewhere else.

kebab 5y ago

Won't the APK just be released on one of the apk mirror sites? Isn't every version already hosted on these sites?

ryankrage77 5y ago
Yes, you can continue to use Vanced for now, if you already have a working APK or can procure one. But with no updates coming, it's only a matter of time before YouTube make breaking changes and it stops working. I would guess 6 months to a year, based on how often I've needed to update in the past.