Google could kill YouTube Vanced for good::The company is exploring an integrity API that could lock down WebViews with DRM
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Wow, this article is just like 100% wrong. I’m surprised no one has mentioned this yet.
To get why this could be a problem for YouTube Vanced’s successors, we need to understand how they work. Rather than modding the YouTube app itself, Vanced apps are essentially tweaked and modded browsers that display videos via a WebView that shows YouTube, adding extra features to the experience like adblock and other YouTube Premium perks. If YouTube was able to check which apps or devices are trying to access its servers before displaying content, this would be an easy route to stop Vanced successors from working.
The YouTube-app, and Revanced in turn, does not utilize a WebView to display video. They are most certainly not ‘modded browsers’.
Seriously, who wrote this shit? An AI? It’s baffling.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Manuel Vonau • Senior Google Editor
(2251 Articles Published)
Given that Revanced patches the YouTube app, Monsieur Vonau is most certainly wrong.
Manuel Vonau
From his bio on that site (https://www.androidpolice.com/author/manuel-vonau/):
Manuel studied Media and Culture studies in Düsseldorf, finishing his university career with a master’s thesis titled “The Aesthetics of Tech YouTube Channels: Production of Proximity and Authenticity.” His background gives him a unique perspective on the ever-evolving world of technology and its implications on society. He isn’t shy to dig into technical backgrounds and the nitty-gritty developer details, either.
So he’s a marketing guy with possibly zero tech background beyond watching YouTube videos, who isn’t afraid to discuss “nitty-gritty developer details” despite apparently not actually understanding them.
I’m surprised no one had mentioned this yet
It’s because there’s an annoying trend of everyone reading the headline and not the article. Drives me bonkers
Headline: “THING IS HAPPENING”
Body: “Here’s 1000 words unrelated to the headline. Here’s some ads. Here’s interviews with three people saying nothing of interest. Here’s the thing you clicked under the headline for and it adds a bit of nuance to the headline along with a bunch of waffling and uncertainty. Here’s a pointless anecdote. More ads! Here’s a recipe for chicken wings and a bunch of pictures of celebrities. Oops! Article ended a full screen ago. Nothing down here but clickbait and more ads.”
Gee, I wonder why people just take the headline at face value.
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No matter what, people will always find a way to mod the apps they really want to have free.
There’s definitely a danger if attestation becomes widespread enough that they can require it.
Not a danger of being unable to mod the apps, but they will be able to restrict access to their servers to the official unmodified app, when it’s running on specific trusted operating systems.
Of course they would, the bastards. I’m assuming that would also affect newpipe and freetube too?
At first I thought so too, but I believe those might still work as long as the attestation feature doesn’t end up in browsers. Those applications likely can still pretend to be web user.
ReVanced is special because it patches original YouTube. So if the original YouTube would start doing this kind of verification, after being patched it would stop working. To fix it the whole playback code would have to be replaced, but at that point why not use NewPipe or GrayJay.
BTW: Google is doing that because it has monopoly in that market. They similarly have monoly with browser market. Still after uproar they backed off. We really should try to break it and apps that support multiple platforms (like mentioned NewPipe and GrayJay are probably the best way to dethrone them)
Surely as long as there’s a way to access YouTube on devices without attestation, this won’t kill anything.
Indeed. And if they decide to brick or degrade all legacy apps, people will just transcode and torrent.
Information wants to be free, and millions of people have the skills to make it happen.
Alright, and Google doesn’t need to pay for that, so win win?
The irony is that it will probably cost Google way more due to the overhead of DRM for normal users than what they save on “lost” capacity in the current situation.
Can’t say I agree. I’d guess it’ll turn out like the Netflix shared passwords situation where everyone online predicted mass cancellations, and Netflix subs grew in actuality. Most people won’t give up YouTube, they will either stop blocking ads or pay for Premium. At least enough to increase their profits.
I’m making good use of yt-dlp while I still can
Can someone confirm whether YouTube ReVanced really uses WebView?
I don’t think it matters. ReVanced patches original YouTube so it will use whatever YouTube is using. Even if current YouTube app doesn’t use WebView that’s nothing stopping them from adding it in the future.
If I’m reading article right, Google supposedly “discontinued” the attestation technology in Chrome, because of the shit storm, but looks like they are thinking of adding it to Android and use it to verify the devices and applications are genuine. The YouTube server for example might refuse to serve the video if the application is not genuine.
If they are testing application genuinity im more concerned they might break all the google services hacks etc used by graphene os.
The amount of copium I see in these comments is staggering. Google owns the Youtube app, they own the Youtube servers, they even own the damn operating system you’re running it on, and they’re one of the richest companies in history. Do you REALLY think they couldn’t shut down ReVanced if they wanted to? Are you really that naive?
The moment they decide to put even a small amount of effort towards shutting down ReVanced or the others, they’re as good as dead.
They’ve already tried to kill it like a year or two ago with their last major API changes. This is just another attempt at it.
Google may be wealthy, they may be in control. However, they’re still limited by how the technology fundamentally works. You can only secure something so much before you inadvertently damage your own product’s functionality by restricting its access too aggressively.
Another thing to remember, YouTube is used by literal billions of people across the entire planet from virtually every notable OS capable of doing so. Locking it down so that only one type of app and web browser can access it would cause them to lose millions of eyeballs and ears, i.e. hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue over time. It’d have the exact opposite effect of what they’re trying to do (increase ad profits).
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