Google’s experimental Android WebView Media Integrity API could patch the YouTube Vanced loophole once and for all

Google could kill YouTube Vanced for good::The company is exploring an integrity API that could lock down WebViews with DRM

  • @PeachMan@lemmy.worldEnglish
    11•1 year ago

    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.

    • @bassomitron@lemmy.worldEnglish
      27•1 year ago

      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).

    • JohnEdwaEnglish
      11•1 year ago

      Technically they could, but the effort and checks required to do so would be massive and very disruptive to android in general. They tried something kinda like it with SafetyNet, and it’s so trivial to bypass it’s being phased out.
      Turns out root detection is kinda easy to circumvent if you have, you know, root access.

    • gian English
      3•1 year ago

      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.

      Possible. Now what it is missing is the part that should convince the ReVanced user to accept the new situation (they must bear the Ads) instead of stopping to use the service. Remember, Google if fighting against people that are already taking active actions against them, not the Average Joe user.

      And in all this, Google cannot risk to put too many hops in the path of the Average Joe users as there is the risk that the common user consider that, all in all, the service no more worth the headache to use it.