Google forced the YouTube Vanced project to close and froze LibreTube on GitHub
Earlier this week, it was reported that developers of Vanced app for YouTube were shutting down their app under pressure from Google, and now the developers of a similar project, LibreTube, have reported that their GitHub account has been suspended.
The news of YouTube Vanced being discontinued appeared earlier this week. This Android app allowed YouTube users to block all ads without a Premium subscription, and also had a true dark theme and other settings not provided by the official YouTube app for Android.The developers said that in the coming days the project will be closed.
Already installed applications will continue to work on users’ devices, but without updates, they will most likely cease to function after some time. As an alternative, the authors of YouTube Vanced recommended that their users officially connect to a YouTube Premium subscription.
The decision to stop development was made for legal reasons. As one of the authors explained to The Verge journalists, Google recently sent a written warning to the creators of the application about the violation of intellectual property rights, which forced them to stop distributing and developing the application.
In addition, now the copyright holders seem to be seeking the closure of another similar project, LibreTube. This is another app for Android that allows watching YouTube videos without ads and tracking by Google.nToday, the authors of LibreTube announced on Twitter that their GitHub account was frozen, and it was not possible to quickly find out for what reason the block was set.“ Vanced is the latest casualty in Google’s action against third-party apps that access YouTube.
Let me remind you that we talked about the fact that From GitHub were removed 18 projects for downloading content from YouTube, and also that GitHub restored youtube-dl library after EFF intervention.