I'd never heard of Vanced before today. What features did they offer that YT Premium doesn't?

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.

The sponsorblock seems pretty hypocritical: “I don’t want to give money to Google”… “Actually I don’t want to give money to creators either”

It does not seems hypocritical, because the original rationale is not "I don't want to give money to Google" but "I don't want to be subjected to ads"

Whether the ads profit to Google or creators is irrelevant.

There's about 10 sponsors that go over and over in the channels I watch. I've seen them all and am a customer of one (from long ago - so nothing to do with their YT sponsorship) already. Nobody benefits from wasting my time showing me products/brands I already know about and already made a decision to buy or not to buy.

10 feels generous already.

There was already the option to scrub past it, this is just an automated system which does that for you.

Really I think the sponsors know this, and put their money on targetting the market of people who are, for example, watching while eating.

btw the regular YouTube app has picture in picture. Without premium you can't use it on "music videos."

Only from US IP addresses

SponsorBlock would be one where it automagically skip ad segments that are a part of the videos. It also adds back the dislike counter.

The article mentions custom swipe controls, swipe controls, and "codec features" which I'm not familiar with.

An actual pure black dark mode that’s perfect for OLEDs.

Getting rid of tiktock-est YouTube shorts or whatever they call it. Hated having that on my YouTube homepage and the official app doesn't let you remove it. YouTube Vanced does. I also pay for YouTube premium.