My rational mind realises it’s such an expensive system to run that it’s reasonable for them to charge or show ads. The problem is they’ve been extremely aggressive with ads and pushing subscriptions, to the point where I’m pretty resentful of the idea. Plus they’ve neglected so many things (like allowing aggressive copyright predators and refusing to implement sensible human-based appeals processes) that they really should have dealt with and instead embraced an algorithm that I’m pretty sure is at least partially responsible for the radicalisation of large groups of people.

I… don’t mind paying for shit. I just don’t want to give them money.

Also: wow there’s federated video sharing? Bet that’s not cheap to run.

Check also LibreTube and YMusic

Also youtube-dl/yt-dlp (or mpv directly) if you just want to play and/or download videos and don’t care about the UI or subscription stuff.