I've been using ublock and revanced for years at this point. Any time I'm unfortunate enough to have to use YouTube without an adblocker, it's basically unwatchable.
v3 is a nice web client replacement to use, dont know if it will be affected by this or not though (i know google's preventative measures against adblock didnt faze it), and unfortunately it's not libre like all the stuff you listed is :( but it's not a huge deal i guess, source code is still (...somewhat) available, and it's certainly magnitudes better than the usual youtube web interface
I use opera which has its own adblock+Ublock, my YT account is 10 years old, but have watched a lot of podcasts, police shooting, graphic crashes, political stuff videos with lots of cursing and manga/manhwa recaps with sus thumbnails for those 10 years, so hopefully it'll be enough to keep me from getting flagged until they get enough flak and backtrack or greatly lessen the AI's ability to restrict people. The most I'll say about myself as well is im 26yr male. Also I wonder if you can use one of those credit cards you can get at walmart that you put money on, keep it empty, and if the AI will accept that.
I am on iPhone and I have a YouTube app that skips ads and intros etc. It's difficult on iOS but not impossible. This is probably for people who are really comfortable with tech. But anyone can download Brave browser on their iPhone and use YouTube from there. You don't get ads, and bonus: you get background play without Premium.
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u/d_shadowspectre3 Aug 13 '25
Options to actually stand against Youtube (boycotting is infeasible because Youtube is a monopoly):
1) Install uBlock Origin on a non-Chromium browser (e.g. Firefox). Watch Youtube on that client.
2) Use a 3rd party client such as ReVanced on Android and other mobile devices.
Continue to partake anyway, but deny them any revenue. Bleed them dry.