At some point I will set up a yt-dlp thing to download the videos I want because the public instance invidious experience recently has not been great. I could also try a self-hosted invidious.

Something interesting is considering the privacy benefits of watching the content on a privacy frontend while sitll talking directly to youtube. Does it prevent the fingerprinting? Does it improve your privacy significantly?

I imagine the shared frontend proxy approach is best for privacy, but is not reliable currently.

photon-reddit.com has been a gamechanger for one specific feature—it lets you recover deleted comments and posts. But, I have found it less reliable than redlib.

After hopping between several in the past, I've learned to avoid services that blatantly violate TOS for their existence, since they rarely last long, usually going private once the cease and desist letters start coming.

I ended up just going with the non-music youtube premium "lite" for $8/month.