In the meantime you can use invidio.us, which scrapes youtube, and lets you 'subscribe' and create playlists without having an account directly on youtube. NewPipe is an app for getting youtube without the youtube. And PeerTube is still young, but a place to check out and get involved with, if you want to see an alternative succeed.

> getting youtube without the youtube

I think that's not really what people have issues with. The scariest thing about YouTube to me is that there's so much great content that's only on YouTube and there's not really an alternative. So if YouTube goes away for some reason, or Google decides to wipe all videos with < xxxx views, or Google decides to get rid of it for liability issues or other things there's nothing to archive this amount of content.

>I think that's not really what people have issues with.

It's tedious to even have to draw these distinctions at all, but I'm not saying it is the answer. A replacement is most preferable. In the meantime, here's something that accesses youtube without being associated with a youtube account or ads, which is one step better than being directly plugged in as we await a preferable alternative.

I frankly archive videos (as music) solely for this purpose.

I really like the idea of PeerTube, I wish it would gain a larger audience. Profitability might be it's biggest hurdle though.

Well it took YT over a decade to become profitable —before that it was losing lots of money so it’s kinda understandable competitors would be few and far between

This. An ad-free, recommendations-free, comment-free, subscription-free YouTube. Just a search bar with an advanced search feature. That way I can just watch what I need to, not what I want to.

For the gaming Niche, twitch is likely larger than youtube.