I don't want the ads, but I'd rather see the carefully curated list of creators I care about be able to get paid, and Youtube Music works for me. Youtube Premium is worth it.

same. firefox with ubO is my best friend.

Same here.

Sideloaded the latest and greatest YouTube++/uYou/uYouPlus/(currently uYouEnhanced) on my iPhone and re-sign it weekly with AltStore, Trollstore, or use a jailbroken equivalent on a device that managed to stay jailbroken.

There’s a few other new options I’ve seen through Reddit for web viewing, iOS content blockers, or hosting your own VPS invidious/piped instance with rotating ipv6 servers (not google/aws/digital ocean as they require using a web panel).

You can leave ads on for whitelisted creators sponsored advertising content also.

YouTube seems to be doing subtle dark patterns if you use uBlock origin.

For example, I can watch videos, but I often get an "error" if I try to seek in the video.

Phones and TVs.