I was in the same position until a few weeks ago; mainly used YT for podcasts, downloading videos to watch while travelling etc.

If you have an Android phone, get the NewPipe app from F-Droid. It has pretty much everything that YT Premium offers, but free. It’s been working really well for me.

Same; I’ve been trying to disengage from anything big tech related recently, not just social media, even Amazon etc. Can’t take it anymore. It’s all so blatantly exploitative and fucked up. Cancelling subscriptions feels good; hope I stick to it. Can’t shake YouTube yet though, need my Rossmann fix. Hopefully we can figure out a viable FOSS alternative; tried PeerTube but it doesn’t quite do it just yet.

The Internet can still be a beautiful positive thing.

BezoSpez Zuck-Musk can fuck off.