I noticed that YouTube began setting my videos to the lowest resolution, when set to Auto, since a day or two ago.
I installed an extension to force the resolution I want, and it took maybe 10 seconds to grab.
I'm on premium and my videos load like shit too when forced to high resolution with the plugin.
and before anyone says anything, I get family YouTube for $3 a month. switch your VPN to turkey, login in incognito, buy it. I had to go this route to keep even more shitty ads playing on my kids switch. my home is already layered with pihole adblocking and ublock on every computer. $3 is fine by me.
I don't care about "tracking", you need to decide if that's something you really even need to worry about. you need to set your expectations of what you are "protecting". privacy is a very grey area, if you think the government is tracking or looking for you, you've got larger issues. for most people, blocking 99% of ads is perfectly acceptable. use disposable accounts if you want for other things. use bitwarden or another password manager and MFA. you'll never be 100% "private" unless you buy a cabin in the woods and disappear.
What annoys me about YT premium is that if I'm at my friend's house and they own premium but I don't then any videos I add to the queue on their TV will have ads.