While YT is playing its games, I've found a half-dozen other ways to get at the videos. Very educational. I'm thinking they are learning a whole bunch about what people think of their way-too-aggressive approach ... and how people usually respond to that behavior.
I haven't seen a valuation on Youtube ... but recently saw that Twitter sold for $44B and X is now at $12B.
I've enjoyed viewing YT videos for many years ... learned A LOT ... and thought quite highly of them. I can see charging to see long films (bandwidth and licenses isn't cheap) ... but piling ads on top of thousands of private people trying to help others out (for little profit)? Ads on educational programming? Yeah... it's WORSE than what Cable did to films.
Sure, throw it away and get something with access to 3rd party apps. Alternatively, wait a couple of years for the EU regulations regarding 3rd party apps to take effect on apple products.
I'm not on IOS, but I've heard Brave browser on IOS has adblock so that might be a way to avoid ads. Sites like various Invidious instances run in any browser would also be a way to dodge ads.
Any browser that accepts plugins would also work, but I'm not sure if they exsist or not.