Seems like Piped and Invidious are both on their last legs. Public instances on both services are pretty iffy, they go down fairly often now. Freetube works well on desktop but no real way to sync subscriptions and watch history to a phone. Self-hosting Piped/Invidious might be the solution but I don’t know if it’s worth the upkeep when YouTube is actively fighting against it.
Yes, people should not be looking for ways to watch youtube secretly, but support alternative platforms that don’t censor and intimidate people?
I don’t think there’sal lot of alternatives for the moment. People go where there is content.