• No ads
• No need to create a Google account
• Tools for managing subscriptions
• Adds ability to listen only to audio
• No need for YouTube app in order to listen to videos on mobile (or use Newpipe on Android)
• No need to "ding" bell, just being subscribed is enough to receive all notifications
• No age-gate
• Dark mode (although YouTube has this now too)
• Free software (AGPL v3 license)

A good Firefox add-on is Privacy Redirect. Apart from handling Youtube can also redirect other services, and it also automatically rotates each redirect from a list of Invidious instances so as to avoid overloading any single one.

See Invidious Instances for a list of publicly available instances.

• "Small acts of resistance are all we need. Together, we make change", Yarmo Mackenbach
• https://reddit.com/r/SideProject/comments/8wvazc/invidous_alternative_frontend_to_youtube/
• https://github.com/omarroth/invidious

Other Youtube front-end alternatives

• yt-dlp
• NewPipe (Android)
• PipePipe (Android), includes SponsorBlock
• yt-local , via reddit thread

Replacing Youtube altogether

Another approach is to replace Youtube with an open-source, federated video host service.
That would be PeerTube (see this blog post by LazyBear).

• https://fedi.video - a good place to get started with PeerTube, by FediThing

By Open Sourced, a new project from Recode by Vox.

A custom-made mobile personal web server made from over-the-shelf components.
This project puts a fine point on the question: why can't we use our mobile phones as truly personal mobile computing devices?

RSS offers the ability to follow your favourite channels without having to be logged in to Google.

Note: you don't actually need to scour through the page's HTML code. Just paste the channel ID (it's a long alphanumeric string in the URL when looking at the channel's landing page) into the end of this URL:

https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=

Here's some example links to the RSS feed of some popular Youtube channels:

• https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCHnyfMqiRRG1u-2MsSQLbXA - Veritasium
• https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCEIwxahdLz7bap-VDs9h35A - Steve Mould
• https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCtESv1e7ntJaLJYKIO1FoYw - Periodic Videos

More links

• someone wrote a webapp for that (not that I think it's necessary...). Via reddit

No coding knowledge required, very portable with Markdown text, and supports custom domains

Via Waxy.org

English language essay on some common usage issues

From Patrick Collison's review:

World Bank data indicate that 3.7 billion people, about half the world’s population, are exposed to more than 50 µg/m³ of PM2.5 on an annual basis, 5x the unit of measure for most of the findings below.

• Substantial declines in short-term cognitive performance after short-term exposure to moderate (median 27.0 µg/m³) PM2.5 pollution: “The results from the MMSE test showed a statistically robust decline in cognitive function after exposure to both the candle burning and outdoor commuting compared to ambient indoor conditions. The similarity in the results between the two experiments suggests that PM exposure is the cause of the short-term cognitive decline observed in both.” […] “The mean average [test scores] for pre and post exposure to the candle burning were 48 ± 16 and 40 ± 17, respectively.” – Shehab & Pope 2019.
• Chess players make more mistakes on polluted days: “We find that an increase of 10 µg/m³ raises the probability of making an error by 1.5 percentage points, and increases the magnitude of the errors by 9.4%. The impact of pollution is exacerbated by time pressure. When players approach the time control of games, an increase of 10 µg/m³, corresponding to about one standard deviation, increases the probability of making a meaningful error by 3.2 percentage points, and errors being 17.3% larger.” – Künn et al 2019.
• A 3.26x (albeit with very wide CI) increase in Alzheimer’s incidence for each 10 µg/m³ increase in long-term PM2.5 exposure? “Short- and long-term PM2.5 exposure was associated with increased risks of stroke (short-term odds ratio 1.01 [per µg/m³ increase in PM2.5 concentrations], 95% CI 1.01-1.02; long-term 1.14, 95% CI 1.08-1.21) and mortality (short-term 1.02, 95% CI 1.01-1.04; long-term 1.15, 95% CI 1.07-1.24) of stroke. Long-term PM2.5 exposure was associated with increased risks of dementia (1.16, 95% CI 1.07-1.26), Alzheimer’s disease (3.26, 95% 0.84-12.74), ASD (1.68, 95% CI 1.20-2.34), and Parkinson’s disease (1.34, 95% CI 1.04-1.73).” – Fu et al 2019. Similar effects are seen in Bishop et al 2018: “We find that a 1 µg/m³ increase in decadal PM2.5 increases the probability of a dementia diagnosis by 1.68 percentage points.”
• A study of 20,000 elderly women concluded that “the effect of a 10 µg/m³ increment in long-term [PM2.5 and PM10] exposure is cognitively equivalent to aging by approximately 2 years”. – Weuve et al 2013.
• “Utilizing variations in transitory and cumulative air pollution exposures for the same individuals over time in China, we provide evidence that polluted air may impede cognitive ability as people become older, especially for less educated men. Cutting annual mean concentration of particulate matter smaller than 10 µm (PM10) in China to the Environmental Protection Agency’s standard (50 µg/m³) would move people from the median to the 63rd percentile (verbal test scores) and the 58th percentile (math test scores), respectively.” – Zhang et al 2018.
• “Exposure to CO2 and VOCs at levels found in conventional office buildings was associated with lower cognitive scores than those associated with levels of these compounds found in a Green building.” – Allen et al 2016. The effect seems to kick in at around 1,000 ppm of CO2.