I gotta say, I don’t get that perspective. The content is one thing, but YouTube is super reliable for me, streaming or watching. I can easily stream in 4k 60FPS from OBS and YouTube has never had issues ingesting it, though I generally do 1440p because my computer is slow. When watching, I have never had an interruption on my wired Apple TV even for 4k/60FPS.
I do hate the pushing of shorts and the algorithm that seems to have a 3 video memory, but aside from that I’m pretty happy, I don’t get the weird right wing stuff or creepy videos pushed at me or my kids.
For me the content is not the main problem, rather the consistent bloating and enshitification of the player and interface over the years. Nowadays I don't bother anymore and just use mpv and ytdlp to play the few videos I'm interested in.
I don't even bother using scripts, I just manually paste the URL of the video I want to watch into mpv. It's not slow enough for me to have to deal with the garbage Youtube interface.
I do hate the pushing of shorts and the algorithm that seems to have a 3 video memory, but aside from that I’m pretty happy, I don’t get the weird right wing stuff or creepy videos pushed at me or my kids.