for desktop, https://mpv.io/ is free and lets you watch youtube (or any other video) at even more and faster speeds than youtube premium does, among many other features
for android, https://newpipe.net/ lets you play youtube in the background (and download videos, and block ads, ...)
https://ublockorigin.com/ blocks ads everywhere (and yes it does still work on youtube, at least in firefox anyway)
I feel like whatever alternative ways of consuming YouTube videos there are are only because the overlords haven't considered them sufficiently problematic. yt-dlp recently had to choose to delegate javascript challenges to stuff like deno.
For me it's only 4x they're charging for (so far) which is admittedly approaching ludicrous speed... but nonetheless, charging for it is awfully petty.
I noticed that youtube hasn't let me change the speed at all recently on my computer. They show the typical speed control, but it doesn't work and shows 4x speed premium.
That being said, I have a browser extension that just lets me speed up the video with a keyboard shortcut to whatever speed I want, so it really doesn't matter.
AdGuard is also an acceptable option if you’re willing to pay a small amount. I won’t say it’s as good as ublock but it’s what I have to use on iOS to actually get good blocking.
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