Do you think anybody at YouTube is concerned that you can no longer download their videos?
I doubt enough people will reach that level of fed up for it to hurt Google's profits, but that doesn't matter to me. I was happy enough to use youtube and give google my data on my own terms. If a workaround to this issue can't be found I'll be disappointed by Google's decision to cut off third party applications, but they won't be successful in trying to force me to accept their terms.
I don't think they're really that bothered about your data. They want to show you ads or sell you yt premium.
I have a strict policy against paying people to remove the problems they themselves created for me (AKA racketeering) so I was never going to be a youtube premium customer, but there are plenty of other opportunities to make money from my data, including through ads, even without those ads I won't tolerate on youtube. I'm not Google's preferred user, but that doesn't mean they can't still make money at my expense.
For people who just follow subscriptions, not the discovery page, Youtube doesn't really have a moat. PeerTube integrated into Mastodon is a borderline existential threat.
Sorry even as a big fan of PeerTube and Mastodon this is simply delusional.
Sounds bizarre, i know. But i get _some_ value out of YT, but not the price of the sub. Worse even, is that as a paying customer i still feel like their UI is hostile and i need to modulate my behavior to fight their algoritm.
God forbid i click on a video that i don't want to see 5,000 times on my home page.