Tough balance, and not one where I have any real confidence in my own answer.
I have avoided any kind of "community" or participatory-type Youtube engagements specifically because I expect it all to get walled-off at some point.
But you just mentioned the RSS thing ... Doctor, heal thyself!
Ssshh, you just did it again!
and yt-dlp I guess?
I guess the RSS side does provide some value standalone. I used to as read/unread pointers before I started actively archiving, so there was value in that. Beyond posting a couple of private videos for sharing purposes I've never actually used a Youtube account for any of the community engagement stuff (like / subscribe / bleeeeech). My feed reader served the "subscribe" function fine (which is why I assume Google would love to kill the RSS feeds).