As a consumer, you don't need an account to use it. I have a Google account for Android and Gmail but my YouTube account is deleted. I "subscribe" to channels with RSS. If producers make their content feed available elsewhere (and they should, even if it happens to only link to YouTube for now) I use that feed instead. If producers only publish to YouTube, that's really their dependency problem. You can download an store anything you find worthy of archiving. Use an ad blocker to avoid supporting the platform. Producers should be selling their own native ads if they need to make a living off the videos, like pod casters do.