My current work-around is https://deturl.com/ and then click 'clean viewer'. Changing a video URL from www.youtube.com to www.pwnyoutube.com redirects there. Example https://www.pwnyoutube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
I'm using this one: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/redirector/ I've set it up to only redirect https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=\* so I can still use the regular YouTube UI for browsing videos. This invidious instance feels surprisingly snappy, perhaps even faster than the 'native' YouTube player.
I guess YouTube could always block that domain from embedding videos, but if the extension allowed the user to set a custom domain from /etc/hosts, I'm not sure Google could stop it unless they forbid embedding on hosts that resolve to loopback address.
javascript:void(location.href='https://deturl.com/play.php?v='+location.href.split('=')[1])
when you're on a yt video click it and it will redirect using the id