To play devil's advocate, they kept rss feeds for youtube (albeit it not easily found). This allowed me to 'subscribe' and get updates via newsboat on Linux. When i open these links, a redirect extension in my browser takes me to invidious and noscript prevents google from pulling even small bits of data. Then i use yt-dlp with a sponsorrblock flag to grab the actual vid and watch it using mpv. Yay...but yeah, Google has weird loopholes they left open.

More obvious example of this irony is buying a Google Pixel and installing GrapheneOS.