>This is quite annoying and I see there's a trend against VPN usage in many sites including banks off course, airlines, gov sites. I don't want to give up on the VPN but it's becoming increasingly hard and not many people think it's a problem.

So true! You can't even Google something without a Captacha, and you can't go to sites and have a smooth experience everywhere; it's getting harder and harder with endless loading and bot verification. It's not just one single VPN provider; it's everyone out there. I now use IronFox with uBlock, NoScript, and Mullvad DNS when I need some quick info. Maybe you can try this. I use sites that I trust without a VPN.

NovaRift

privacy

How to avoid privacy creep on youtube?

purpurato

You can use [LibreTube](https://f-droid.org/packages/com.github.libretube)

>***LibreTube is an alternative frontend for YouTube. It uses the Piped API to load data and play videos and thus needs no YT account and no Google Services on your device.***

 You can also turn off recommendations, etc., by going through the settings.