NewPipe blocks ads, and optionally blocks Shorts. NewPipe does also happen to break YouTube's terms of service.
My opinion is that YouTube should be forced to permit third party clients (interoperate). NewPipe and the various other clients are proof that there is a desire for alternative experiences and more toggles and options. Forcing users to identity themselves online to watch videos (or certain classes of videos) is a privacy nightmare, dystopic even.
I wonder how much DNS blocking would contribute to a unique browser fingerprint? Like a tracker could use a range of domains, some of which are known to be blocked by certain end-user software, to build a fingerprint.
I currently use a vanilla LibreWolf which has uBlock Origin and reasonable defaults out of the box for this reason.
My only other line of thinking is that a combination of DNS, IP and in-browser blocking could be more effective than just in-browser alone.
I think the avoiding exit nodes part is probably the most important to me. Exit nodes have always been problematic - from memory about 20% of relays have an exit flag but most of the traffic is directed to the most performant relays. Tor actively discourages using the network for file sharing because of the exit node bottleneck.
I think there are probably some uses of the Tor network that aren't fully realised yet - file sharing (something similar to I2P) which avoids the exit node using onion addressing and chat applications (like Briar which uses onion addresses, or Secure Scuttlebutt).
As for web traffic, it is nice to offer an onion address. I wonder if websites could offer an "upgrade" to onion addresses, similar to how IPFS does?
My opinion is that YouTube should be forced to permit third party clients (interoperate). NewPipe and the various other clients are proof that there is a desire for alternative experiences and more toggles and options. Forcing users to identity themselves online to watch videos (or certain classes of videos) is a privacy nightmare, dystopic even.