While I’m not opposed to paying for YouTube (it is a service after all) the only way to do so would be by being logged in to YouTube with whatever black box algorithmic tracking and curation that entails. There is no “proper” way to anonymously access YouTube without ads.
I run a small server for my family on a cheap VPS. We’ve been using it for about 5 years now and it’s chugging along. It’s simpler and lighter than Matrix (at least from the server’s point of view) but the user facing side could use some polish. It’s perfectly fine for one to one chat. I wish it was more popular for group chatting.
Here’s a list of good servers if you want to try it out. You will also need a client. Check one with E2E suppo ort (called OMEMO in XMPP).