By the 2010's, websites became bloated beyond belief. Web pages that were once less than a hundred kilobytes are now thousands of kilobytes and sometimes even larger in size. Not only that, but instead of making use of every sliver of screen real-estate, they decided to fill that space with blank fillers making browsing a chore. I was a YouTube user since the early days, I'm talking I was 7 years old watching funny YouTube videos like "Try not to laugh" challenges. YouTube had a great UI back then, one that sites like VidLii try to capture. But YouTube is just a needle in the haystack of sites that took the endless, downward spiral. Reddit (although Reddit is not a great place to be, period), Twitter (way before today), and others did as well. A lot of it was in part to accomodate for the growth of smartphones, which are probably one of the worst advancements (more like a step backwards). But there was a silver lining for bloated websites: privacy-respecting, alternative frontends.
I had first heard of frontends when a friend of mine kept sharing what were essentially YouTube links but led to something called Invidious. Invidious is one of the biggest examples, it's a frontend for YouTube that loads twice as quick (because its much smaller in size), doesn't have ads, and doesn't need Javascript. There's plenty of others that do the same thing, such as Teddit or Redlib for Reddit, Nitter for X/Twitter, Breeze Wiki for Fandom wikis, etc. and what people who wanted to use these instances would typically do is install an extension (such as Libredirect) or a userscript that redirects from youtube.com to inv.nadeko.net, for example. Those who had the space would host for themselves or for those who need it. I still do this for as many sites as possible, but unfortunately we are quite literally down to just nadeko.net for Invidious instances. In other words, it didn't take long for these companies to crack down on their APIs (the frameworks for using a particular website) and keep web scrapers out. Using these extensions these days often result in a lot of refreshing or bookmarking specific instances that work and going to those instead. It makes it a lot harder and not as seamless as it once was.
So what does this mean? I think that the corporations got what they wanted. They can keep people in their ecosystem. Like years past, the only way to combat them is to go to actual alternatives. Peertube for the truly decentralized path or Rumble if you want something ran by a business, Rumble in particular became a rather large business, i.e have a better chance at competing directly with YouTube. Lemmy for Reddit. Mastodon for X. This means you will lose people along the way, but this is what separates the freethinking people from the sheepminded. This is kind of like how I promote XMPP and Matrix, but I can't convince most people I know in person to use it over Discord. That doesnt mean I cave in and use Discord, it means I have learned who thinks freely and who doesn't.