Not OP, but I personally use youtube-dl to retrieve videos on a remote server accessed via ssh, which then get downloaded slowly over a low bandwidth link for offline viewing at a later time. They may or may not get reencoded using the ffmpeg integration before retrieving as well.
YouTube's web interface is basically useless for me on a slow link, not to mention it's incredibly obnoxious with all its recommendations and other unmanagable propaganda delivery.
Youtube-dl's ability to retrieve titles and descriptions without showing me anything else and before retrieving any video content alone make youtube's opaque hashed URLs usable for me.
Youtube links are shared everywhere, including here on HN.
I also have a small collection of youtube channels bookmarked at their /videos URL, which at least doesn't try play any video and just gives a grid of thumbnails. Occasionally I'll visit those to discover new videos from the creators I'm interested in.
This already consumes more time watching youtube content than I care to admit.
YouTube's web interface is basically useless for me on a slow link, not to mention it's incredibly obnoxious with all its recommendations and other unmanagable propaganda delivery.
Youtube-dl's ability to retrieve titles and descriptions without showing me anything else and before retrieving any video content alone make youtube's opaque hashed URLs usable for me.