Alternative to working with a big silicon valley giant. If you want to integrate/use YouTube you need to deal with whatever that company puts you up with. And as the article states, you don't want them to become grumpy at you; otherwise, they will turn you off even quicker. The only alternative I see is to develop a new YouTube, which seems unreasonable given how dominant Google is.
You don’t need a direct alternative to youtube to stop using youtube. You can just not deal with it, or access it via browser when needed, and use other platforms/media more instead. It might even become irrelevant on its own, like facebook and google search are slowly becoming.
But sure, if that’s not enough and you need a clone of youtube then yes, you need to develop a new youtube.
Most devs work on projects that don’t actively compete with large companies on their own ground.
Or do you mean alternative to watching video on Vision - I suppose youtube still works via safari, is that not the case?