YouTube announced yesterday that third-party applications that block ads while watching YouTube videos violates its Terms of Service (ToS), and it will soon start taking action against the apps.
It's funny how they say it's to protect creators while their actions in the past prove they don't care about creators, they also earn from ads (more than creators as far as I know). At least they can't do anything about RSS readers since they use XML and can be used in many ways other than watching YouTube videos.
I'm having such a difficult time with Newpipe. Lots of bugs since forever, no support for account, no way to sort channel videos. I'll use it out of necessity rather than by preference.
The fork with sponsorblock is unfortunately very buggy, scrolling comments causes it to crash and lag, some videos just show "content unavailable" and I constantly get "something went wrong" banners popping up - even though sometimes nothing looks wrong. Vanced rarely gives me any issues aside from needing to be repatched a couple times a year.