Or turn on adblockers and support the people you watch directly (donate, patreon, merch, etc). It takes like $2/yr to replace the ad revenue that you would've generated for them (something like that).

Or use the alt platforms that creators create themselves when possible.

You can't escape youtube right now (as in there is no real alternative if you stop using it all together), but you can turn on adblockers (ublock), use 3rd party clients and give something directly to creators you watch a lot.

And you can support PBS in addition if you want.

you know who else has documentaries?

PBS.

support your local public broadcasting stations, people.

And do you know which documentaries they don't have? The ones that are uploaded by their creators only to YouTube.

I watch plenty of Arte and I pay the fee but documentaries about video game speedruns etc. simply aren't on Arte (or PBS or Nebula). I watch those where they are: YouTube.