How so, exactly.

I have been playing around with NewPipe SponsorBlock. It has its flaws but generally seems to work. I have not seen it mentioned but NewPipe SB also supports Soundcloud, Bandcamp and PeerTube instances. I think it includes FramaSoft's and CCC's PeerTube instances as presets. It is interesting how smoothly PeerTube seems to work.

I would not rely on NewPipe for downloading or playing YouTube videos, even when it is "fixed", but the app does much more than just those two things.

0.20.2 is working for me (at least it's working enough that videos can be played and downloaded). Even in newpipe I prefer to download videos rather than stream them. VLC is a far better player, fewer ads, fewer distractions, zero comments, and what videos I re-watch and how often isn't being logged by google.