In that spirit I have a userscript, ironically called Youtube HD[0], that with one edit sets the resolution to 'medium' ie 360p. On a laptop it's plenty for talking head content (the softening is nice actually), and I only find myself switching to 480p if there's small text on screen.

It's a small thing, but as you say internet video is relatively heavy.

To reduce my AI footprint I use the udm=14 trick[1] to kill AI in Google search. It generally gives better results too.

For general web browsing the best single tip is running uBlock Origin. If you can master medium[2] or hard mode (which will require un-breaking/whitelisting sites) it saves more bandwidth and has better privacy.[3]

To go all-out on bandwidth conservation, LocalCDN[4] and CleanURLs[5] are good. "Set it and forget it," improves privacy and load times, and saves a bit of energy.

Sorry this got long. Cheers

[0] https://greasyfork.org/whichen/scripts/23661-youtube-hd

[1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/05/google-searchs-udm14...

[2] https://old.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/1j5tktg/ubloc...

[3] https://github.com/gorhill/ublock/wiki/Blocking-mode

[4] https://www.localcdn.org/

[5] https://github.com/ClearURLs/Addon