The reason why yt makes 4k behind a paywall because streaming in that resolution hurts their revenue, now does watching in newpipe do the same or I’ll just drain my battery faster
Any stream / download is costing something.
In newpipe you are still using yt servers so I guess the answer is yes (since you are leeching bandwidth without watching ads)
You are not just draining your battery tho, you are actually enjoying higher quality content :)
There aren’t currently enough people using tools like NewPipe for you watching in 4K to hurt YouTube’s revenue, which I’d say is what they deserve anyway. Also, it’s not like they’ll really notice.
Besides, exactly how would it hurt their revenue?
You don’t watch the ads, you don’t get tracked besides some obvious IP tracking. These two things are the whole point Google maintains the service, you know