Not even speaking about all the ads in the default YouTube app without a subscription.
The app is basically useless in my opinion. It defaults to freaking 240p for every video. My phone is definitively not the problem, also not the Internet connection. Watching in Firefox on the same connection gives me normal expected quality.
This was better on some “feature phones” without touchscreen!!! YouTube app works and playback is in 720p / 1080p
My phone always defaults to 4K, it’s definitely something up with your phone/the app settings.
On mobile, it usually manages to set itself to my desired resolution, on a modded client, but sometimes youtube just does unexplainable things. I have an addon on desktop that forces playback at a specific res, and even then it would casually decide to play 360p
YouTube will randomly enable closed captions for me, even though I literally never have them on.