DeGoogle Yourself

I've almost completely removed Google products from my life now, having recently decided to change the OS on my phone, delete Gmail, etc. etc. but only two things remain:

I've looked at Invidious and at Piped and I just can't seem to get the same experience as on Youtube. It's fine if Google knows nothing about me except what I watch on Youtube and what dates I'd put the bins out in 2013, no? (Can't seem to delete that from the calendar) Or if anyone's managed to emulate the same kind of experience Youtube gives on one of the two, please share. I quite like the recommendations but I think it's only possible on the abovementioned by watching a video then looking at the side of the page?

I've got a tablet (Samsung SM-T335) from ten years ago running on Android 5.1.1. I've decided to root it to delete all the bollocks that came installed with it (I've recently factory reset it and only use it for ebooks and Firefox Focus), including the Google stuff. I have to wait a week or something apparently before it'll let me check the OEM-unlocking box but I was wondering if anyone's had any success with this (I've seen people saying you can change the date, you can fiddle with it in xyz manner, but I'm looking to hear people's experiences).

The plan then is to root it, delete the shovelware, and sideload the two apps I want to use. Also curious to hear people's experiences with sideloading, because most of the articles I find on the internet were written by a robot or in the year dot. I've also read that it's impossible to install a custom OS on such an old tablet but I'd like to hear whether it's worth trying at the risk of bricking the thing.

Edit: After waiting a week, the OEM-unlocking never became available, so after searching and searching and having no joy, I decided to just log out of Google on the tablet and it just let me without deleting the apps I'd downloaded. It turns out, too, that this particular version of Android 5 lets you just hide the apps in the list, so I've just hidden all the shovelware and that's good enough for me. I've ended up subscribing to those I was subscribed to on Youtube on Invidious and in doing so I've discovered that a load of videos just have never been recommended to me by Youtube, so I'll see how I go and if the subscriptions thing works, I just have to delete my Youtube account then I'm free of Google!