Adding to say I have the same experience. Not banned, never used a TPA, but downloaded RIF Is Fun when people were writing up a storm just to see what was even going on. When the blackouts happened, I saw the more and more unhinged shit the Reddit administration was doing to stifle the protests and decided to make my blackout permanent from then onward. My exposure to the Fediverse has entirely changed how I interact with megacorps and software now. If it's not FOSS or DRM free stuff on my device, I don't want anything to do with it. Obviously getting to 100% on that is a very tall order, but I've been making a lot of headway since 2023.
Even in spite of the vast disparity in quantity of content, I would vastly prefer Lemmy to current Reddit without contest. Even aside from the massive brain drain the blackout had, and all the ad related enshittification, imagine being punished for even upvoting awesome things like Luigi Mangione? Now instead of the countless years I spent leaving my art and constant comments to boost some boneheaded corporation, I can post them here and be involved with a movement controlled by individuals. A movement made for and funded by each other, instead of lining greedy pockets.
Yeah, giving Google unfettered access to your attention span with their algorithm (or any giant corporation) is just a disaster waiting to happen. None of them are interested in your well being or helping you in any way, only to keep you engaging, and to try pushing narratives to the masses. These very same algorithms also determine how creators act and what they post, since disobeying the nebulous 'algorithm' results in having your video cratered.
As for PeerTube, I will tell you right out of the gate it won't be a major supplement to offset something like YouTube watch time. You will find some fun though, it's quite cool watching super indie stuff you end up enjoying, think like 2005 tier YT where people just kinda post stuff for fun. If you are a creative (e.g. artist, musician, maker, tech reviewer) and have the rights to your videos, MakerTube is the instance I'm on, and they would be happy to have you (my channel). If you aren't a maker, you can browse the instance list and try to pick a server you're comfortable with (all of them have an info page which shows their rules and what you can do). I know that's tedious and overwhelming though, so I spent a little bit mulling for something I'd consider acceptable as a starting point and found Peertube.wtf. They seem to be open signups, allow video uploads with a high limit, non-US, a proper no bigotry policy, looks good at a glance anyway!