Honestly no idea. It would depend if the views are counted from an api request or from amount of clients asking for the video. Newpipe Invidious and many other 3rd party frontends dont use youtubes api cause they would quickly be blocked and sued.

Who said you gonna BUY a license?

Liar! Its a bat!!!

Vpn is not required if you use a debrid service which makes stremio as fast as most streaming services. Also its quite cheap

You could just hide the home tab and default to the subscriptions. And I think you can also hide recomendations but Im not sure about that.