I imagine it lurking in the shadows, waiting to strike

It's a thankless job

It would be stupid, but very funny if someone created a YouTube bot for Piped links...

They'd get into an endless loop of responding to each other. Just a regular internet conversation then
Like when the reddit lotr bots get stuck in a loop.
Needed one the other day because the post only had the Piped one and Piped never loads for me. When it briefly used to load then it would buffer constantly.

What is the etiquette for posting YT links in this scenario? If the content is from YT I'd prefer to post the canonical link instead of a mirror that may go down or may get hugged to death. If you'd rather view on a mirror I'd suggest you use e.g. LibRedirect. Does this make sense? Are there better ideas? I'd like to promote non-YT frontends but am not sure what the best option here would be.

I would say just post the YT link and let folks do what they want with it. When someone only posts a piped link I don’t bother clicking because they are very unreliable for me and I pay for YouTube so I like to just use it and not deal with the bs.
Piped is not a mirror, it's just like a backdoor access to the original YouTube video.

So if you can access it on YT, you can access it on Piped
- So if you can access it on YT, you can access it on Piped
  
  Unless Piped dies
I can't imagine there'd be any damage to posting two or more links: the YT one, a piped one, an invidious one, etc... All sides of the conversation that matter are covered.

Hot take: Piped API sucks and is a giant waste of resources (unless you're running your own instance)

What is it exactly?
- It's a proxy to access YouTube privately. But all the servers are overloaded.
I agree. I've had to switch instances so many times, it's frustrating.

I found Piped to be way too slow. Use Freetube instead.

I'm vibing with invidious

I blocked it because Piped never seems to work.

Do content creators get views if I watch a video through any of the front-ends?

Content creators get almost nothing from ads. You're better off donating $5 to their buymeacoffee or patreon or similar, etc.
- That's not true and I don't know where this comes from. Ask anyone who actually is successful on YouTube and they will tell you YouTube ads pay quite well and their revenue share is very favorable.
  
  https://plasmatrap.com/notes/9lfexzmgccvvkr7q
Content creators barely get anything anyway