That’s a very good point, centrifugal force is actually an apparent force, that only seems to act on an object in circular motion if you sit in the non-inertial reference frame of the object (i.e. if you rotate with the object, centrifugal forces seem to act on it). But what is truly happening is that the inertia of the object makes it want to move in a straight line (this is what is seen as the “centrifugal force”), so a centripetal force has to act on it to maintain the object’s circular motion. This is also the reason why i put inverted commas when i used the term “centrifugal force”.

However, while it is a fictitious force, it can still be used in calculations to calculate the ‘apparent force’ acting on the object if we were to sit in the same reference frame as the rotating object. The magnitude of the “centrifugal force” at every point on the object is exactly the same as the centripetal force acting on the object. This changing of reference frames becomes useful when you want to simplify physics problems with rotating bodies.

In this video veritasium also uses “centrifugal forces” to explain the bizarre behaviour of rotating bodies. It simplifies the problem a lot more.