@randahl
Ask Sergey Brin if Google is pushing all it's bandwidth to AI projects
I have noticed in several videos that same issue.

@randahl It happened to me yesterday, but because it was Robert Reich and Heather Cox Richardson,I assumed it was just honestly overloading the server.

@randahl

I've had the same issue, and the solution that worked for me was a local Invidiuos-instance.

Not sure that it was their intention to make me go down that route, but hey - it works, and the commercials are history as well. I'd call that a win-win. :)

@randahl
Yes, and then in each case I ran a speed test to make sure it wasn't on my end.

The issue comes and goes, but frequently enough to be noticeable as a change. For me, it is also not all videos. I can often fire up a new YouTube window to a different video and it runs fine

@randahl There are consistent reports that this is being done on purpose for those who run the "wrong" browser (Firefox) or use ad blockers.

It never happens to me, but I am a Premium user so maybe those are excluded.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/youtube-responds-to-delayed-loading-in-rival-browser-complaints

@randahl They love to make people with Firefox and/or an ad blocker suffer, artificially. Might well be that.

@randahl

I've seen this happen a few times and every time I do it turns out that I'm still connected to the VPN and have to disconnect

@randahl I am not. I am in the metro dc area of the US. We use gigabit fiber as our internet connection.

@randahl This is going to be most likely, an issue between your ISP (or their interco) and Google. Basically Google expects ISPs to pay for a lot of the bandwidth used by YT. So your connection to your ISP could be amazing, but your ISP’s interconnection to Google could be saturating, or the regional cache has issues, etc.

The network is vastly more complicated, expensive and intricate than “my internet works great”.

@randahl

I haven’t seen delivery disruption, but their rework is simply crap. I use the web interface because I refuse to stick an app on any of my devices. For instance, I used to be able to switch to a different tab and continue to listen to whatever was happening but now it doesn’t, it pauses.

Not every commercial that was playing resumes properly when I returned to the tab, causing me to reload the page. Of course, this would ostensibly screw over the advertiser. But it’s Google

@randahl I observe similar issues as well. My guess is, that it is due to using Firefox with uBlock origin an NoScript extension (on Linux). Guess Google is not investing in compatibility any more, since now almost everything is Edge...