Last Friday everything worked fine. Today, if I try to watch a video while signed in to Google account I can only do it with quality set to auto that then defaults to 144p or 240p. Setting quality to 360p or higher results in constant buffering like we're back in 2008 and 720p does not even start playing. Tried Firefox on my work computer at work, Librewolf on my personal machine at home, both machines are at different ISP-s, work DL speed is 50 Mbit/s, home is 150. Tried disabling uBlock Origin, tried clearing browser cache, no go. Only way I can get videos to play in FF is when I log out or open them in private window. Cromium-based Vivaldi works without a hitch, too, with uBlock, Tampermonkey and all that jazz active.
What in the Seven Hells is going on here, Google? Has my account been flagged and throttled for refusing to disable adblock? Then why does it work fine on Chromium with adblock? Is FF under attack by Google and they are throttling YT? Then why everything works fine when signed out from Google? Why it started happening suddenly over the weekend? So many questions...
Google just wants you to submit to their authority and do things the way they want.
Invidious and Piped are great alternative front ends; no ads, no tracking, no algorithm, no stupid throttling.
Piped.video is the main Piped instance, and I’ve got Invidious running at ourtube.roguewave.observer
I used to self-host an Invidious instance on my home server for personal use, but at some point it stopped working and I haven't tried it again. I might give it another try along with Piped.
But as bad as YT is, by this point I have trained "The Algorithm" well enough that the home feed suggestions are pretty good at pointing me to stuff I actually would watch (mainly tech, science and engineering topics), I think none of the alternative frontend does suggestions, right?
That’s right, the tailored homepage isn’t present in Invidious.
I’m in the same boat of having educated the algorithm to fairly reliably show me things I actually want to see; I use my Invidious instance mostly as a backup for when the YouTube gods are in a foul mood towards Firefox or Ublock or the color of my shirt or whatever