Glad I saw this - I thought it was some local issue.
Amazingly laggy for me with firefox/Debian 12.
I restarted firefox thinking it was the problem, apparently not.
Very high CPU usage as well.
Just now, I soon saw excessive delays on Debian 12 with `firefox-esr`, more than the occasional usual-of-late several-second blank video area spinner, though the videos otherwise play OK.
The noticeable first delay this session, they displayed a still image of the Chrome logo in the video area, with text saying that they recommend Chrome, and maybe a button to get Chrome.
(Edit: Screenshot from reproducing this in new browser session; again, it was the first ad, blocking before playing any content video: https://i.imgur.com/GkasyRX.png )
(I'm wondering why they bother with this, if under antitrust scrutiny, when they have more subtle and deniable ways of leveraging their platform control.)
Though, I should mention that YouTube is not showing ad videos when it seems to be trying to, which could explain some of these delays. It will overlay white text in upper left of video area, identifying an advertiser (e.g., Old Spice, Liberty Mutual?), but then not run the ad at all, and move on after several seconds. I suppose that my uBlock Origin rules might be blocking something for ad display now, though that's not my intent (and I normally see YouTube videos without having consciously changed something since then), or the ad-showing failure might be the fault of YouTube.
