I have issues with YouTube playback specifically on my work laptop. At home it's fine. It just started one day where videos sometimes fail to auto play and requires multiple refreshes. Even once they get going they often stall out and the progress bar goes all the way back to the beginning so I've gotten in the habit of taking notes of the time before I hit refresh and hope it comes back before I completely lose all interest.
I'd use Piped instead, but it has literally never once worked for me. Videos never load.