It's Google shenanigans again.
Are you using the Piped proxy? Try without it and see if that helps.
I am seeing the same thing since last night, it really struggles to load more than a few seconds, and then pauses. I have tried different instances and the problem persists. I was hoping for an update today. But I guess I will use NewPipe until this is working again
Newpipe has had similar issues for me for the last few days. Not every video, but more have problems than the ones that play. ALL videos are having longer than normal buffering ti es tho. Slow initial load times in Freetube but it's been playing everything fine otherwise.
I've switched instance to game.yt
and it seemed to work for 1 day. Now I'm having the same issue and I've checked all the instances available. It seems like an app issue.
LibreTube
An alternative frontend for YouTube, for Android.
https://github.com/libre-tube/LibreTube