I also had it stop working completely. I thought they finally wised up to my adblocker, but I decided to finally install that update I had been sitting on for a while and it just started working again
Probably just the typical nefarious activities of YouTube. Either "accidentally" driving users to switch browsers, or experimenting with circumventing ad blockers, or negligence in testing, or who knows what.
If they want the "Google has no browser monopoly!" claim, then they should be obligated to make their services work perfectly with the alternative, instead of subtly scheming and manipulating people.
One thing you can do is to use an invidious instance. Those don't support live streams and shorts, but at least you don't have to deal with the atrocious normal YouTube frontend.
Sometimes I can’t even click on the front page, sometimes when I open a video it refuses to play.
I don’t know what’s up, but it works in chrome.