An update to my YouTube problem. Had a bit of a back and forth on Mastodon with Tommy Williams, one of the guys on the curmudgeon.cafe instance generously offered by Rob Fahrni. Although I'd seen many references to people having similar issues, I may have left the impression that nearly everyone does, and that wasn't my intention.

If everyone had to endure this, YouTube wouldn't exist!

I figured it had to be an interaction with something running on my Mac, so I started with Safari. First, I should note that I didn't observe the problem in embedded videos, only on the Youtube site. In Settings for youtube.com, I unchecked "Enable content blockers." No change. Next, I looked at browser extensions. I disabled Vinegar first, and that made no difference. Then I looked at Stop The Madness.

The first thing I noticed was that an update had dropped six hours before. So I deleted STM on my Mac, and tried a few videos. No weird volume issues. Ok, looks like something to do with STM. I checked the most recent reviews and saw no mentions of problems with YouTube. But the What's New section referred to some YouTube issues.

So I deleted STM on my iMac, and tried playing Stephen Colbert's monologue from the night before. No problems. Went back to the video where I'd been having the issue and tried it. Played fine for over 8 minutes, previously the problem would appear within the first two or three minutes.

I concluded STM might be the problem. But I like STM, so I updated it, quit and re-launched Safari, and tried again. I watched the problematic video through the entire talk, but I didn't stick around for the Q&A. No problems.

Then I watched the livestream of the Starship test fire. No problems. I'm congratulating myself.

Clicked over to a livestream of a National Space Council meeting and, uh-oh! Audio problems.

Only now, instead of going to max, the volume decreases. It doesn't mute, which was the issue I had repeatedly before I went to Premium. Switched to another video, same issue.

That's where I left it. I get pretty tired screwing around with bullshit like this.

I'll try again today sometime. A cynical man might suspect Google is detecting STM and just screwing with the audio to be pricks.