Are you able to play the video linked in the comments of this post? It plays for me (in Firefox btw).

@Rodeo I've been using #piped as my alternative front-end to #youtube for like a year, and it's working fine. I don't use the official instance though; however, I did notice that the API was down for a couple of days (at least the subscription feed).

You can choose one from their instance list. Obviously, you are putting your trust to the instance owner.

So it wasn't just me, though that only happens in my browser, they work fine through Libretube otherwise

Has piped ever actually worked for you?

Yes, out of the box, always. But I also heard your story a couple of times. Apparently, it can be both!

it's always either a hit or a miss. The player UI really needs to show if the instance you're streaming from is online and working or not. Otherwise, you just keep waiting for the loading to complete, but it never does and you go the the preference to check and the instance isn't up anymore. You change it back to another instance, go back to the player, check again and change instance again until it works. Then sometime later the same thing happens again.

Newpipe mostly always works and is good enough for me.