Okay, so I’m going to ask you to do two steps. Do it all separately, not all at the same time. If at any time things work, it tells us what the issue likely is.
Open in New Private Window and go to YouTube. See if there’s any issues.
Go to hamburger menu and Create a new profile. Then test YouTube.
#1 checks to see if Extensions might be causing the problem.
#2 rules out settings. If it’s something in cookies or site settings, it should hopefully resolve within New Profile.
Usually one of those two resolves. Regardless of the results, please respond and let us know what happens. It’s just trying to check more common issues and solutions.
Sorry for taking so long to reply. Before I read your answer I turned off shields and that fixed the problem. But of course that means I’m watching a ton of ads I didn’t used to have to watch. I’m not sure why this is a problem now unless youtube updated and is working to counter ad blockers. But I haven’t seen any other responses to this issue on the forum so maybe that’s not it at all. All I know is I had to turn shields off in order to get youtube working correctly again.
Please try the methods I said, with Shields on. The idea here is to fix your issue and let it keep blocking ads. But if you’re content with your situation, then I guess go as is. Otherwise it would be helpful if you’d do as suggested and report back on whether problem is fixed when testing either step.
Hamburger Menu is how you access Brave Settings. It’s the three lines on top of each other on Desktop or three dots on top of each other on Mobile devices.