>videos "buffering" for 10-60 seconds before they start playing

Thanks, that explains a lot, why i sometime have trouble with youtube, while having perfectly fine internet connection.

I've noticed a big increase in time-to-first-content over the last few years, even on ever-increasing bandwidth and decreasing latency.

I should sniff traffic to find out why, but my assumption is that it's a mix of CRL bloat and code bloat.