Google recently removed the Stop download command from the context-menu of videos on YouTube.
Reports indicate that videos stop buffering in the background when you pause while others indicate that they continue to download even when paused (I suspect both to be true either due to Google changing the behavior while experimenting and/or it being dependent on some sort of aspect of the video, e.g. length).
Either way, this is hugely aggravating because:
If the video continues to buffer even when paused, then bandwidth (both people’s and Google’s) gets wasted. Users often decide to quit watching a video, and without a way to stop the video (not just pause it), then they are forced to either close the tab or reload it, both of which are absurd solution and very annoying since the user may not be done with the tab yet (comments, voting, related videos, etc.) even though they decide to stop watching the video.
If the video stops buffering when you pause, then people who have slow/high-latency/unreliable/etc. connections cannot pause it and let it buffer the whole video before watching. They are forced to watch it a bit at a time which can easily end up causing stuttering and make a video unwatchable (presumably Google picked some arbitrary and likely capricious amount to pre-buffer while paused).
YouTube still does not have an actual Stop button.
Does anybody know of a way to make YouTube usable again? Perhaps a setting or browser-extension or something that can either provide a (functioning) Stop button and/or provide manual control over buffering?