Tried to follow the instructions as written here under "Updating the VLC Youtube parser":VLC - YouTube videos won't play anymore
The problem is I can't delete the youtube.luac file. Apparently it's read-only and located within the snap directory (specifically, /snap/vlc/2344/usr/lib/vlc/lua/playlist). Using sudo nautilus and removing the file per GUI failed as well, and now I'm not sure how to move forward.