I never click ads and I turn off personalisation wherever possible. Could it be that the system is punishing me somehow? Is this some dystopian algorithm?
"Since we have no idea of who you are, this is the drek that targeted to you -- i.e. 'everybody'".
This is also the reason I don't log in to YouTube, and if I do find I video, I open it in a "private tab".
If I don't suddenly my "feed" explodes with even more stuff I was barely interested in when I wanted to watch the video in the first place.
Never let it know you might be casually interested in anything borderline controversial, or you'll be overwhelmed with every fringe dingbat clickbait video that's, perchance, even barely related to the video you watched.
This is clearly a dystopian development and it turns on its head the old adage that when you pay for a product you become the customer. These businesses are abusing their "customers" by treating them as something less.
Think about it: if the ad auction house knows nothing about you, then you'd expect to only get least-common-denominator ads. Everyone has a butt, after all.
If someone's reading an article about guitars, there's a good bet they'll respond more favorably to a guitar ad than to a picture of someone's ass. Common sense was a casualty in the transition to the internet.
Opinion piece about politics -> advertise a book of the same political leaning
I guarantee, no matter the topic, there's always a more relevant option than someone's ass.
>more relevant option than someone's ass
That's a pretty low bar. I'm not arguing for this kind of ad. I'm only saying that keeping all ads exclusively topical would be highly unprofitable for many categories of information you find on the internet.
>News about crime -> advertise a home security system
That would create some pretty perverse incentives for news organizations to fear monger about local crime (more than usual that is). What could go wrong?
Yes. The system is punishing you with ads for not having an ad blocker.