For the past 2 weeks I've been getting these extremely depressing, sad, and almost shocking pre-video ads on YouTube. They have absolutely nothing to do with what I've searched for, or have watched videos about recently. For example, I do not get any advertisements for apparel, for skateboards, for instruments, nothing that I actually have interest in.
Instead, I've been getting ads with parents who are crying and talking about how their young child has cancer, or it's a shot of a disfigured child or elderly person with a disability, or it's something tragic. As soon as the tragedy is made apparent is when the 5 second mark hits allowing me to skip the video.
"If my son is a miracle child, how did he get CANCER!?" with this women balling her eyes out next to her kid in a hospital bed. On top of that, the app has been so fucking glitchy. I can set my phone down while watching a video, pick it up, and somehow I'm clicking the link to the actual video of the ad.
I've been wondering why I've been getting these horrible ads, especially because they're not personalized in any way, and it hit me that I've been paying for YouTube premium for about a year now up until 2 weeks ago.
They're fully showing me these ads and letting the app glitch out so I end up buying YouTube premium again. That may come as no shock and almost be like a "not shit," moment, but when I put two and two together, it's pretty disgusting that they would use these kids with cancer in order to get $13 a month off of me again.