>For instance, my IP changes when I travel, but I’m an American who speaks English, and yet YouTube insists in showing me local ads in different languages when I’m in foreign countries, despite having my home address (verified with my credit card no less!!!) That’s just laughable.

Funny, my experience with YouTube is the opposite. I'm Italian, but I've emigrated a decade ago. I've tried to purge my Google account of all traces of Italian, changed my languages in my Google profile, settings, and all the places I could find. Google also has my credit card through Google Pay.

And yet they keep switching my YouTube interface to Italian at least once a week. I set it back to English every time but within days it's back.

The Italian interface is perfectly fine, mind you, but they insist on auto-translating the titles of English videos, which a) often results in barely coherent titles and b) the videos are still in English!