- Hyper aggressive ads
- Restricted access to moderation and admin features of wiki
- Restrictions in layout/formatting to maintain compatibility with ad placements
- Forced addition of an AI generated section in wikis which contained gibberish or straight up wrong information
Comment on Stop using Fandom
EyIchFragDochNur@feddit.de 7 months ago
Could you give a summary? I stopped using youtube.
NightAuthor@lemmy.world 7 months ago
T4UTV1S@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Worst TL;DR:
Fandom is a wiki farm, meaning it hosts a bunch of wikis. Also they run on freely available software mediawiki.
Fandom has a couple main problems:
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Barriers to entry are super low, verification for users takes place 4 days post account creation, with no other steps needed by the user. Paired with the limited options that moderators have for editing access on wikis and you have a wiki that is much tougher to moderate.
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Ads. Fandom is for-profit. And that means super obtrusive ads that we’ve come to expect. But fandom also shoved ads in the middle of wiki pages, with admins having no control of where those should be placed. There’s also the matter of sketchy ads that are served to minors. Also, some of the ads are outdated but are for subsidiary companies of Fandom.
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The Grimace Incident. Basically Fandom took over and turned the McDonald’s and grimace wikis into huge advertisements, wiping out the hard work that the actual wiki maintainers did. They also put in a bunch of factually incorrect information, literally going against the whole purpose of a wiki and really worrying other wikis, because what’s stopping Fandom from getting paid again and repeating the event with their wikis?
I’m sure I glossed over a bunch of the details but that’s the best I can do from memory.
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Skasi@lemmy.world 7 months ago
How about an alternative Link to the same video? inv.vern.cc/watch?v=qcfuA_UAz3I
EyIchFragDochNur@feddit.de 7 months ago
[deleted]wildginger@lemmy.myserv.one 7 months ago
What does this even mean
Pringles@lemm.ee 7 months ago
How do you find these? You search alternative video players or is there some site where you enter a youtube url and it gives you alternatives?
Skasi@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Personally I use a browser extension called LibRedirect.
cherenkov@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
It is called individious, there are many hosts you can choose from. In any instance, a youtube link you paste in the search bar gives you that video in individious. If a certain video is not working, you can use “Switch Individious Instance” to quickly jump to another.
H1jAcK@lemm.ee 7 months ago
Stop using Fandom
EyIchFragDochNur@feddit.de 7 months ago
Why?
H1jAcK@lemm.ee 7 months ago
Sorry, that’s the best summary I could find up with
snooggums@kbin.social 7 months ago
Did you stop using YouTube because of the intrusive ads and monetization?
Same issue with Fandom.
EyIchFragDochNur@feddit.de 7 months ago
Tbh mainly because of dumb content. I grew up with free TV so i understand and can life with some ads if the content can be used for free. Also tbh i still sometimes use it for music and that one video gaming magazine’s channel that i really like.
I feel like I’ve become somehow allergic to youtubers and such.
NightAuthor@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Where’s that bot w the fedi links for videos?
Th3D3k0y@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Be the change you want to see.
NightAuthor@lemmy.world 7 months ago
You want me to be pipedbot ?
Th3D3k0y@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Yes, integrate yourself with the digital world! Translate the videos for us!
WeLoveCastingSpellz@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 months ago
summarize.tech
simple@lemm.ee 7 months ago
The video pretty much describes why Fandom is so bad and why many games are moving their wikis to alternative services, and why you should stop using it in general. Some examples include:
Ads everywhere, including autoplaying video ads that play another ad when they’re done. There are also ads sneakily inserted in the middle of articles that are related to the wiki, like a Gamespot review (Gamespot is owned by Fandom)
A sidebar you can’t remove that promotes their content
Fandom hijacked the community’s Mcdonald’s wiki to turn it into a giant advertisement
Accounts that are 4 days old can bypass restrictions and easily vandalize pages
Fandom sometimes introduces things nobody wants, such as AI generated answers that are usually wrong, take up the top half of the page, and with no way for wiki admins to remove it. They removed it after a lot of backlash but still…
GrammatonCleric@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Fandom seems like my experience on Fextralife
buddhabound@lemmy.world 7 months ago
And then you learn about Fextra’s embedded twitch player that artificially inflates their twitch view count and pushes out smaller content creators who are actually trying to engage with a game’s audience.
simple@lemm.ee 7 months ago
God, I hate constantly seeing their channel with 50k+ views on Twitch. It’s insane that embedding the player throughout their entire website isn’t against TOS.
captainphatty@lemmy.world 7 months ago
The good thing is that they are going to stop abusers of the embed system like Fextralife, the new policy was announced at TwitchCon blog.twitch.tv/…/everything-we-announced-at-twitc…
pyrflie@lemm.ee 7 months ago
You can block the element behind the player with the UBlock Origin element picker and it won’t comeback. I took the time to build this into my UBlock filters list since I regularly use the WotR Wiki.
EyIchFragDochNur@feddit.de 7 months ago
Thank you
Paradachshund@lemmy.today 7 months ago
Seems like on that last one someone could go through and change all the content in every page to a link to the new wiki. A PIA? Certainly, but at least it would get the ball rolling and use the built up SEO from fandom to help your new site get views.
ysjet@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Unfortunately they just use a bot to revert those. You’re not allowed to truly migrate off fandom, all you can do is fork your own data and try to out-SEO the fandom wiki, because as soon as you put it.on fandom, fandom owns it too.
Paradachshund@lemmy.today 7 months ago
I wonder if you could use a bot and AI to write fake information and post that instead. Seems like fandom wouldn’t have enough game specific info to judge the accuracy, especially if it happened over time.
Th3D3k0y@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Oh yeah… Gamespot, that place existed and it was terrible always. Then you look at the other things Gamespot own and realize they all got butchered in terms of reliability and impact.
108@kbin.social 7 months ago
When the OG crew left, so did I.
Zoidsberg@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
What can we do with this information, I wonder…
CoderKat@lemm.ee 7 months ago
The video also calls out that one of the challenges in moving off of fandom is SEO. The fandom sites often are above the new sites even when the fandom site becomes a pile of unmaintained, vandalized garbage. This suggests that vandalism actually helps fandom.
The best thing we can do is not visit the sites and don’t link to them, instead using and linking to their new sites.
ThrowawayPermanente@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
You’re the best, thanks
theneverfox@pawb.social 7 months ago
Nice write-up, I appreciate it