>>719099574 (OP)
They started out as Wikia, a genuinely above average platform that was easier to just pick up and play than all of the other options. You could just go to Wikia, start one for your topic of choice, and get to filling out articles without having to know anything about running or hosting a website.
That's how a lot of major wikis got started, and why they stuck with Fandom until the last moment.
But then, as more and more of Wikia got bought up by venture capital (Which was a process that began almost immediately, I acknowledge.) And the original board and executive staff were phased out, it got more and more predatory.
Eventually, they gradually rebranded to Fandom, getting more and more obtrusive with advertising and taking design control away from the individual wiki operators with each step.
They bought Gamepedia, one of their biggest competitors, left it separate and independent for a few years so those who migrated to it would produce more content for Fandom to run a billion ads over, then consolidated it all for SEO purposes, which is why Fandom sites always show up first. There are about twice as many pages that the algorithm sees, but you don't.
And now, Fandom still appears first, even if those Fandom wikis aren't supported by the same people, who've moved on to other platforms. All that content is still there, and there are still new people naive enough to use and update Fandom Wikis, often plagiarizing from non-Fandom wikis in the process.
Fandom know they have a captive audience who don't pay attention, so they just slam the pages full of ads and other moneymaking content.
