Comment by lovich

> Eventually, this arms race ends with a computer vision model that looks at the screen, classifies visual elements as ads, and draws a rectangle over anything that looks like an ad.

I think fandom wikis appear to have surpassed even this level of bad which I thought was the floor.

I’ll look up a character or lore and fandom has managed to SEO their way to the top of search. I’ll click on the link because I haven’t trained myself to avoid them immediately yet. I’ll then have a site load that immediately makes my pc fans take off like a vtol engine or make my phone start overheating to the point that it dims like the luminosity to protect itself as it reloads ads over and over and even reloads the page.

If I am willing to abuse myself enough to stay on the page to scroll down it then waits until I go to click on a link to immediately load an ad where I clicked and treat it like a real ad click.

At this point with the modern internet I do not know why any marketing department trusts the metrics they are getting from websites for click thrus. Every ad I’ve clicked on in the past year has been a trick on me and not a real click thru and has made me hate the company paying for the ad.

It feels like it’s nearing 100% fraud.