(Moved this question from Stack Overflow, as this feels to be the more appropriate place. Please correct me if it should go somewhere else)
I was doing some reading on HTML questions and ran into the weirdest problem. Questions like the one here (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/79478665/why-cant-i-remove-the-underline-from-my-navigation-links) which hold example HTML code blocks get rendered in the browser instead of shown literally, which would be the original intention. This leads to some incredibly erratic webpage behavior following anything after the block(s) in the form, like in the provided screencaps from the first link and from (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8903584/how-do-i-prevent-code-written-in-my-pre-from-rendering). Webpages that do not hold such HTML code blocks, like the python code blocks in (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/22517885/how-to-create-a-python-class), have no such issues and render normally.
I generally use Chrome, but the issue persists in Edge as well, so I’m pretty certain it’s not related to only the browser. Furthermore, it seems to occur in some, not all, other websites using example HTML code blocks as well, such as tutorial sites, leading to malformed webpages. I’ve already messed with extensions and clearing the cache/cookies per normal, to no avail. I am uncertain what could possibly be causing this issue; both browsers are the most recent versions (Chrome Version 133.0.6943.143 (Official Build) (64-bit), and Edge Version 133.0.3065.92 (Official build) (64-bit)).
My first thought is something malicious, such as a browser-jacker, but this is a brand new rig made fairly recently with a fresh copy of Windows 10 Home from an Amazon product key, and I am generally alright with not picking up shiny trojans on the wide web (not that I’ve been on this build long enough to have done so anyway), and I haven’t noticed any other strange activity or movement (no changes to CPU/GPU usage, no weird processes or files or erratic behavior, and neither Windows Defender, Malwarebytes, nor Nord have found anything) so unless this is a really quiet rootkit or something I am stumped.
Link to images on Imgur, since I can’t embed on this stack site it seems: https://imgur.com/a/QOLpUcZ
Has anyone else seen something like this? Any idea what could possibly be going on here?
