Sometimes I wonder how I miss some of the commotion and drama on the web. Sometimes I’m glad I miss it, frankly. Before digging into this, be sure you have at least 10 minutes to completely absorb what follows.

This story about Fark broke on Friday in Wired (but earlier in blogs of course) and today upon reading it was a thing that made me go hmm.

Fark.com, one of the most popular blogs on the Net, has been accused of selling out — joining a growing list of new-media outfits willing to bend old-media rules. According to a veteran new-media publisher, Fark has been selling preferential placement of story links without informing its readers.

The accusation is that Fark is selling spots on their listings and not identifying them as advertisements, leaving readers to believe that they are user-submitted when allegedly some of them are purchased spots. I can’t say whether or not this is actually happening because I don’t know, but if you believe what Jason Calacanis wrote here, then there is certainly damning evidence to lead to this conclusion. Steve Rubel wondered yesterday if there was any hypocrisy going on here. People for and against Fark are still commenting to that interesting blog entry.

But here is what I do know about Fark and at least one of the companies that they deal with: Pluck. Yes, this Pluck.

I often do coding work for adult webmasters, something of which I do not hide or shy away from. In fact I have a radio show every Friday (since May of 2000) which specifically addresses the technical side (coding mostly) of webmastering for adult webmasters at scriptschool.com.

Anyway, over the last year I’ve been putting together a resource page for adult webmasters on blogging. This quick reference blogging page has been generated from notes from an adult webmaster messageboard thread that I started in July of 2003 and am still updating as of this writing. Basically I’ve taken the information out of the messageboard posts, condensed and put onto one useful webpage that is all about blogs and blogging. In addition to that page I’ve listed blogging-related utilities, resources, tools, scripts and websites. To date we’ve only had one resource ask to have their link removed. Guess who that was?

Pluck. Why? They said that they didn’t want to be associated with adult material.

First of all, let me be clear: I don’t have a problem with anybody — including Pluck – not wanting to associate with adult material and when Pluck asked to have their link removed it was promptly removed. However, I do have a problem when people/companies aren’t consistent in their policies. So, here I am perusing Fark one day and notice who provides their RSS feed: Pluck. Now what does Fark sometimes link to? “Not safe for work” posts with soft porn galleries. Most of the time it is Playboy-caliber nudity, of which I don’t mind (I’m not judging the morality of adult content here), but there you go: there’s Pluck, in the middle of it serving up the feed and at the same time telling an established, professional adult webmaster resource that they didn’t want anything to do with being even linked on their website which was clearly related to blogs and blogging (and not linking to any adult galleries, BTW, with the heading of “not safe for work”).Hypocrisy? You decide.

Now fast forward to this Wired story about Fark selling access to stories for $300-400 and ask yourself if these bedroom deals are being made. Personally, I think the Fark site is very funny with some really cool photoshop contests, and them having links to adult sites is naturally cool with me, although if they are deeplinking adult site galleries and running up their bandwith bills without some advance arrangement then the adult webmasters could understandably be upset. Adult webmasters are looking for surfers that want to buy porn, not looking for freeloaders who want to just look at free content.

I’ve heard from at least one adult webmaster who says Fark deeplinked to his gallery content without permission, so he had to change the content of the Fark linked page (redirect). It is mentioned in the comment thread at weblogs that Drew Curtis, owner of Fark, has had problems with links being changed to other moneymaking links once Fark has deeplinked the content and he believes that one solution would be to sell those links (thus having permission from the adult webmaster to link to them).

Note: deeplinking is the process of bypassing linking to the home, entry and/or warning page and linking directly to the content. Articles, news stories, etc, generally every blogger does this regularly. However, is it generally considered bad form on the web to link to picture/video and/or other high bandwith content unless it is done with permission? Have I ever deeplinked content without permission? Sure. The linkdump section of this blog often contains links to content (like the Programming Language Inventor or Serial Killer Quiz that was recently posted for example). And I bet the vast majority of webmasters have done so too if they are being honest.

The underlying problem with a site like Fark deeplinking content is that they have so much traffic that it can significantly impact the site they are linking to and raise their bandwith bill. This is a gray area subject and one that eventually will be worked out on the web, I’m sure, but it’s one that effects every website that contains third party links and has a significant amount of traffic like Fark does. Also if enough smaller sites deeplink to content then it can cause that site problems if they don’t swap out the content and attempt to make at least some money to cover the costs. A recent example is the political cartoon JibJab which got a ton of press from blogs and major media but according to the creators it only generated one month’s rent and a little extra money in terms of it’s monetary impact.

Readers shouldn’t confuse the practice of deeplinking with hotlinking, which is the act of actually including content from a third party (pictures, videos, etc) on one’s website without permission. This is by far a worse case of bandwith theft than deeplinking because at least in the case of deeplinking the traffic is being sent to the website. I don’t hotlink anybody’s content without permission and I don’t think Fark has ever done so or is being accused of doing so. Just put that in here to make the clarification that what Fark is doing linking to these adult site galleries — if indeed it is without permission as I’ve heard from at least one source – isn’t something that other sites haven’t tried doing. The point I am trying to make is that Drew Curtis and Fark shouldn’t be surprised if the content they link to is changed to something else.

Selling links to adult galleries isn’t a foreign concept. High traffic adult site like The Hun have been doing this for awhile. I think surfers pretty much know that some of the links are sold and that’s one way these Thumbnail Gallery Post (TGP) type sites make money in the business these days. I am surprised that Fark wasn’t already doing this and it sort of wraps together in one quick, easy summary the information in this blog entry:

- Fark allegedly deeplinks content without permission
- Fark allegedly charges for some listings and doesn’t indicate those are advertisers or sponsored links (this was what Jason Calacanis and others are upset about)
- Fark’s RSS feed is provided by Pluck (see screenshot of RSS feed above)
- Pluck allegedly doesn’t want to be associated with adult content and yet is running “not safe for work” links from Fark

Did this post make you go hmm?

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