EF Continues To Dig It’s Own Grave

This post has been updated with the more current happenings. Please scroll to the bottom for the updates.

I posted a link to Maymay’s article detailing EF’s unethical “linking” practices in the EF forum. As you know, I already posted about them here. Well, EF being the “transparent” and classy place that they are, removed the post. See? It no longer exists. But, fear not! I still had the page up and screencapped it, so you can see that this thread did actually exist.

Click to embiggen, plz.

If the picture isn’t working for you, AAG has individual screengrabs of the thread.

EF claims to be about “transparency” and “community,” when, in fact, they’re about none of those things. And this? Is complete and total bullshit. Anyone that still defends this company is unethical, too. There’s no defending this crap.

EDIT: I have now been blocked by EF, and was not given a warning, or an email explanation. At all. I just went to log in, and it told me my account was locked. I’m the third person that I know of. To me, it looks like they’re trying to get rid of anyone that could possibly know (and spread) the truth. The truth hurts, don’t it? That’s called “damage control.”

Not only that, comments are being deleted all over the forum. Comments are there and then gone. Threads are, too. Threads say “new comment,” yet nothing is there, implying deletion. Myself, Sex and Law, and Holly (Woman Tribune) were all locked out of our accounts for posting comments or threads pointing out the error of EF’s linking policies. Sex and Law screencaptured hers:

And here is the bullshit explanation they’ve given, which as you can see, people are still letting them know is incorrect. The “examples” they cite aren’t even backing up their point. None of them use the same script that EF does, even though they’re citing them as examples. And anyone that tries to point that out, or why it’s unethical, is being deleted. You can read Google’s explanations of why “sneaky Javascript redirects” are unethical and wrong here. From Google:

Sneaky JavaScript redirects

When Googlebot indexes a page containing JavaScript, it will index that page but it cannot follow or index any links hidden in the JavaScript itself. Use of JavaScript is an entirely legitimate web practice. However, use of JavaScript with the intent to deceive search engines is not. For instance, placing different text in JavaScript than in a noscript tag violates our webmaster guidelines because it displays different content for users (who see the JavaScript-based text) than for search engines (which see the noscript-based text). Along those lines, it violates the webmaster guidelines to embed a link in JavaScript that redirects the user to a different page with the intent to show the user a different page than the search engine sees. When a redirect link is embedded in JavaScript, the search engine indexes the original page rather than following the link, whereas users are taken to the redirect target. Like cloaking, this practice is deceptive because it displays different content to users and to Googlebot, and can take a visitor somewhere other than where they intended to go.

Note that placement of links within JavaScript is alone not deceptive. When examining JavaScript on your site to ensure your site adheres to our guidelines, consider the intent.

Keep in mind that since search engines generally can’t access the contents of JavaScript, legitimate links within JavaScript will likely be inaccessible to them (as well as to visitors without Javascript-enabled browsers). You might instead keep links outside of JavaScript or replicate them in a noscript tag.

This could have serious consequences for EF, yet they’re brushing it off. You can report spam websites to Google here. I’ve also emailed the manufacturers listed on Eden Link, and sent Maymay’s post to as many people as I could, including Violet Blue, who says everything I think needs to be said.

And just in case anyone still wants to try and defend this, Maymay explains brilliantly why EF’s “explanation” is a load of crap:

I read their response, and investigated (briefly) some of the other sites they claim are using “encapsulation,” a term I’ve never heard of in this context before. I believe they are using a classic smoke-and-mirrors tactic, a classic “we’re doing it for your your own good, your safety, your security” misdirection, which is disingenuous. I call bullshit on EdenFantasys’s response, because the proof of the other websites’ innocence is underneath the “View source” button, just like the proof of their guilt is.

Here is a snippet of code of a link from one of the sites Fred mentioned, Lifehacker:

<a href="http://www.proteron.com/">LiteSwitch X</a> [Site via <a href="http://onethingwell.org/post/610183401/liteswitch-x">One Thing Well</a>

The above snippet was taken from the page at http://lifehacker.com/5541901/liteswitch-x-makes-macs-application-switcher-far-more-useful.

That snippet of code from Lifehacker, as you have already no doubt guessed, is exactly the same with and without JavaScript. It’s exactly the same in Safari and Firefox. It’s exactly the same on a Mac and a PC. It’s exactly the same for humans and for Googlebot. It’s exactly the same as other links on Lifehacker.com, even though it’s a link that points off-site.

So where is the “encapsulation” Fred is talking about? Maybe in his head. Or maybe he only wants his disingenuous story to be in the heads of non-technical users.

All of you can do exactly what I’ve done to test his claims. Disable JavaScript and view source. If you don’t already know the reality, then look into it for yourself, and then try to reconcile what you see with EdenFantasys’s story.

Let’s look again at EdenFantasys’s code for “links,” again with JavaScript disabled:

<span ID="EFLink_68034_fe64d2">female consumers make up 56% of video sales.</span>

In no way do the two snippets bear any significant resemblance. Fred’s claim that other sites like Lifehacker are doing the same kind of sneaky JavaScript redirects is a flat-out lie. The audacity of his statement (he must have known someone would challenge the claim), is stunning.

The more EdenFantasys tries to throw smoke in the face of their unethical behavior, the more obvious their deception becomes, and you don’t need to be a professional web developer to tell the difference.

When it comes to technology, I don’t believe openness and honesty based on promises should be sufficient. When it comes to technology, demand actually honest and open code. Demand transparency, otherwise you get people like Fred making promises and crying “safety!” while doing exactly the kind of unethical SEO as they’re doing.

So no, I totally don’t buy their response. Not even a little. Not even close.

Moreover, the kind of link-filtering EdenFantasys describe doing for “safety” is a technique already implemented by sites like Twitter and Facebook, which both function very differently from the way EdenFantasys does. Arguing that removing offsite links and programmatically altering links in syndicated content to point back to themselves for “security” reasons is a weak straw-man argument. There are more effective ways to offer security, and I think any technical professional worth their salt can understand that.

That post he made is not intended to clear his company’s name, it’s intended to placate the already loyal and to confuse the as-yet undecided.

And EF is referring to the disabling of several of our accounts a “cooling off period.” Uh huh.

This post on ShePosts also has some new and revealing information, including a quote from an EF employee accusing Maymay of  “stealing SexIs content” and this being his way at trying to get back at the company .

When asked to respond to MayMay’s post, EdenFantasy’s Marketing Director Victoria Steinour said the post was in response to an email exchange between an employee of EF and MayMay. She claims he “was stealing SexIs content and was angered by our request that he properly link to it… hence the lovely attack this week.”

But that post also points out that EF is definitely in the wrong here, and those of us that work with them should expect to be screwed regarding their linking practices.