Fark.com

Fark.com is a community website created by Drew Curtis allowing users to comment on a daily batch of news articles and other items from various websites. Most links are submitted by Fark readers, which are then approved for posting on the main page by admins. Fark is one of the most widely read community sites of its type on the internet.

Criticisms

Fark is often criticized for running headlines and articles that are politically biased. However, they are accused of having both a conservative and a liberal bias. Drew has stated that rather than trying to keep it in the middle, admins enjoy running both far-left and far-right articles.http://www.badmouth.net/interview-farks-drew-curtis/ The top three hated "groups" on Fark.com are PETA, molester Catholic priests and those who push Intelligent Design according to founder Drew Curtis.http://www.newmoanyeah.com/2003-features/120103_interview_with_drew_curtis.php?content=2003§ion=features&title=120103_interview_with_drew_curtis&vo=83

Related Topics:
PETA - Catholic priests - Intelligent Design

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Fark has been accused of selling preferential placement of story links on the main page.http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,64472,00.html Drew responded to this by saying he had considered selling links he was already going to post to servers that could handle the bandwith, such as CNN or ABC. The only type of links that are paid are some of the adult content (usually "boobies") links, which are clearly labelled as being sponsored. Thus far the only sponsored links have only been clearly labelled adult content links. This is done to ensure the links are trojan-free, spam-free, and spyware-free. Adult content links that aren't labelled as sponsored links are not paid for and were submitted by individual users. According to Drew, there is currently nothing in the works to sell links to sites such as AP, CNN, or anyone else.

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Many people also complain that Fark will not publish their link to their main page or "greenlight" their articles. All of the links submitted on Fark.com are submitted by individual users and are approved based on content by administrators. Articles which are posted to the main page are selected based on the content of the article, how funny the headline is, and sometimes how much bandwith the server can hold http://www.fark.com/farq/faq.shtml. All sites wishing to be posted on the main page of Fark.com are advised to submit links through the Fark queue and follow the posting guidelines instead of emailing the administrators. The administrators will never greenlight an article because they were emailed and asked to do so.

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