As an employee of EdenFantasys, I’m quite tired of all of the bashing of the company, the employees, and the Community that goes on with cunt bloggers. I watch one actually go to people’s blogs and belittle and bully them in the comments for working with us. Way to stay classy. I usually keep my mouth shut because these cunts would gladly use it as another excuse to bash people (hence the disclaimer above). But you know what? I work damn hard for EF and our Community (as do the other employees), and I’m tired of these whiny and useless cunts beating a dead horse. Sure, I could avoid the shit, but the internet is a small word after all and things get around. [snip] I guess no one has clued them in to the fact that they are nobodies outside of their small retarded circle jerk of sycophants.¹

This is who you are dealing with when you buy from, review for, or write for EF. Really, there’s nothing I could add that would make it any more clear.

1. I am not linking to this ridonkulousness but you can check out nektca dot com if you would like to see the quote in all its resplendent glory. Be warned, however; the rest of her post requires a trigger warning for rape apology and violence.

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This post, Proud to Be a Cunt Blogger, originally appeared on aag on Monday, May 23, 2011. Tweet This Post!

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Who are its members? Where are its members? What passwords or secret handshakes exist to grant one entrance? I don’t know! I’ve never heard of anyone who does know, nor even a breath of a whisper of a hint that would suggest the reality of this “in” group, and you know why? Because there is no “in” group. There are, however, many of us who feel passionately about certain topics, including two or three which have caused quite a kerfuffle lately — and rightly so.

The glorious interconnectedness of the ‘net means that if you post a blog about a topic abhorrent to me and I’m hosting your ad, your assholery rubs off on me. I look like a jerk by proxy, and trust me when I say that I do a fine enough job of looking like a jerk without anyone else’s help.

This phenomena seems to be getting more pronounced as Twitter, Facebook and other social media draw us into an ever more tightly woven network. The growing pains are sharp but they’re not nearly over. Companies have to be more cognizant than ever about how they look to their customers:

So what is the point of all this?  The point is, FORGET YOUR BRAND.  You don’t own it because it is literally nothing.  You can spend all sorts of time and money trying to manufacture public opinion, but ultimately, that’s up to the public, now isn’t it?

You know the best way to get the public to respect your brand?  Have a respectable brand.  Offer a great, innovative product and make responsible, ethical business decisions.

I’ll add this: When you fuck up — and we all fuck up — have the ovaries to admit it. Face your failure, apologize for the misstep and promise to make things right. Look, it’s dead simple:

• “Our current linking strategy really isn’t building the kind of collaboration we want to encourage. Give us a week to reevaluate, during which we’d love to have your constructive feedback in our forums; at the end of this time we’ll roll out a new policy that will be fair to everyone.”

• “Our company makes products specifically designed to help people explore and enjoy their sexuality no matter what their body type. We’re saddened and embarrassed to have posted an article that suggests otherwise. We have removed the piece in question and in the future we’ll hire more qualified writers and better vet their work before allowing it on our site.”

• “After receiving an enormous amount of feedback on this topic we’ve come to the conclusion that linking to someone who put a bounty on sex workers was ill-advised at best. We’re proud to fight for sex-workers’ safety and human rights, and in the future we’ll do better to respond to their concerns promptly.”

Kindergartners know to do this when they’re wrong. CEOs should follow their example.

Should companies about-face with every complaint? Not hardly. But when dozens or hundreds start flowing in, it’s time to realize that those messages come not from anonymous nobodies but actual human beings who may in fact work in the very fields they’re critiquing and who quite literally put food on your table and a roof over your head. Consumers have more ability than ever to know you and contact you. Expect to be held accountable. Expect it if you are a blogger writing to an audience of dozens or if you are the President of a Fortune 500 company.

Do your opinions on these topics differ from mine? That’s ok. Economics being what they are right now, I cannot condemn anyone who keeps their ties to a company I’ve criticized. It’s hard to turn down affiliate checks no matter how small; it’s even harder to contemplate giving up full-time employment based on the experiences others have had. Affiliate away. Work away. But for the love of God have an exit strategy because my gut and overwhelmingly ample evidence tells me that sooner or later you will need it.

You don’t need an “in” crowd to tell you that.

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This post, On the “In” Crowd and Sex Blogging, originally appeared on aag on Friday, June 4, 2010. Tweet This Post!

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I’ve been an occasional blogger for a while now. I have a bit of a hectic life, though it’s starting to calm down. When I first started I received quite a few comments, but they kinda stopped happening and I think that’s part of why I got irregular at putting stuff on the blog.

If I think about it, the interaction online is what I like, but because of the hit-and-miss way I blog I don’t interact as much as I perhaps should with others online.

Do you think I should I put myself on blog listing sites? I have to wonder if it is worth doing, especially after reading about how people like EdenFantasys seem to mess around with their links back to bloggers. And if so, without me being able to spend a long time online, am I just going to be a blogger also-ran?

I would really appreciate advice from an experienced blogger.

Katie, while you might get a few hits from blog listing sites, I’d suggest that you spend your online time otherwise:

• Add blogs in your niche to a feed reader so that you can find updates easily. This might take an hour to set up initially (less if you’re already familiar with using Google or another RSS reader) but it will be well worth it in the long run. If you’re just starting, choose twenty to thirty sites so that you don’t get overwhelmed.

• Read your updates daily. If you’ve selected a moderate number of blogs, it shouldn’t take too long to skim most of them and concentrate on a few that really catch your interest.

• Leave at least five meaningful comments on blogs from your reader each day. “Meaningful” is the key word here. Take the time to respond thoughtfully to the topic. Make sure that you leave your URL with your comment and set up an account with Gravatar. This will help the blog’s author and readers remember you.

• Link to blogs in your niche. They might link back to you. If they don’t, you are not allowed to whine.

Once your reader is all set up, Katie, you should be able to read and comment in under a half-hour a day. I think this will help you find some of the interaction you’re after, but I bet my readers can suggest more ways.

Readers? Have at it.

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This post, A Question About Linking from a Reader, originally appeared on aag on Thursday, May 27, 2010. Tweet This Post!

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This post, A red herring, a misdirection, a distraction, originally appeared on aag on Tuesday, May 25, 2010. Tweet This Post!

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Dear contributors,

I want to address recent concerns about EdenFantasys’ linking practices.
I am talking about multiple links placed on our website by thousands of contributors: reviewers, forum participants, manufacturers and general users.

Thousands of users post daily on EdenFantasys. These are posts on the forum, reviews, commentaries, personal profiles and today we even opened up our video platform EdenTube. This is all user-generated content (UGC) which requires special handling to assure our website is not damaged with malicious software that could compromise our commerce operations, credit card security compliance procedures, and overall could shut down the website.

It is a common practice on all user-driven websites, including giants like Facebook, MySpace, Yelp or any of the others. You read from time to time about disastrous outbreaks of trojans – virus software – inserted this way into platforms. When it is detected that the posted content contains scripting, linking or other coding symbols beside just alphanumeric characters, the standard coding procedure is to raise a security alert flag. Then there are two ways to handle this: a program can erase / delete all coding from the content or encapsulate it into a separate module that won’t be able to interfere with the rest of the website.
EdenFantasys uses high efficient and the most advanced Web 2.0 technologies like AJAX with DotNET and JQuery frameworks to handle this technical problem. As a matter of fact, our server logs detect over 1,000 daily attempts to insert malicious software on all available user-submit forms. These technologies allow us to be a safe and reliable place.

Some helpful examples include these sites, which do the same JavaScript-based encapsulation:

[list of "links" removed because they all pointed to EF instead of the intended sites]

Those are just a few of the millions of sites who utilize this linking practice as means for protection of user-generated content on interactive platforms.

All linking within SexIs Magazine, on contributor profiles, and elsewhere on EF have always been encapsulated. This allows us to be able to display all of the content instantly without pre-moderation and to share traffic with our contributors.

If there is anyone here whose promise was not met, please contact us and we’ll address the problem immediately. We all appreciate your patience here. The allegations made by a few individuals are misguided, misinformed and surely confusing to most people. This is the stuff of highly experienced programmers and it is easy to twist such information out of context. I wanted to address it here for your reassurance. We care deeply about our community, and as you can see, this is another way we endeavor to make Eden a safe place to play and shop.

Eden is my greatest passion, watching this community grow and seeing people interact with each other on so many levels has been a dream come true. There is no other place like this, and I truly feel that we have the best community out there. We are looking forward to even better times and more exciting features in the future. Thank you to every person who has made Eden such a special and welcoming place!

This makes it tingle even more:

I am the lead programmer here at Eden – here is my input, I hope it is helpful!

99% of modern browsers support JavaScript and it is turned on by default. On our website, we heavily use JavaScript, AJAX, JQuery Framework and XML in order to make information available faster, more secure. Most parts of our website will not work without JavaScript.

In most cases modern search engines do not understand the dynamic information, although it would be highly beneficial for us if they did, since they are missing a lot of information.

As software developers, we will continue to use JavaScript because we believe that the dynamic applications are the future of Internet and are better for our customers.

Thanks!

This is bullshit of the highest order of magnitude, folks. It’s even more bullshitilicious when you consider the posts they removed from that thread before locking it:

And this, courtesy of Mistress Kay:

Or this, courtesy of Sex & Law:

Why did EF not want these questions raised? Because any explanations they can give are nothing more than smoke and mirrors.

All sites need security measures in place to keep users with malicious intent from causing damage. I’m sure EF has implemented many valid techniques to deal with hacking and spam. But this linking scheme is not one of them. Ask yourself this: Would EF really be concerned about malicious content on Aslan Leather’s profile page? Isn’t Aslan Leather a trusted enough “partner” with EdenFantasys to be worthy of an honest link back to their site? The very simple answer is the best answer: Of course they should have a real link; a link that is visible to human eyes and to Google. Every verified manufacturer and contributor should have a real link, instead of an “encapsulated” link. This is the kind of link that reputable sites give their friends and even their competitors.

EF is not a reputable site for many, many reasons. The exposure of this unethical linking scheme is just the latest in a long string of bad behavior.

Why not do something about it?

–also read:
Link Roundup: Eden Fantasys? More like Epic Fail
Eden Fantasys: A Sex Shop No One Can Trust
EdenFantasys.com Shoots Itself In The Balls…Again

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This post, Ask Yourself, originally appeared on aag on Friday, May 21, 2010. Tweet This Post!

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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.

–please read the rest of the comments here.

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This post, A response from maymay, originally appeared on aag on Thursday, May 20, 2010. Tweet This Post!

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Never fear. Britni saved a screen shot:

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This post, Screencaps of EF Removed Forum Thread, originally appeared on aag on Thursday, May 20, 2010. Tweet This Post!

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It affects even those who have been the most vocal in defending EF. Have a look at the screenshot below, taken from the profile of EF contributor Red Roulette, who blogs at Champage and Benzadrine:

See the “link” there next to “My blog”? To your human eyes, it looks like a link. But hover over it and you’ll see that it doesn’t point to Champagne and Benzadrine. It points, in fact, back to the EF site. Click the link with JavaScript enabled and you will indeed be taken to Champagne and Benzadrine. To your human eyes, this “link” looks normal. (I won’t link to the page on EF’s site but you can find it at edenfantasys dot com slash contributors slash red-roulette)

But disable JavaScript and you’ll see something entirely different. The “link” is dead. It goes precisely nowhere. Dear Red Roulette, who has defended EF with every last breath in his body, gets no reciprocal link from EF.

If you can’t see the link without JavaScript, Google can’t see it either. For all the link-love you pour into EF, they pour nothing back.

I urge you to read this post about long-term, deeply entrenched issues with the sex toy retailer EdenFantasys. I’ve cross-posted it below; you are welcome to cross-post, Tweet, Facebook, email or otherwise share this information with folks  the sex-blogging community and beyond. Thank you.

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This post, EdenFantasys’ Black Hole of Links, originally appeared on aag on Thursday, May 20, 2010. Tweet This Post!

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————

A few nights ago, I received an email from Editor of EdenFantasys’s SexIs Magazine, Judy Cole, asking me to modify this Kink On Tap brief I published that cites Lorna D. Keach’s writing. Judy asked me to “provide attribution and a link back to” SexIs Magazine. An ordinary enough request soon proved extraordinarily unethical when I discovered that EdenFantasys has invested a staggering amount of time and money to develop and implement a technology platform that actively denies others the courtesy of link reciprocity, a courtesy on which the ethical Internet is based.

While what they’re doing may not be illegal, EdenFantasys has proven itself to me to be an unethical and unworthy partner, in business or otherwise. Its actions are blatantly hypocritical, as I intend to show in detail in this post. Taking willful and self-serving advantage of those not technically savvy is a form of inexcusable oppression, and none of us should tolerate it from companies who purport to be well-intentioned resources for a community of sex-positive individuals.

For busy or non-technical readers, see the next section, Executive Summary, to quickly understand what EdenFantasys is doing, why it’s unethical, and how it affects you whether you’re a customer, a contributor, or a syndication partner. For the technical reader, the Technical Details section should provide ample evidence in the form of a walkthrough and sample code describing the unethical Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) techniques EdenFantasys, aka. Web Merchants, Inc., is engaged in. For anyone who wants to read further, I provide an Editorial section in which I share some thoughts about what you can do to help combat these practices and bring transparency and trust—not the sabotage of trust EdenFantasys enacts—to the market.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Internet sex toy retailer Web Merchants, Inc., which bills itself as the “sex shop you can trust” and does business under the name EdenFantasys, has implemented technology on their websites that actively interferes with contributors’ content, intercepts outgoing links, and alters republished content so that links in the original work are redirected to themselves. Using techniques widely acknowledged as unethical by Internet professionals and that are arguably in violation of major search engines’ policies, EdenFantasys’s publishing platform has effectively outsourced the task of “link farming” (a questionable Search Engine Marketing [SEM] technique) to sites with which they have “an ongoing relationship,” such as AlterNet.org, other large news hubs, and individual bloggers’ blogs.

Articles published on EdenFantasys websites, such as the “community” website SexIs Magazine, contain HTML crafted to look like links, but aren’t. When visited by a typical human user, a program written in JavaScript and included as part of the web pages is automatically downloaded and intercepts clicks on these “link-like” elements, fetching their intended destination from the server and redirecting users there. Due to the careful and deliberate implementation, the browser’s status bar is made to appear as though the link is legitimate, and that a destination is provided as expected.

For non-human visitors, including automated search engine indexing programs such as Googlebot, the “link” remains non-functional, making the article a search engine’s dead-end or “orphan” page whose only functional links are those whose destination is EdenFantasys’s own web presence. This makes EdenFantasys’ website(s) a self-referential black hole that provides no reciprocity for contributors who author content, nor for any website ostensibly “linked” to from article content. At the same time, EdenFantasys editors actively solicit inbound links from individuals and organizations through “link exchanges” and incentive programs such as “awards” and “free” sex toys, as well as syndicating SexIs Magazine content such that the content is programmatically altered in order to create multiple (real) inbound links to EdenFantasys’s websites after republication on their partner’s media channels.

How EdenFantasys’s unethical practices have an impact on you

Regardless of who you are, EdenFantasys’s unethical practices have a negative impact on you and, indeed, on the Internet as a whole.

See for yourself: First, log out of any and all EdenFantasys websites or, preferably, use a different browser, or even a proxy service such as the Tor network for greater anonymity. Due to EdenFantasys’s technology, you cannot trust that what you are seeing on your screen is what someone else will see on theirs. Next, temporarily disable JavaScript (read instructions for your browser) and then try clicking on the links in SexIs Magazine articles. If clicking the intended off-site “links” doesn’t work, you know that your article’s links are being hidden from Google and that your content is being used for shady practices. In contrast, with JavaScript still disabled, navigate to another website (such as this blog), try clicking on the links, and note that the links still work as intended.Here’s another verifiable example from the EdenFantasys site showing that many other parts of Web Merchants, Inc. pages, not merely SexIs Magazine, are affected as well: With JavaScript disabled, visit the EdenFantasys company page on Aslan Leather (note, for the sake of comparison, the link in this sentence will work, even with JavaScript off). Try clicking on the link in the “Contact Information” section in the lower-right hand column of the page (shown in the screenshot, below). This “link” should take you to the Aslan Leather homepage but in fact it does not. So much for that “link exchange.”

(Click to enlarge.)

• If you’re an EdenFantasys employee, people will demand answers from you regarding the unethical practices of your (hopefully former) employer. While you are working for EdenFantasys, you’re seriously soiling your reputation in the eyes of ethical Internet professionals. Ignorance is no excuse for the lack of ethics on the programmers’ part, and it’s a shoddy one for everyone else; you should be aware of your company’s business practices because you represent them and they, in turn, represent you.
• If you’re a partner or contributor (reviewer, affiliate, blogger), while you’re providing EdenFantasys with inbound links or writing articles for them and thereby propping them up higher in search results, EdenFantasys is not returning the favor to you (when they are supposed to be doing so). Moreover, they’re attaching your handle, pseudonym, or real name directly to all of their link farming (i.e., spamming) efforts. They look like they’re linking to you and they look like their content is syndicated fairly, but they’re actually playing dirty. They’re going the extra mile to ensure search engines like Google do not recognize the links in articles you write. They’re trying remarkably hard to make certain that all roads lead to EdenFantasys, but none lead outside of it; no matter what the “link,” search engines see it as stemming from and leading to EdenFantasys. The technically savvy executives of Web Merchants, Inc. are using you without giving you a fair return on your efforts. Moreover, EdenFantasys is doing this in a way that preys upon people’s lack of technical knowledge—potentially your own as well as your readership’s. Do you want to keep doing business with people like that?
• If you’re a customer, you’re monetarily supporting a company that essentially amounts to a glorified yet subtle spammer. If you hate spam, you should hate the unethical practices that lead to spam’s perpetual reappearance, including the practices of companies like Web Merchants, Inc. EdenFantasys’s unethical practices may not be illegal, but they are unabashedly a hair’s width away from it, just like many spammers’. If you want to keep companies honest and transparent, if you really want a “sex shop you can trust,” this is relevant to you because EdenFantasys is not it. If you want to purchase from a retailer that truly strives to offer a welcoming, trustworthy community for those interested in sex positivity and sexuality, pay close attention and take action. For ideas about what you can do, please see the “What you can do” section, below.
• If you’ve never heard about EdenFantasys before, but you care about a fair and equal-opportunity Internet, this is relevant to you because what EdenFantasys is doing takes advantage of non-tech-savvy people in order to slant the odds of winning the search engine game in their favor. They could have done this fairly, and I personally believe that they would have succeeded. Their sites are user-friendly, well-designed, and solidly implemented. However, they chose to behave maliciously by not providing credit where credit is due, failing to follow through on agreements with their own community members and contributors, and sneakily utilizing other publishers’ web presences to play a very sad zero-sum game that they need not have entered in the first place. In the Internet I want, nobody takes malicious advantage of those less skilled than they are because their own skill should speak for itself. Isn’t that the Internet and, indeed, the future you want, too?

TECHNICAL DETAILS

What follows is a technical exploration of the way the EdenFantasys technology works. It is my best-effort evaluation of the process in as much detail as I can manage within strict self-imposed time constraints. If any of this information is incorrect, I’d welcome any and all clarifications provided by the EdenFantasys CTO and technical team in an appropriately transparent, public, and ethical manner. (You’re welcome—nay, encouraged—to leave a comment.)

Although I’m unconvinced that EdenFantasys understands this, it is the case that honesty is the best policy—especially on the Internet, where everyone has the power of “View source.”

The “EF Framework” for obfuscating links

Article content written by contributors on SexIs Magazine pages is published after all links are replaced with a <span> element bearing the class of linklike and a unique id attribute value. This apparently happens across any and all content published by Web Merchants, Inc.’s content management system, but I’ll be focusing on Lorna D. Keach’s post entitled SexFeed:Anti-Porn Activists Now Targeting Female Porn Addicts for the sake of example.

These fake links look like this in HTML:

And according to Theresa Flynt, vice president of marketing for Hustler video, <span ID="EFLink_68034_fe64d2">female consumers make up 56% of video sales.</span>

This originally published HTML is what visitors without JavaScript enabled (and what search engine indexers) see when they access the page. Note that the <span> is not a real link, even though it is made to look like one. (See Figure 1; click it to enlarge.)

Figure 1:

In a typical user’s browser, when this page is loaded, a JavaScript program is executed that mutates these “linklike” elements into <a> elements, retaining the “linklike” class and the unique id attribute values. However, no value is provided in the href (link destination) attribute of the <a> element. See Figure 2.

Figure 2:

The JavaScript program is downloaded in two parts from the endpoint at http://cdn3.edenfantasys.com/Scripts/Handler/jsget.ashx. The first part, retrieved in this example by accessing the URI at http://cdn3.edenfantasys.com/Scripts/Handler/jsget.ashx?i=jq132_cnf_jdm12_cks_cm_ujsn_udm_stt_err_jsdm_stul_ael_lls_ganl_jqac_jtv_smg_assf_agrsh&v_14927484.12.0, loads the popular jQuery JavaScript framework as well as custom code called the “EF Framework”.

The EF Framework contains code called the DBLinkHandler, an object that parses the <span> “linklike” elements (called “pseudolinks” in the EF Framework code) and retrieves the real destination. The entirety of the DBLinkHandler object is shown in code listing 1, below. Note the code contains a function called handle that performs the mutation of the <span> “linklike” elements (seen primarily on lines 8 through 16) and, based on the prefix of each elements’ id attribute value, two key functions (BuildUrlForElement and GetUrlByUrlID, whose signatures are on lines 48 and 68, respectively) interact to set up the browser navigation after responding to clicks on the fake links.

var DBLinkHandler = {
    pseudoLinkPrefix: "EFLink_",
    generatedAHrefPrefix: "ArtLink_",
    targetBlankClass: "target_blank",
    jsLinksCssLinkLikeClass: "linklike",
    handle: function () {
        var pseudolinksSpans = $("span[id^='" + DBLinkHandler.pseudoLinkPrefix + "']");
        pseudolinksSpans.each(function () {
            var psLink = $(this);
            var cssClass = $.trim(psLink.attr("class"));
            var target = "";
            var id = psLink.attr("id").replace(DBLinkHandler.pseudoLinkPrefix, DBLinkHandler.generatedAHrefPrefix);
            var href = $("<a></a>").attr({
                id: id,
                href: ""
            }).html(psLink.html());
            if (psLink.hasClass(DBLinkHandler.targetBlankClass)) {
                href.attr({
                    target: "_blank"
                });
                cssClass = $.trim(cssClass.replace(DBLinkHandler.targetBlankClass, ""))
            }
            if (cssClass != "") {
                href.attr({
                    "class": cssClass
                })
            }
            psLink.before(href).remove()
        });
        var pseudolinksAHrefs = $("a[id^='" + DBLinkHandler.generatedAHrefPrefix + "']");
        pseudolinksAHrefs.live("mouseup", function (event) {
            DBLinkHandler.ArtLinkClick(this)
        });
        pseudolinksSpans = $("span[id^='" + DBLinkHandler.pseudoLinkPrefix + "']");
        pseudolinksSpans.live("click", function (event) {
            if (event.button != 0) {
                return
            }
            var psLink = $(this);
            var url = DBLinkHandler.BuildUrlForElement(psLink, DBLinkHandler.pseudoLinkPrefix);
            if (!psLink.hasClass(DBLinkHandler.targetBlankClass)) {
                RedirectTo(url)
            } else {
                OpenNewWindow(url)
            }
        })
    },
    BuildUrlForElement: function (psLink, prefix) {
        var psLink = $(psLink);
        var sufix = psLink.attr("id").toString().substring(prefix.length);
        var id = (sufix.indexOf("_") != -1) ? sufix.substring(0, sufix.indexOf("_")) : sufix;
        var url = DBLinkHandler.GetUrlByUrlID(id);
        if (url == "") {
            url = EF.Constants.Links.Url
        }
        var end = sufix.substring(sufix.indexOf("_") + 1);
        var anchor = "";
        if (end.indexOf("_") != -1) {
            anchor = "#" + end.substring(0, end.lastIndexOf("_"))
        }
        url += anchor;
        return url
    },
    ArtLinkClick: function (psLink) {
        var url = DBLinkHandler.BuildUrlForElement(psLink, DBLinkHandler.generatedAHrefPrefix);
        $(psLink).attr("href", url)
    },
    GetUrlByUrlID: function (UrlID) {
        var url = "";
        UrlRequest = $.ajax({
            type: "POST",
            url: "/LinkLanguage/AjaxLinkHandling.aspx",
            dataType: "json",
            async: false,
            data: {
                urlid: UrlID
            },
            cache: false,
            success: function (data) {
                if (data.status == "Success") {
                    url = data.url;
                    return url
                }
            },
            error: function (xhtmlObj, status, error) {}
        });
        return url
    }
};

Once the mutation is performed and all the content “links” are in the state shown in Figure 2, above, an event listener has been bound to the anchors that captures a click event. This is done using prototypal extension, aka. classic prototypal inheritance, in another part of the code, the live function on line 2,280 of the (de-minimized) jsget.ashx program, as shown in code listing 2, here:

        live: function (G, F) {
            var E = o.event.proxy(F);
            E.guid += this.selector + G;
            o(document).bind(i(G, this.selector), this.selector, E);
            return this
        },

At this point, clicking on one of the “pseudolinks” triggers the EF Framework to call code set up by the GetUrlByUrlID function from within the DBLinkHandler object, initiating an XMLHttpRequest (XHR) connection to the AjaxLinkHandling.aspx server-side application. The request is an HTTP POST containing only one parameter, called urlid, and its value matches a substring from within the id value of the “pseudolinks.” In this example, the id attribute contains a value of EFLink_68034_fe64d2, which means that the unique ID POST’ed to the server is 68034. This is shown in Figure 3, below.

Figure 3:

The response from the server, shown in Figure 4, is also simple. If successful, the intended destination is retrieved by the GetUrlByUrlID object’s success function (on line 79 of Code Listing 1, above) and the user is redirected to that web address, as if the link was a real one all along. The real destination, in this case to CNN.com, is thereby only revealed after the XHR request returns a successful reply.

Figure 4:

All of this obfuscation effectively blinds machines such as the Googlebot who are not JavaScript-capable from seeing and following these links. It deliberately provides no increased Pagerank for the link destination (as a real link would normally do) despite being “linked to” from EdenFantasys’s SexIs Magazine article. While the intended destination in this example link was at CNN.com, it could just as easily have been—and is, in other examples—links to the blogs of EdenFantasys community members and, indeed, everyone else linked to from a SexIs Magazine article or potentially any website operated by Web Merchants, Inc. that makes use of this technology.

The EdenFantasys Outsourced Link-Farm

In addition to creating a self-referential black hole with no gracefully degrading outgoing links, EdenFantasys also actively performs link-stuffing through its syndicated content “relationships,” underhandedly creating an outsourced and distributed link-farm, just like a spammer. The difference is that this spammer (Web Merchants, Inc. aka EdenFantasys) is cleverly crowd-sourcing high-value, high-quality content from its own “community.”

Articles published at SexIs Magazine are syndicated in full to other large hub sites, such as AlterNet.org. Continuing with the above example post by Lorna D. Keach, Anti-Porn Activists Now Targeting Female Porn Addicts, we can see that this content was republished on AlterNet.org shortly after original publication through EdenFantasys’ website on May 3^rd at http://www.alternet.org/story/146774/christian_anti-porn_activists_now_targeting_female_. However, a closer look at the HTML code of the republication shows that each and every link contained within the article points to the same destination: the same article published on SexIs Magazine, as shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5:

Naturally, these syndicated links provided to third-party sites by EdenFantasys are real and function as expected to both human visitors and to search engines indexing the content. The result is “natural,” high-value links to the EdenFantasys website from these third-party sites; EdenFantasys doesn’t merely scrounge pagerank from harvesting the sheer number of incoming links, but as each link’s anchor text is different, they are setting themselves up to match more keywords in search engine results, keywords that the original author likely did not intend to direct to them. Offering search engines the implication that EdenFantasys.com contains the content described in the anchor text, when in fact EdenFantasys merely acts as an intermediary to the information, is very shady, to say the least.

In addition to syndication, EdenFantasys employs human editors to do community outreach. These editors follow up with publishers, including individual bloggers (such as myself), and request that any references to published material provide attribution and a link back to us, to use the words of Judy Cole, Editor of SexIs Magazine in an email she sent to me (see below), and presumably many others. EdenFantasys has also been known to request “link exchanges,” and offer incentive programs that encouraged bloggers to add the EdenFantasys website to their blogroll or sidebar in order to help raise both parties search engine ranking, when in fact EdenFantasys is not actually providing reciprocity.

More information about EdenFantasys’s unethical practices, which are not limited to technical subterfuge, can be obtained via AAGBlog.com.

EDITORIAL

It is unsurprising that the distributed, subtle, and carefully crafted way EdenFantasys has managed to crowd-source links has (presumably) remained unpenalized by search engines like Google. It is similarly unsurprising that nontechnical users such as the contributors to SexIs Magazine would be unaware of these deceptive practices, or that they are complicit in promoting them.

This is no mistake on the part of EdenFantasys, nor is it a one-off occurrence. The amount of work necessary to implement the elaborate system I’ve described is also not even remotely feasible for a rogue programmer to accomplish, far less accomplish covertly. No, this is the result of a calculated and decidedly underhanded strategy that originated from the direction of top executives at Web Merchants, Inc. aka EdenFantasys.

It is unfortunate that technically privileged people would be so willing to take advantage of the technically uneducated, particularly under the guise of providing a trusted place for the community which they claim to serve. These practices are exactly the ones that “the sex shop you can trust” should in no way support, far less be actively engaged in. And yet, here is unmistakable evidence that EdenFantasys is doing literally everything it can not only to bolster its own web presence at the cost of others’, but to hide this fact from its understandably non-tech-savvy contributors.

On a personal note, I am angered that I would be contacted by the Editor of SexIs Magazine, and asked to properly “attribute” and provide a link to them when it is precisely that reciprocity which SexIs Magazine would clearly deny me (and everyone else) in return. It was this request originally received over email from Judy Cole, that sparked my investigation outlined above and enabled me to uncover this hypocrisy. The email I received from Judy Cole is republished, in full, here:

From: Judy Cole <luxuryholmes@gmail.com>
Subject: Repost mis-attributed
Date: May 17, 2010 2:42:00 PM PDT
To: kinkontap+viewermail@gmail.com
Cc: Laurel <laurelb@edenfantasys.com>

Hello Emma and maymay,

I am the Editor of the online adult magazine SexIs (http://www.edenfantasys.com/sexis/). You recently picked up and re-posted a story of ours by Lorna Keach that Alternet had already picked up:

http://kinkontap.com/?s=alternet

We were hoping that you might provide attribution and a link back to us, citing us as the original source (as is done on Alternet, with whom we have an ongoing relationship), should you pick up something of ours to re-post in the future.

If you would be interested in having us send you updates on stories that might be of interest, I would be happy to arrange for a member of our editorial staff to do so. (Like your site, by the way. TBK is one of our regular contributors.)

Thanks and Best Regards,

Judy Cole
Editor, SexIs

Judy’s email probably intended to reference the new Kink On Tap briefs that my co-host Emma and I publish, not a search result page on the Kink On Tap website. Specifically, she was talking about this brief: http://KinkOnTap.com/?p=676. I said as much in my reply to Judy:

Hi Judy,

The URL in your email doesn’t actually link to a post. We pick up many stories from AlterNet, as well as a number from SexIs, because we follow both those sources, among others. So, did you mean this following entry?

http://KinkOnTap.com/?p=676

If so, you should know that we write briefs as we find them and provide links to where we found them. We purposefully do not republish or re-post significant portions of stories and we limit our briefs to short summaries in deference to the source. In regards to the brief in question, we do provide attribution to Lorna Keach, and our publication process provides links automatically to, again, the source where we found the article. :) As I’m sure you understand, this is the nature of the Internet. Its distribution capability is remarkable, isn’t it?

Also, while we’d absolutely be thrilled to have you send us updates on stories that might be of interest, we would prefer that you do so in the same way the rest of our community does: by contributing to the community links feed. You can find detailed instructions for the many ways you can do that on our wiki:

http://wiki.kinkontap.com/wiki/Community_links_feed

Congratulations on the continued success of SexIs.

Cheers,
-maymay

At the time when I wrote the email replying to Judy, I was perturbed but could not put my finger on why. Her email upset me because she seemed to be suggesting that our briefs are wholesale “re-posts,” when in fact Emma and I have thoroughly discussed attribution policies and, as mentioned in my reply, settled on a number of practices including a length limit, automated back linking (yes, with real links, go see some Kink On Tap briefs for yourself), and clearly demarcating quotes from the source article in our editorializing to ensure we play fair. Clearly, my somewhat snarky reply betrays my annoyance.

In any event, this exchange prompted me to take a closer look at the Kink On Tap brief I wrote, at the original article, and at the cross-post on AlterNet.org. I never would have imagined that EdenFantasys’s technical subterfuge would be as pervasive as it has proven to be. It’s so deeply embedded in the EdenFantasys publishing platform that I’m willing to give Judy the benefit of the doubt regarding this hypocrisy because she doesn’t seem to understand the difference between a search query and a permalink (something any laymen blogger would grok). This is apparent from her reply to my response:

From: Judy Cole <luxuryholmes@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Repost mis-attributed
Date: May 18, 2010 4:57:59 AM PDT
[…redundant email headers clipped…]

Funny, the URL in my email opens the same link as the one you sent me when I click on it.

Maybe if you pick up one of our stories in future, you could just say something like “so and so wrote for SexIs.” ?

As it stands, it looks as if Lorna wrote the piece for Alternet. Thanks.

Judy

That is the end of our email exchange, and will be for good, unless and until EdenFantasys changes its ways. I will from this point forward endeavor never to publish links to any web property that I know to be owned by Web Merchants, Inc., including EdenFantasys.com. I will also do my best to avoid citing any and all SexIs Magazine articles from here on out, and I encourage everyone who has an interest in seeing honesty on the Internet to follow my lead here.

As some of my friends are currently contributors to SexIs Magazine, I would like all of you to know that I sincerely hope you immediately sever all ties with any and all Web Merchants, Inc. properties, suppliers, and business partners, especially because you are friends and I think your work is too important to be sullied by such a disreputable company. Similarly, I hope you encourage your friends to do the same. I understand that the economy is rough and that some of you may have business contracts bearing legal penalties for breaking them, but I urge you to nevertheless consider looking at this as a cost-benefit analysis: the sooner you break up with EdenFantasys, the happier everyone on the Internet, including you, will be (and besides, you can loose just as much of your reputation, money, and pagerank while being happy as you can being sad).

What you can do

• If you are an EdenFantasys reviewer, a SexIs Magazine contributor, or have any other arrangement with Web Merchants, Inc., write to Judy Cole and demand that content you produce for SexIs Magazine adheres to ethical Internet publication standards. Sever business ties with this company immediately upon receipt of any non-response, or any response that does not adequately address every concern raised in this blog post. (Feel free to leave comments on this post with technical questions, and I’ll do my best to help you sort out any l33t answers.)
• EdenFantasys wants to stack the deck in Google. They do this by misusing your content and harvesting your links. To combat this effort, immediately remove any and all links to EdenFantasys websites and web presences from your websites. Furthermore, do not—I repeat—do not publish new links to EdenFantasys websites, not even in direct reference to this post. Instead, provide enough information, as I have done, so visitors to your blog posts can find their website themselves. In lieu of links to EdenFantasys, link to other bloggers’ posts about this issue. (Such posts will probably be mentioned in the comments section of this post.)
• Boycott EdenFantasys: the technical prowess their website displays does provide a useful shopping experience for some people. However, that in no way obligates you to purchase from their website. If you enjoy using their interface, use it to get information about products you’re interested in, but then go buy those products elsewhere, perhaps from the manufacturers directly.
  • On the recommendation of my friend Dr. Charlie Glickman, I suggest Good Vibrations.
  • On the recommendation of my friend Shanna Katz, I also recommend Fascinations.
• Watch for “improved” technical subterfuge from Web Merchants, Inc. As a professional web developer, I can identify several things EdenFantasys could do to make their unethical practices even harder to spot, and harder to stop. If you have any technical knowledge at all, even if you’re “just” a savvy blogger, you can keep a close watch on EdenFantasys and, if you notice anything that doesn’t sit well with you, speak up about it like I did. Get a professional programmer to look into things for you if you need help; yes, you can make a difference just by remaining vigilant as long as you share what you know and act honestly, and transparently.

If you have additional ideas or recommendations regarding how more people can help keep sex toy retailers honest, please suggest them in the comments.

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This post, Edenfantasys’s unethical technology is a self-referential black hole, originally appeared on aag on Wednesday, May 19, 2010. Tweet This Post!

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I’m completely locked out; I cannot access my profile, my wishlist, my past orders, anything.

But don’t worry — the forums [link removed by aag; I will not link to EF] have an explanation!

‘We at Eden work really hard for the community — making it a safe, fun, and informative place to visit and to be enjoyed by any person. This is a 24/7 job, which requires all of our passion, attention and collective efforts.

However, there is a member of our community, Epiphora, that is having an adverse effect on the positive culture at EF — we get continuous complaints about her drama, rudeness, and overall negativity.

Today we collectively decided to ban her from the community. The decision is final and supported by the owner.’

For anyone considering associating themselves with this company, let me make clear to you what you should expect. Your progress will go through seven distinct stages:

1. Romance: “We love your work so much. Come work with us. You’ll be awesome! In fact you’ll be so much better than everyone else.”

2. Honeymoon: “You are amazing. Your predecessor never did this kind of work. We want you with us forever and ever and ever and you’ll make so much money and have so much responsibility.”

3. Danger: “We have some problems with your work. This is not what we expected from you. You must do more, and better, and faster.”

4. Threats: “If you can’t do better we will cut your payment rate/ban you.”

5. Divorce: “You’ve not lived up to our expectations. You’re fired/banned. This is final. We will not discuss it with you.”

6. Condemnation: “That person was awful for the community because of  this issue which we will explain in painful, humiliating (and largely fictitious) detail, as well as whole bunch of stuff you couldn’t possibly understand. But we wanted to tell everyone all about it because we are transparent! And we love everyone! Except for the increasingly long list of people we’ve banned/fired/not paid. Everyone! Really!”

7. Repeat: “Come work with us! It will be awesome.”

Every organization has a culture; unfortunately EF has demonstrated time and time again that theirs is anything but “positive.” Epiphora, I’m sorry you had this experience. I’m sorry that they chose to write ridiculous things on their site. I’m sorry that they closed your affiliate account with money still in it. None of these things should have happened.

Regardless of how many other wonderful things EF might have done, it has a long history of treating its employees and contributors poorly. Is this the kind of company to whom you want to give your money, your time, or your work? Are you comfortable having your name attached to them?

Do you think there is something so special about you that EF will not treat you the same way it has treated many others before?

————

For More Information:

from Epiphora: What the fuck, EdenFantasys?
from Britni: Bad Move, Eden Fantasys
from Essin’ Em: My Take on the EdenFantasys Drama
from That Toy Chick: A Tale of Intriguing Timing
from aag: Problems with EF and Update on EdenFantasys.com Problems
from Ask Garnet:  A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing
from Sarah Sloane: Money, ethics, and real sex-positivity

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This post, Problems with EdenFantasys, Take Nine-Thousand, originally appeared on aag on Friday, May 14, 2010. Tweet This Post!

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