How, and when, did the politics tab come to be on FARK.com?
I think it was back in 2007 sometime, we added it because there are links that are of interest to smaller groups that we don’t post on the main page of Fark.
Do you track page hits on links compared to the tabs they’re on and/or
did you see a noticable traffic increase overall related to election events,
or in the 2008 election campaign season overall?
yes, we saw a substantial uptick in the amount of traffic related to politics. We also saw an increase in the number of comments generated. In 2008 we saw a huge uptick of paid commentors showing up to leave comments. Both campaigns hired teams of people to hit most of the major sites on the net.
What prompted the creation of the “political thermometer” at the top of
FARK political pages?
we do politics a little differently than other sites. We’re just screwing around so we tend to take political articles and spin them hard one way or the other. We’ve always tried to keep a balance. We kept getting accused of being liberal/conservative/communist/fascist/religous/atheist by people who didn’t pick up on what we were doing so we posted it to show people we were more or less on track
As FARK has evolved over the years, did you ever think that FARK would
play a role in the political discourse of our country? If so, what role did
you see it playing, and how have your initial thoughts or perceptions played
out?
no not really. Although it’s been extremely interesting to watch how political parties have tried to use Fark over the past three presidential elections. Even in 2000 we saw a number of attempts to manipulate media coverage on Fark, however it was grass-roots motivated. This time it was a concerted effort by both parties.
What sort of concerted effort was there?
we’d post a story about mccain or obama being dumbasses and folks would come out of the woodwork immediately to defend them – folks whose accounts have gone idle since the election. Might be worth checking with someone who worked on the campaigns to find out how they did it on their end, I only know what we saw
You were talking about people making up non-stories and posting them to blogs- were they using existing sources like Kos or RedState, or did they make multiple vanity blogs, or how did that go?
no more like articles on random blogs you’ve never heard of. Personal sites. People would submit a ton of those
Damn. Were they stupid? I
mean, I suppose you’d have to expect, with the contentious nature of the
election, there would be shenanigans like that, but that blog-trick seems
pretty ham-fisted.
yes they are stupid. Most politicians have only heard of the Internet, knowing subtle tricks is like 10 steps down the way. Fark’s on a list of sites (along with Digg, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, and others) that marketters are told to try to game to get a ton of traffic. Last time we checked tho, a few were telling their customers don’t bother trying to game Fark because it isn’t possible. Hopefully the word will spread
Heh, so no stories of encountering a slew of submissions from McCain
or Obama party servers, and fighting them off with a bottle of Heinekin?
haha no nothing like that
the perception of Fark is really weird, most people think it’s a small backwater site out in the middle of nowhere. I don’t do a lot to convince them otherwise, because it wouldn’t do us any good
You seem to have purposefully eschewed a Web 2.0-type platform so popular
with social networking places like Facebook, or Digg, yet FARK seems to have
had no trouble attracting a very vibrant and diverse community of differing
ideas and political affiliations. This seems almost counterintuitive, as the
reputation FARK has built is one of flippant cynicism and disdain of
“traditional” media. Or perhaps that’s exactly why it thrived, because so
many people of all walks of life were fed up- much as you describe in your
book. What are your thoughts on this?
I personally do not believe in the wisdom of crowds. There has to be a custodian or organizer for crowds to come up with anything useful. Otherwise it’s just a lot of standing around and background noise. I tell people that web 3.0 is “good editting”
I see what you mean now about “Web 3.0”, especially considering that
information. Do you still see any of this crop up, given the almost non-stop
nature of poliical campaigning these days?
nah it’s kinda at a lull point right now, I expect it’ll pick up january next year. Very few people seem to be laying groundwork this far out. I also think a lot of people are going to be trying to replicate the fundraising efforts that obama’s campaign came up with
When did FARK start greenlighting links to political “blogs”, like
DailyKos, RedState, The Huffington Post, etc, on a regular basis? (An
addendum here- I’m trying to establish when independent, internet-based
sources started to come into play, rather than commenting on the
greenlighting done by FARK modmins- greenlit links seem to be generally
chosen for their relative popularity, ie, that people will be interested in
looking at them- hence the followup question below)
fairly early on, and I suspect that the fact that we were trying to balance out political links had something to do with the frequency of links to one type of site or the other.
Ahh, so it was more of an equal time thing rather than a reflection on their
“notability”, say?
right. Altho it depends, it’s always about teh funnay – we wouldn’t just greenlight stuff to make the meter go back the other way, we’d just pay more attention to what we were doing.
What do you think the impetus was behind this- were people tired of the
“crap” being passed off as real news, or do you think there was another
dynamic there?
actually I think it has more to do with what I’d call “me too” syndrome. People really don’t like their beliefs to be challenged. They tend to congregate around websites that mirror their views so they can be on “the team” and go after “the enemy” whoever they may be. We do this with sports too, you won’t find Yankees fans hanging out on Red Sox blogs. Etc.
Do you think this will keep sites like DailyKos et all from truly moving
into the mainstream?
depends on what you mean by that. If you mean mainstream as in having a balanced audience, yes they’ll never get there. I don’t think they’re trying for that though. If you mean mainstream as in having an impact on elections in general, I think they’re already doing it.
I understand, from previous news stories about the site and interviews
you’ve done, that “real” news outlets will often lurk on FARK and try to
catch “News Flash” headlines, or otherwise use FARK as a supplement- or
crutch- to their existing methods of finding stories. Were there any notable
examples of this happening during the 2008 Presidential elections that you
are aware of?
there were tons. I can’t recall any specific ones from 2008, it happens so often I quit paying attention. I do remember one example from 2004 though. A Farker who worked at the airport where John Kerry’s plane was parked snapped some photos one night of folks repainting the plane with “And John Edwards” which was the first indication of who Kerry had picked. We posted it, MSM jumped all over it.
What role, if any, do you think FARK played in last year’s elections?
good question. I don’t know. We’re not a partisan site, so we saw a lot of campaigns trying to get smear articles pushed out to Fark – probably because they knew we have such a diverse readership that it was actually likely to hit people i
n favor of their opponents. You can publish smear pieces on Kos all day but no conservatives are likely to see them.
By the same token, because we are editting we’re relatively immune to manipulation. We saw a lot of attempts to get made up non-stories seeded on Fark by writing multiple random blog versions of the same bs story and submitting them all as if there was a lot of discussion about the made up subject. Personally I’m already well aware that just because a number of media outlets report something doesn’t mean there’s more than one source of the information (in fact usually there isn’t more than one source, everyone’s copying everyone else). I’m even more suspicious of blog summaries. Even more suspicious when they’re all posted by the same person. Or multiple accounts with the same password. We saw pretty much every trick under the sun in 2008
As mentioned before, FARK seems to attract a very diverse crowd of
people, of all political persuasions and affiliations. While FARK simply
aggregates the news, it still gives FARKers the opportunity to comment and
discuss the article linked. Whereas if I was to head over to the DailyKos,
or RedState, I would probably find the vast amount of commentators formed an
“echo chamber” of thought in the direction of that site’s political
leansings, regardless of the topic or validity of the article. Since FARK
itself is a non-partisan site, I have often found it enlightening to read
through the comments threads and get a “pulse” of what other people think
about various topics in an environment that is openly hostile to “echo
chambers”. This isn’t really a question, more of an observation, and I’d
like to know if you had any thoughts on this, or if you ever noticed
anything like this yourself.
I would also add that you’d be likely to find a small subset of trolls on purely partisan sites that are just there to raise hell. We have our share too but from both sides of issues.
I’m not sure anything else like Fark’s diversity exists on the entire net. Mainly because of the “me too” syndrome. Additionally I think we dodge the bullet there because people come to Fark to be entertained, and that tends to cross ideological boundaries. Arguing about poltics is secondary to why people come to Fark, but opinions are like assholes, everyone’s got em.
What role do you think the Internet will play in future elections? Is
the traditional media “doomed”?
they’re probably doomed for reasons other than political ones. As I mentioned before, I think the next innovation is the rise of editors or custodians of media. People will follow sites that select a mix of news they appreciate. We’re just hanging out waiting for everyone else to catch up. Maybe next bubble they will
Have you ever considered taking advantage of the unique
position FARK has, or promoting FARK’s non-partisan nature to further political
discourse?
part of my problem is I have no respect for either party. On top of that, it seems like most political discourse is just a bunch of people shouting at each other. I don’t think there’s a lot of discussion going on. Assuming it was even possible to succeed at doing so, once word got out all the partisan hacks would show up and ruin it.
I suppose this is part of the appeal of FARK; you can essentially get your
news a la carte, and a laugh or two in the process. Do you see any problems
cropping up with the editorial or moderation of media, as you’ve got on
FARK? What form do you think that’ll take, will people try and ripoff FARK’s
format, or strive for something different?
haha well what do you think Digg is? Rose told me so himself
but I’m not really worried about it for a couple reasons. First off, “competition” on the Internet isn’t the same as competition for a timeslot on network TV back before VCRs. If you find a new website you like, you just add it to the list. You don’t cross one off to make room. About the only way you can lose an audience is by sucking, no one can take it from you. If someone made an exact Fark clone just as funny as the original, it still wouldn’t impact us – people would go to both. Similar sites do a lot better linking back and forth to each other because they tend to gain each others’ audience while not losing their own
Secondly, execution is everything. Fark’s idea isn’t particularly revolutionary. It’s a bunch of links. It’s not what we’re doing though it’s how we’re doing it. Execution. For example, you and I could open a steak restaurant because we both know how to cook steak but we wouldn’t be very good at it – Ruth’s Chris would kick our asses all day long and look at what they’re doing, just cooking steak basically.
Do you see the
Internet or “blogosphere” capable of evolving into a pan-partisan
conversation, or is it destined to dive into more isolated communities of
agreement?
I think it’s destined to dive into more isolated communities of agreement. In a way it’s a return to the way journalism was done in the late 19th century. Every town had at least one liberal and conservative paper, democrat, whig, republican, communist, whatever. It seems to me that the era of unbiased journalism was the aberation, partisan news coverage may be the norm after all. Which really sucks but I don’t see it going the other way.
yes they are stupid. Most politicians have only heard of the Internet,
knowing subtle tricks is like 10 steps down the way
as time goes on, politicians will only
get more and more Internet and computer savvy. What direction do you think you’ll see
that start to go?
it got results (with Obama), so I think the next time around folks will go buy a team of “professionals” to run their ad campaigns for them. Whether or not that works is another thing entirely, entire organizations exist to scam money from election campaigns. Of particular interest would be the fundraising aspect, Obama absolutely hit it out of the park on fundraising via micro-contributions. I expect everyone will try to replicate that first. I think the communications networks (ie twitter and facebook) will be replicated but will be of more dubious use since they’re pretty much used to contact supporters not undecided voters. But who knows there’s probably value in that too.
How do you see anonymity in the blogosphere lasting into the
future? I know you’ve had, uhm, biting comments towards a Kentucky
legislator on that issue, heh. Is the anonymity key to way sites like FARK
and others work? Contrapositively, with a loss of anonymity, you could
largely avoid people trying to abuse your site in the way you describe, but
is it worth it?
I think anonymity probably is here to stay one way or the other. It’s impossible to prevent people from adopting completely different identities (although we have many ways to recognize when this happens). I don’t know if it’s a good thing or not but I don’t see it changing ever. The net just doesn’t work like that.