BARFCOM has jumped the shark

Now I know that this might be airing dirty laundry, but I'm so glad I got banned from there.

Essentially:
-The site got a new facelift; it's not my cup of tea, and I understand that sites change their look.
-As part of the facelift, links members post to products on affiliate websites get altered so that barfcom staff gets a cut.
-They've included a handy way to share products on amazon so that they get a cut.

Now, I realize that there are costs associated with running a website, but when you put the bottom line way above quality—you get on the same level with clickbait garbage.

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Originally Posted by Uberjager

Now I know that this might be airing dirty laundry, but I'm so glad I got banned from there.

Essentially:
-The site got a new facelift; it's not my cup of tea, and I understand that sites change their look.
-As part of the facelift, links members post to products on affiliate websites get altered so that barfcom staff gets a cut.
-They've included a handy way to share products on amazon so that they get a cut.

Now, I realize that there are costs associated with running a website, but when you put the bottom line way above quality—you get on the same level with clickbait garbage.

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Products on affiliate websites? Are they altering post to go somewhere other than intended. Link to thread explaining it?

So if you write the name of a product, it highlights it as a link to the vendor of ARFs choosing. I'm not going there to find out.

The internet is pretty simple, if you don't want to go to certain site's than dont go there.

Lots of forums do that.


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Originally Posted by USMC88-93

Products on affiliate websites? Are they altering post to go somewhere other than intended. Link to thread explaining it?

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Let's say you launch a site called USM88-93guns.com, and let's say that it's part of an affiliate program. If someone posts a direct link to a product on your site on barfcom it will be like: avantlinks.com/referals/USMC88-93guns.com/Colt_6920 instead of USMC88-93guns.com/Colt_6920. Now barfcom gets to skim off the top, and the poster gets their post tampered with, without a heads up.

Meh. Size matters. When I was active on that site it was much smaller. There wasn't so much site traffic, nor did it require a lot of moderation to make it functional. It was run as a labor of love by people who otherwise had real jobs. Everyone knew everyone.
Then it got a lot bigger. Operating costs increased with traffic. It required more moderators and required more of them and site staff. It became a business in and of itself. You can like that or hate it, but that doesn't change the reality of it. I imagine this site would become very similar if it had the same level of traffic and exposure. I also imagine this site already strains the capacity of those who run it now, and also have full time jobs and lives they must attend to.

I vastly prefer this site because it is what the other was in the beginning. A small community of like-minded individuals who mostly know one another within at most two to three degrees of separation. But scale it up enough and the costs go up and the signal to noise ratio goes down, and you end up with pretty much the same site, with much of the same tactics to keep revenues rolling in.