Thanks for the heads-up about the AMA.
If someone takes nothing else away from it, this should be part of everyone's "To Don't Do List"...
http://www.reddit.com/r/bigseo/comme..._about/cgbjoh2
The audio of Danny's rant about link building is pretty funny too.
https://soundcloud.com/jeremy-bencke...ments/64853048
http://www.websimple.com/blog/danny-...inks-rant.html (transcript)
...particularly the part about when there were only 3 Directories, something those of us who've been netizens for a long time will (fondly?) remember.
But the same reasoning applies to things many adult webmasters do nearly every day. Bloggers getting links from blog directories is one example. And depending on whether or not a Link List is a directory, and whether Free Sites are viewed as gateway* pages ...well, I don't want to rekindle that flame.
Thanks again for posting the link for the AMA.
* For those who wonder why Free Sites would be seen as gateway pages, it's because traffic usually flows into the Free Site domain through those pages instead of through the root index page and then out to those pages. If the Free Site pages have links back to the root "hub" page then the majority of new user clicks to that root page will be from inside the site unless the Free Site domain has its own traffic sources aside from Free Site traffic.