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LiveJournal stripping users' affiliate links

vichan.livejournal.com

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Re: LiveJournal stripping users' affiliate links

#21

Post by zaatar »

barrkel wrote: post #7
swombat wrote: post #2

Stripping affiliate links from freely hosted blogs = dubious, but just about defensible Stripping affiliate links from freely hosted blogs AND replacing them with your own links = unacceptably sleazy Stripping affiliate links from paid blogs and replacing them with your own links = outright offensive? Extra serving of fail? What's next? Inserting porn ads into people's blogs?

It's even worse - not only is it stripping links, it's often actually breaking them. The www.glutenfreebay.com example actually should redirect to glutenfreebay.blogspot.com, but instead it's heading to ebay.com.

It's actually any domain with the word "bay" that redirects to ebay.com: http://www.crittersbythebay.com for example.

Re: LiveJournal stripping users' affiliate links

#22

Post by Willie_Dynamite »

pyre wrote: post #16
Willie_Dynamite wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did before I posted the link, and I didn't get redirected to eBay.

That link is currently still redirecting me to ebay.com.

I don't have a lj account and I'm not ebayed. Both Chrome and FF steadfastly refuses to steal my click.

Re: LiveJournal stripping users' affiliate links

#23

Post by djcapelis »

zaatar wrote: post #21
barrkel wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's even worse - not only is it stripping links, it's often actually breaking them. The www.glutenfreebay.com example actually should redirect to glutenfreebay.blogspot.com, but instead it's heading to ebay.com.

It's actually any domain with the word "bay" that redirects to ebay.com: http://www.crittersbythebay.com for example.

Uhm, you're aware that link has "ebay.com" as the last 8 characters of the domain, right?

Re: LiveJournal stripping users' affiliate links

#24

Post by pyre »

Willie_Dynamite wrote: post #22
pyre wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That link is currently still redirecting me to ebay.com.

I don't have a lj account and I'm not ebayed. Both Chrome and FF steadfastly refuses to steal my click.

Could have been a caching issue. The link is no longer broken for me.

Re: LiveJournal stripping users' affiliate links

#25

Post by mbreese »

djcapelis wrote: post #23
zaatar wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually any domain with the word "bay" that redirects to ebay.com: http://www.crittersbythebay.com for example.

Uhm, you're aware that link has "ebay.com" as the last 8 characters of the domain, right?

What does that have to do with it? If I put to a link to "ifreakinghateebay.com" would it be okay if they rediected it to ebay? No, of course not.

Re: LiveJournal stripping users' affiliate links

#26

Post by djcapelis »

mbreese wrote: post #25
djcapelis wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uhm, you're aware that link has "ebay.com" as the last 8 characters of the domain, right?

What does that have to do with it? If I put to a link to "ifreakinghateebay.com" would it be okay if they rediected it to ebay? No, of course not.

Oh, it's clearly broken, it's just the comment I was replying to asserted that anything with the word bay in it triggers the breakage. This seems to be unlikely. The fact that the behavior was broken and links unrelated to ebay were being redirected to ebay was already well established by that point in the thread.

Understanding which links are affected by this issue and the scope of the problem might be relevant.

In fact, one might go ahead and leap to the conclusion based on our revised understanding (that it does in-fact likely need ebay.com in the url to trigger) that this error is being caused by an unfortunately constructed regular expression or overaggressive pattern match and one might even learn something.

But far be it from me to assume that such a far fetched conjecture has anything to do with it.

Re: LiveJournal stripping users' affiliate links

#28

Post by jrockway »

pyre wrote: post #19
dotBen wrote: post #9

Ok serious question... What do people feel about url shorteners doing this? Also, what about free twitter clients - as a mechanism for monetization?

If you read the whole thing (links and all) you'll find this nugget of a comment: Ooh, wait, I can do one better: I'm telling Amazon. (Anybody with me? A plurality of e-mail speaks louder than one.) This is in strict violation of the Operation Agreement for the Associate program, which forbids attempts to hide links, links being processed through redirects, failure to disclose use of the Affiliate program, and tamper…

What is Amazon going to do about a Russian company?

Re: LiveJournal stripping users' affiliate links

#29

Post by mbrubeck »

jrockway wrote: post #28
pyre wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you read the whole thing (links and all) you'll find this nugget of a comment: Ooh, wait, I can do one better: I'm telling Amazon. (Anybody with me? A plurality of e-mail speaks louder than one.) This is in strict violation of the Operation Agreement for the Associate program, which forbids attempts to hide links, links being processed through redirects, failure to disclose use of the Affiliate program, and tamper…

What is Amazon going to do about a Russian company?

Cancel their affiliate account and refuse to pay any earnings from their referrals?

Re: LiveJournal stripping users' affiliate links

#30

Post by ktsmith »

ramchip wrote: post #6
jonknee wrote: post #4

http://drivingrevenue.com/ was the firm running the redirector... Looks shady as hell.

Driving Revenue is full service affiliate marketing solution comprised of online marketers, developers and analysts. Our mission is to equip site owners with a variety of powerful and innovative tools designed to maximize their online ventures. We use cutting-edge solutions that provide a compressive and customized approach to your Internet environment. In short: we help you monetize your existing traffic. Well, it s…

Someone seriously misspelled comprehensive and when they ran it through spell check it came out with compressive.
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