Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links

shamrin.posterous.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 187 posts

Re: Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links

#21

Post by babar »

jmtulloss wrote: post #8
urlwolf wrote: post #2

Well, I'm not as torn as the author. They are altering the original content of the author, even if the result is the same. Imagine that someone's religion believes that you go to hell if you use affiliate links... posterous would have condemned them! (dramatizing works)

That's a bit silly, their whole draw is in the fact that they change your content. If you have a youtube link, they turn that into a youtube embed. If you have http://... , they change that into an anchor. There are dozens of examples of content that you can put in an email and they will transform into something more useful, and this is generally regarded as being quite valuable. If you have a problem with posterous…

They could be more transparent about their usage of this, since it isn't indicated anywhere on their admin pages, especially for people who may have been using their own affiliate links which are being overwritten.

Having a paid version which would disable this would be another nice option for them to provide.

Re: Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links

#24

Post by chc »

urlwolf wrote: post #2

Well, I'm not as torn as the author. They are altering the original content of the author, even if the result is the same. Imagine that someone's religion believes that you go to hell if you use affiliate links... posterous would have condemned them! (dramatizing works)

Imagine that my religion believes I'll go to hell if I read silly comments — you would have condemned me!

This game can turn into an infinite recursion.

Re: Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links

#25

Post by bravura »

rantfoil wrote: post #22
bravura wrote: post #19

What happens if the user is already trying to monetize their posterous content using affiliate links? Does Posterous steal the affiliate credit, in that case?

Viglink does not strip existing affiliate codes.

Okay. Could you clarify more what happens if there are existing affiliate codes? Does Posterous only get an affiliate fee if there is no existing affiliate code?

Re: Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links

#26

Post by ash »

NathanKP wrote: post #4

I couldn't repeat the link copying trick mentioned in the article. When I right clicked on the link and copied it there was just google.com, no affiliate link. I can see the viglink JavaScript in the source code for the page, though. Yet the dynamic DOM inspector shows that the link href has not been changed, nor is there an onclick handler added. Perhaps it does not work on Safari, or only works for specific users?

(it works for me)

I've checked Chrome Developer Tools. It does its magic via click event, installing vl_mC function as a listener.

Re: Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links

#27

Post by minouye »

To confirm for yourself:

1. Go to this post (the result of a Google search for Posterous and Amazon) - http://adeb.posterous.com/ubuntu-one-music-store-vs-amazon

2. Fire up a browser extension/add-on to monitor HTTP requests like HTTP Fox or HTTP Watch.

3. Click the link "here" at the end of the line: 1 install the rpm/deb from here

You can clearly see a request to:

http://api.viglink.com/api/click?key=8eb8c964d427e97a1567cec....

Re: Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links

#30

Post by ash »

NathanKP wrote: post #10
ErrantX wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get the affiliate link when copying in Google Chrome on XP.

Ah, so it may only work on specific browsers. Safari seems immune.

From drivingmenuts comment:

Copied the link and pasted into the address bar in Safari - no change. However if I right-click, and choose Open Link in New Window, it briefly flashes over to VigLink.

Post reply on HN