Let me ask you guys something: would you be upset if HN did this?
Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links
91–100 of 187 posts
Re: Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're using their service completely free, so I don't think you are really entitled to any say on the matter. If you were paying for it you might have some reasonable expectation that they leave your content intact, but you're not. It's like complaining about high taxes and then turning around and complaining that the government isn't sending everyone's children to college for free. You can't have it both ways. I th…
So whenever I use a free service, they are basically entitled to do whatever they want? What kind of logic is that? If they can't handle it, people shouldn't offer a free service. But don't run a service for "free" and then try to make money with shady business practices. In other words, you are not entitled to running a service for free.
From the Posterous Terms of Service:
"You shall retain all of your ownership rights in your User Submissions; however, by submitting material to Posterous you grant Posterous the irrevocable, fully transferable rights to use, reproduce, distribute, modify, transmit, prepare derivative works of, display and produce the material in connection with Posterous and Posterous's business, but solely in accordance with these Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy." (emphasis mine)
I don't know, legally, whether they are allowed to do whatever they want. But it doesn't appear that they broke their terms of service, what more do you want?
Re: Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links
#93Let me ask you guys something: would you be upset if HN did this?
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Re: Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is nothing wrong as long as it is done in a transparent way. Without that transparency, authors are potentially subjecting their readers to click-tracking without being able to give appropriate disclosures.
I don't understand how far they need to go to show that they do this without being obnoxious. If they show the affiliate link instead it may confuse users (even in the status bar).
At least show the authors, so that they can decide how much to disclose to their readers.
Re: Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links
#95Weird. I posted a simple link, http://www.apple.com/wwdc on our blog ( http://gpapps.com ), and I get this crazy sequence of forwards: http://clk.tradedoubler.com/click?p=2554&a=1503186&g... http://registration.euro.apple.com/cgi-bin/trade-cookie.cgi?... http://developer.apple.com/wwdc/?aosid=p204&siteid=15031... All I want is my readers to go to the simple http://apple.com/wwdc link and not all that junk. Posterous…
Your blog http://gpapps.com/ is not hosted on Posterous. This is unrelated to the discussion at hand.
I post on our blog via postereous. Meaning, I email my blog post to posterous and posterous posts on my wordpress account. My original link in my post was http://www.apple.com/wwdc, but it does this crazy URL forwarding that viglink added in. It clearly affects users.
Re: Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links
#96Hey guys, Posterous partnered with Viglink.com back in December as an experiment to see if we could generate revenue by adding an affiliate code to links that don't already have one. We chose to work with Viglink because their technology doesn't interfere with the user experience at all. 1. Links in Posterous posts are not edited in any way 2. Viglink javascript intercepts clicks and adds an affiliate code when possi…
Thanks for your post. I love posterous services, but I think the affiliate link feature should be disclosed and clearly highlighted before the user signs up. You might say it doesn't affect user experience at all, but I disagree. Sometimes the viglinks add an extra one or two forwarding urls and this can delay the user getting to the link, and when they get to the link, it's a long affiliate link, rather than a short URL I originally posted. Also, there's the issue where some bloggers aren't comfortable with the affiliate links. All in all, this should be disclosed and highlighted in the sign up/feature page.
Re: Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links
#97First, personally, I think the use of "oversight" as the reason is oversimplifying. You need more than one "oversight" for this to happen the way it has evolved until caught red handed. And the collective of them looks "weird".
Second, I sincerely agree that I would love to see Posterous earn a profit for such a great service. But "free is free", not "free if I exploit the links on your blog unaware to you". The blog content is the property of the blog owner (except if the owner explicitly makes it public property). I do not think it wise for Posterous to earn income from the blog content without the blog owner's explicit permission.
Third, the response from Posterous does not make it clear the plan to rectify the issue - it is just an apology. The apropriate response, I think, VigLink should be disabled immediately for all blogs. Then each blog owner can be given the option to either opt in (and hopefully gets a cut) or take their content elsewhere.
Just some observations.
Re: Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links
#98As a Posterous user, I'm happy that they did this. It has essentially no effect on the end user, potentially makes them money (to support their excellent, free service), and doesn't kill existing affiliate links. Keep up the good work, guys.
It has essentially no effect on the end user
Re: Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links
#99Hey guys, Posterous partnered with Viglink.com back in December as an experiment to see if we could generate revenue by adding an affiliate code to links that don't already have one. We chose to work with Viglink because their technology doesn't interfere with the user experience at all. 1. Links in Posterous posts are not edited in any way 2. Viglink javascript intercepts clicks and adds an affiliate code when possi…
Overall, I think you handled this well, but... > Our goal is to be 100% transparent with everything we do at Posterous, especially when it affects your blog and content. I'm sure users will be forgiving, but your credibility may be blown (re: transparency) by not announcing something like this. Why is it so trendy to be 'transparent'? Why claim to adhere to principles that you clearly didn't follow? (Sorry to nitpick…
Nitpicking.
You (where "you" is any "you") don't have to be 100% transparent. You are expected though to be 100% non intentionally-opaque. Not the same.
Re: Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links
#100Hey guys, Posterous partnered with Viglink.com back in December as an experiment to see if we could generate revenue by adding an affiliate code to links that don't already have one. We chose to work with Viglink because their technology doesn't interfere with the user experience at all. 1. Links in Posterous posts are not edited in any way 2. Viglink javascript intercepts clicks and adds an affiliate code when possi…
Sachin, if I were hypothetically your in-house SEO, and I read this post at 3 AM in the morning, I would call you on your cell phone and wake you up. The potential for business-level risk terrifies me.
My guess is that you get a huge portion of your traffic from Google. Google needs the Internet's link graph to work. Dynamically retargeting links would be a catastrophe for Google if it caught on. It is possible that Google will say "Well, that is our problem", but I wouldn't predict that based on their previous behavior.