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Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links

shamrin.posterous.com

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Re: Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links

#151

Post by jacquesm »

paraschopra wrote: post #141
jacquesm wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You tried to get away with it under the radar, succeeded for four months and someone found you out. The fact that it took four months is a testament to how well you did what you could to hide it. If you really want to be transparent you do these things in advance, and you make that a big part of your mission statement. Four months is not an experiment, an experiment is something you do for a week or two, maybe a mont…

Or they could have made an announcement. I have seen a lot of reviews and articles clearly mentioning that the link they are posting is an affiliate link and I don't find anything wrong with that. Because they are explicitly saying that it is an affiliate link and it is the choice of a visitor then. There is nothing wrong with affiliate links, _as long as_ the visitor is aware of it.

I don't think the visitors are the people that matter, but the creators of the content, other than that I agree, if they mentioned it explicitly and not clouded in legalese ('we can modify your content', which most people would interpret to mean we can edit your content in case it is offensive or in case it violates the tos).

Re: Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links

#152

Post by jacquesm »

speby wrote: post #148
stuntmouse wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An "oversight" for four months ? On a critical part of your business that has a direct impact on the perception of the quality of the blogs you host? Are you trying to become the Facebook of blogging (in a bad way)? You have a nice service, but this is too much. Also, it prompted me to take another look at your terms of service, which are surprisingly onerous. You've lost a user and an advocate. Good luck.

Good. Tell em! Even better that you're taking a real stand by putting your money where your feet are and moving on. Oh, shit, Posterous is free. Maybe send them a check for the valuable service they did provide you before moving on. And really, what better blog alternative are you even going to go to?

Free services need a business model. And they need to be transparent about that business model, preferably up front.

If you move on because you disagree with a change in policy you do not owe a free service anything for the time they provided you, I really don't understand where you got that idea. It's not up to the end user to structure a service.

If Facebook decides on some silly move tomorrow which causes users to leave in droves that does not mean we owe them for the time before, the same holds true for posterous.

They could have avoided this by publishing it in their corporate blog and by clearly stating their affiliate trick in the terms of service. Anything less simply won't do, especially not after four months. After all, the only reason it is four months is because some user walked in to it after four months, it could have been eight just the same.

I wonder if they would be calling it an 'experiment' then too, or if they would agree too that that is stretching credulity.

I hate corporate speech.

They should have just written:

"Sorry guys & girls, we've messed up on this one, we have amended the terms of service, and we've reset the 'viglink' flag on all existing accounts, if you feel like giving us a hand then please re-enable it but if you don't we understand.".

That would have taken a bit more guts though, but I'll bet you it would have been received a lot better and would have possibly been a net plus for them.

Re: Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links

#153

Post by jacquesm »

DannoHung wrote: post #149
Tichy wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> So whenever I use a free service, they are basically entitled to do whatever they want? What kind of logic is that? Pretty fucking much! You've got it the wrong way around asshole. If you can't handle it, you shouldn't be USING a free service!

> asshole

Sorry ?

If you can't express your disagreement without resorting to name calling I guess you feel you've lost the argument ?

And no, you're completely wrong. Running a free service does not give you the right to run roughshod over your users, the users of free services have rights just like those of paid services and you are normally required to spell those out in your terms of service, preferably in language that your users will actually understand.

In fact, the people at posterous seem to have at least come to the conclusion that that is the way things ought to be and we can consider this experiment a one-off.

Transparency is not just because you want to be nice, it is because you want to keep yourself and your users on the same page, so that people don't feel taken advantage of.

Re: Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links

#154

Post by Tichy »

Silhouette wrote: post #144
Tichy wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm, I don't know how contracts work in the US, but at least where I live, I don't think "a service has to cost money" is part of what makes a contract legal. A contract is a contract, it doesn't matter if it is about money or anything else. Also, it is not really free, Posterous is getting something in return. At the moment for example the affiliate links. So it would be a kind of quantum state contract? If they don'…

Where do you live, where contracts don't have to involve consideration in both directions? That consideration doesn't have to be financial, but there has to be something of value in the deal for both sides. Maybe in Posterous's case, a user could argue that providing the rights to use their content was consideration enough, and maybe a court would agree. This is where you start needing a real lawyer.

Very few "free" services are really free. The ones I use are Twitter and Hacker News (I've tried Posterous, but it wasn't for me). But even in such cases when there is no advertising at first, I don't typically assume the service is really free. For example in the case of Twitter, I assume that me using it adds to the value of the company, and enables them to sell their company for a high price eventually, or to charge a lot of money for advertising. I expect that something like advertising might eventually arise on Twitter, at which point I might quit. But until then, at least it was advertising for Twitter that I used it. Also, why should I worry abut how a company makes money - if they choose to offer something for free, it is their problem.

HN might be more of a hobby project, for the enjoyment of pg. Or it really helps YC to select candidates. If HN started showing ads, I wouldn't blame them. But maybe I would take my comments elsewhere. In fact I wonder at times how much my comments would have been worth in terms of SEO, had I put them in blog comments with a link to my web site, instead of commenting on HN. I probably made thousands of comments on HN by now. I kind of pay by contributing.

Just saying - just because no money transactions are involved, doesn't imply both sides have an advantage. Most "free" services simply want to build a user base and eventually get them to pay or monetize them in some other way. Therefore I don't feel like a freeloader just because I use a free web site.

I am not sure if there can be truly one sided contracts. At least in my country, contracts can "outrageous", for example, you can't have a contract forcing somebody to work their whole live for you in exchange for 1$. But in most cases, a mutual benefit is probably there.

Re: Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links

#155

Post by Tichy »

bootload wrote: post #86
Tichy wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"... So whenever I use a free service, they are basically entitled to do whatever they want? What kind of logic is that? ..." Share cropper mentality. As much as I agree to with your sentiment by not owning the server you post on this is what happens. Eben Moglin has delivered a great speech on the lack of "Freedom in the Cloud" ~ http://www.meetup.com/ny-tech/messages/boards/thread/8486342... The stand out quote: "s…

I don't own my root server either (it is rented), but I have my own ad-free Wordpress installation running on it. So I don't think the cloud has to imply sharecropping. With a good open source blog engine that everybody could set up at the push of a button (without any knowledge about computer administration), such problems could be avoided to some extend?

Atm one could use Google App Engine for that, except I don't like being tied to their specific API.

Not saying everything should be/could be free. But the cloud could make it easier for people to have their own server (rented for a small fee), and run all sorts of stuff on top of it.

Re: Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links

#156

Post by Tichy »

codyrobbins wrote: post #82
Tichy wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even a free service has some "terms", as you said. Neglecting certain aspects of the service (hidden costs) in the terms is fraud in my opinion. Now in this case it probably isn't illegal, but I just don't understand your logic in general. How does offering anything for free justify anything? Picking up on your renting example: if aunty offers me to let me live there for free indefinitely, and I move my stuff there a…

Just being blunt, but if you got pissed off at your aunt like that, I would call you an ungrateful spoiled brat. Doesn’t matter how much you paid to move your stuff in. I don’t actually think you’re a spoiled brat, because it’s just an analogy and expecting something from Posterous as you do is at a much lower level of entitlement than expecting something from someone letting you live with them rent-free. I see your…

Personally I probably wouldn't move in with the aunt to begin with. But suppose I would, I think in most of such cases there is some mutual benefit. Perhaps in exchange for moving in, you are expected to have tea with the lonely aunt at least twice a week, and to tend to her garden (without that having been agreed upon beforehand). In any case, it is just not nice to promise something, make other people invest in your promise, and then suddenly throw out your promise. Whether it is good style by the other party to accept something for free doesn't even enter the equation at this point.

Re: Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links

#157

Post by Silhouette »

jacquesm wrote: post #150
Silhouette wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but how was my post incorrect? (a) Terms and conditions aren't worth anything unless they are legally enforceable. (b) The terms and conditions for just about every blogging or social networking site claim a far-reaching right to use and modify any submitted material, and I've just confirmed that this includes the terms for Posterous. (c) Whether it is bad PR for them to pull something like this is a diffe…

This is not a lawsuit, and to pretend it is is not really correct. It's simply one side not informing the other fully of the status quo, which is not 'actionable' in any other way than by simply quitting the service, which probably quite a few people will do. A business operates on trust, this breaks that trust. It's not just PR, it's a fundamental breach of the silent agreement between users and a service. What your…

> Nobody is going to sue posterous over this, mostly because there isn't any real damage to the end users, and yet they should have known much better than to even try and get away with this.

You are curiously pragmatic about this one moment, but then curiously hostile the next!

Sure, it is unlikely that anyone is going to sue Posterous over this. I was merely addressing the original question to which I replied, which asked whether someone running a free service was entitled to do what they want with it. I never wrote anything about this being a lawsuit.

By the same token, given that apparently this has been going on for months and it's only just been noticed, I'm betting that the impact on Posterous from all the righteous indignation on display in this HN discussion is also going to be negligible, so the guys running the free service are still entitled to do what they want (and accept the consequences, if there are any).

Re: Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links

#158

Post by brown9-2 »

a4agarwal wrote: post #77

Hey 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…

We chose to work with Viglink because their technology doesn't interfere with the user experience at all.

If middle-click is broken, then it does interfere with user experience.

The fact that it took 4 months for someone to really notice this is a testament to how unobtrusive it is.

Others have noticed it prior to this, Shamrin is just the first to blog about this. This is a horrible line of discussion, btw - to attempt to downplay your customers issues with "well, no one noticed".

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