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Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links

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Re: Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links

#161

Post by jacquesm »

Silhouette wrote: post #157
jacquesm wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm pragmatic about the consequences, if they feel this is the way forward, more power to them. But I'm hostile to the way it was done and to the 'apology' above, that's simply not how you go about things like this.

You brought the 'legal angle' in to it, I don't think that that has any place here at all, whether it is legally enforceable or not is not a factor at all.

If they want to do it, sure, they can but if they do it without alerting their users, in fact are going out of their way to make sure the users do not notice that's simply sneaky and counterproductive once it is - inevitably - discovered.

The fact that they did not seem to have any plans at all to disclose it belies their statement that this is 'just an experiment', as does the period it has apparently been live.

If someone feels they should apologize for this they should at least make it real, not just say we won't do it again, they should hit the 'undo' button to show they mean it.

Re: Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links

#162

Post by mahmud »

Tichy wrote: post #159
mahmud wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all upset. It would give me a 30-minute project to circumvent it.

How could you possibly circumvent it? Hacking the HN servers?

No, my own browser.

On the wire, it's just headers followed by \n\n followed by body the size of Content-length :-)

HTTP is a child's play.

Re: Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links

#163

Post by fnid2 »

huhtenberg wrote: post #117
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…

1. Links in Posterous posts are not edited in any way 2. Viglink javascript intercepts clicks... 3. Affiliate codes are not stripped... 4. Copying links is unchanged and 5. All outbound clicks are recorded by an obscure 3rd party server without my consent or knowledge. You are routing me through a third party server in the sneakiest way possible. Who the hell cares if the affiliate codes are getting rewritten? I woul…

api.viglink.com added to my hosts file

Re: Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links

#164

Post by oroup »

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…

Hey guys,

We’ve avoided commenting until Posterous decided what they wanted to do in order to avoid interfering in what is no doubt a sensitive matter for them.

VigLink leaves decisions around disclosure up to our customers. Our terms of service require publishers to comply with all applicable local regulations but as these are still new and evolving, we leave it to our customer to judge what is most appropriate for their specific communities and their local legal jurisdiction.

In the coming weeks we will be working to make it easier for publishers to disclose the use of VigLink through branded badges a publisher may add to their site, linking to a clear explanation of what we do and offering the ability for a permanent customer opt-out. However, the ultimate decisions on how best to disclose will remain in the hands of our customers.

A few points of technical clarification:

We and our competitors do not affect the PageRank of a page. We have received assurances from Google that this is so (we are backed by Google Ventures) and Danny Sullivan has written that he’s received the same guidance from Google. (http://searchengineland.com/viglink-fire-forget-solution-to-...) Our publishers who watch these things closely report no change in PageRank as a result of using our code.

Posterous was not overwriting any existing affiliate links. Neither are 99% of our customers. The option is available for customers who would like it (those who run forums prohibiting commercial links for example) but very few have done so.

We work hard not to “break the web” – we don’t use redirects, ad blockers work as intended and even if our servers are unreachable the page continues to behave as expected. We’ve gotten reports that middle clicks under some circumstances were mis-behaving and so we’ve disabled all modified click rewriting until we get this issue sorted out.

We also work closely with merchants and affiliate networks to ensure we are meeting the requirements of their programs. Some merchants have “blacklists” or “whitelists” and we only affiliate links from publishers that those merchants find acceptable.

Any link can be marked “not rewriteable” by adding the attribute rel=”noskim” to the anchor tag. We will add a global tag that allows a page author to easily opt the whole page out of being rewritten.

Offering the ability for our customers to share the revenue with their customers is something we are investigating. There are numerous technical and business challenges involved but we hope to be able to offer this ability where appropriate in the future.

VigLink believes that sites that facilitate commercial activity are contributing to the ecosystem and unobtrusively deriving revenue from that activity is entirely appropriate. We recognize that community expectations about what is acceptable will vary widely and we think decisions about what’s most appropriate in a given context are best left to our customers. We are working to provide even more tools for all our customers meet the expectations of their community.

If you have comments or concerns about VigLink, you can contact us at feedback@viglink.com or me personally at oroup@viglink.com. We look forward to hearing from you.

Oliver Roup

Co-founder / CEO, VigLink

(Adapted from the VigLink blog at http://vglnk.com/M )

Re: Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links

#165

Post by boucher »

jacquesm wrote: post #133
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…

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…

First off, let's turn down the rhetoric just a bit. You can like or dislike this feature without believing it goes "well across the line" of ethical behavior. We're talking about blog posts here, not scientific research or human life or politics or anything where a serious discussion of the ethics involved might be warranted.

Posterous isn't stealing money from anyone, and to the end user they aren't changing a single aspect of the user experience. They are altering the links of content creators slightly. Now, let's discuss that.

These links aren't being redirected to anywhere but the original destination. Adding an unobtrusive query parameter is absolutely not the same thing as pointing everyone to another website. I respect the opinion that it shouldn't be done, but I don't agree.

There are two arguments in play, the first is that altering links at all is fundamentally wrong. I can't refute that because it seems to be purely opinion driven. I can only say that I disagree, and that to me, things which have no detectable impact on the end user are not fundamentally wrong.

The other argument, and the one I find particularly silly, is this notion that Posterous shouldn't be privately profitting off other people's content. This is, in fact, how the entire economy of the ad driven web works. Users create content, site owners make money. See Google ads. What Posterous is doing is exactly the same thing, except it's better because I don't have to actually look at ads and I can still support the site.

Should Posterous have told people? Yeah. Should they offer an option to turn it off? Probably. But these are relatively minor complaints about an otherwise harmless feature.

Re: Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links

#166

Post by jacquesm »

boucher wrote: post #165
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…

First off, let's turn down the rhetoric just a bit. You can like or dislike this feature without believing it goes "well across the line" of ethical behavior. We're talking about blog posts here, not scientific research or human life or politics or anything where a serious discussion of the ethics involved might be warranted. Posterous isn't stealing money from anyone, and to the end user they aren't changing a singl…

It's not about whether or not it is harmless or not. It's simply a sneaky way of going about an otherwise perfectly ok business.

There would have been absolutely no harm in informing the users if they were not afraid that it would turn people away from posterous, but the way this now comes in to the open and the apology fall way short of what I'd come to expect of them. I'm not a user but I've done my bit to promote posterous and I feel that my trust that those people are in 'good hands' is misplaced.

Altering links is not fundamentally wrong, if you inform your user about it.

Profiting of other peoples content is fine too, if you are aboveboard about that being the deal.

Doing any of this without putting it loud and clear in your terms of service is definitely not ok.

And to make it seem like this was 'just an experiment' is stretching credulity to the breaking point and well beyond, that simply insults the intelligence of the users and the people here. The only reason it was four months is because that's how long it took for someone to figure it out.

Re: Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links

#167

Post by jacquesm »

Silhouette wrote: post #79
Tichy wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would there be different rules for businesses, depending on whether their offering is free or not? Suppose posterous would charge 5$/month for their blog hosting, and still would add the affiliate links, what would it change in your opinion? I don't think it is illegal to add those links. I for one will stay away from them, though. Also, Facebook is free. Why did they bother to introduce new terms of service at a…

> Suppose posterous would charge 5$/month for their blog hosting, and still would add the affiliate links, what would it change in your opinion? It is fundamentally different in law as soon as there is consideration in both directions, because then you have the basis of a contract. However, if users aren't paying for the service (or otherwise giving some significant benefit to the service provider) then there is unli…

> IANAL etc., but this is elementary contract law.

It's perfectly legal to have a contract where no money changes hands at all.

The important part is that there is some kind of agreement between two parties (or more) that is defined in a formal way.

Money definitely need not change hands.

A 'one way contract' gives consideration to only one party, and in the case of posterous that is definitely not the case, after all, the user gets one thing, posterous gets another, both parties benefit, there is an agreement in place that governs the transaction which both parties have consented to. (You use webservices without reading the terms of service, which should be prominently displayed at your own peril).

edit: for reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract

Re: Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links

#168

Post by jorgecastillo »

If anyone intends to change his blogging service I recommend http://my.opera.com/. Although they don't have automatic blog import, so if you have lots of stuff you might want to back it up first and you will have to transfer all your post manually.

Re: Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links

#169

Post by codyrobbins »

jacquesm wrote: post #161
Silhouette wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I'm pragmatic about the consequences, if they feel this is the way forward, more power to them. But I'm hostile to the way it was done and to the 'apology' above, that's simply not how you go about things like this. You brought the 'legal angle' in to it, I don't think that that has any place here at all, whether it is legally enforceable or not is not a factor at all. If they want to do it, sure, they can but if the…

The legal angle most certainly has something to do with it. Many of the comments on this thread seem to imply that there should be something legal barring Posterous from doing such a thing. Silhouette has been trying to point out, and quite deftly I should say, that what they’re doing is probably pretty much entirely legal for various reasons.

Reasonable people can obviously disagree about whether there’s anything sneaky about what they did. I don’t think there is. What do you want them to do, send a mass email out to all their users—95% of whom could care less about this change? That’s just going to confuse a ton of their audience, and it would be completely counter-productive. I’m of the opinion that businesses aren’t obligated to be endlessly transparent to their users. Should Posterous send out a mass email to all users when they change the soup of the day in their employee cafeteria as well?

Caveat emptor. This is why I don’t store my data on free services which may decide to make changes like this. But even if I were, this change is completely harmless.

Re: Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links

#170

Post by josefresco »

jat850 wrote: post #3

I'm not sure if I'm missing something, or doing something wrong, but following the author's directions, none of my links are mangled whatsoever - copying the google.com link simply pasted google.com. I do have Javascript enabled as stated. I tried with each link in the article, and not a single one of them is redirecting via Viglink. (edit) Using Firefox 3.5 on Linux

It probably only picks up links where it can insert an affiliate code like Amazon. Linking to just google.com probably does not trigger the systen.
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