21–30 of 56 posts
> However, to stay within the character limit constraints of the social media platforms, you use Bitly to shorten the URL. Why are people still doing this? The only major platform with such limits is Twitter, but using a shortener no longer does anything - Twitter runs every link, bar none, through t.co and counts that URL length against you (which leads to fun situations like the 11 character link http://j.mp being…
A couple weeks ago on Shark Tank Australia there was some lady trying to get funding for her website "Rich Gurl" (http://richgurl.com/) essentially what she does is goes out and scrapes sales from all of the major retailers, then when someone clicks a product and heads to that website a cookie is saved on your machine for a few weeks. Any purchased you might make in that window is counted as an affiliate sale and it is NOT illegal. This is essentially what Bit.ly are doing with their shortened links.
What Bit.ly are doing here is not illegal, it might be a bit deceptive but not illegal. The best course of action here would be for users of Bit.ly to stop using it and perhaps find an alternative. Eventually if enough people leave then Bit.ly might get the hint and stop what they are doing.
Quite interesting to see so many commenters claiming this is "cookie stuffing", this isn't cookie stuffing. Essentially non-affiliate links are being turned into affiliate links and quite a few people do this. A couple weeks ago on Shark Tank Australia there was some lady trying to get funding for her website "Rich Gurl" ( http://richgurl.com/ ) essentially what she does is goes out and scrapes sales from all of the…
It may not be cookie stuffing by strict definition, but it's definitely affiliate fraud and I cannot see how any advertiser would be happy to pay bitly for adding zero value.
This is right in the same vein as cookie stuffing, which Shawn Hogan went to prison for [1] [2]. Keep in mind that there is no "cookie stuffing" statute - he was charged with Wire Fraud - and using your position in the link chain to steal revenue from other affiliates seems to definitely fall under the definition of wire fraud. I can't imagine what lawyer told Bitly that this was a good idea given this precedent, but…
They'll either get sued and/or the backlash will give them the hint to stop trying to be scammers.
> We hope the shortener never decides to add interstitials or otherwise "monetize" the link with ads, but we have no guarantee.
Easy way to get this fixed: Every time you buy something online, create a bit.ly link and follow it prior to purchasing. Flood retailers with bit.ly affiliated links until they refuse to pay bit.ly for their wire fraud. They'll either get sued and/or the backlash will give them the hint to stop trying to be scammers.
https://torrentfreak.com/chrome-addon-turns-amazon-pirate-eb...
Guess this explains how they became profitable https://medium.com/@markjosephson/why-profitability-matters-... , through shady tactics
Rule #1 of the internet - if you're not a consumer and you're not paying for something, you're actually the product.
http://powazek.com/posts/3229 > We should all stop saying, “if you’re not paying for the product, you are the product,” because it doesn’t really mean anything, it excuses the behavior of bad companies, and it makes you sound kind of like a stoner looking at their hand for the first time.
> However, to stay within the character limit constraints of the social media platforms, you use Bitly to shorten the URL. Why are people still doing this? The only major platform with such limits is Twitter, but using a shortener no longer does anything - Twitter runs every link, bar none, through t.co and counts that URL length against you (which leads to fun situations like the 11 character link http://j.mp being…
See also: http://qntm.org/twit
Heh.