Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links • Hacker News Board

Re: Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links

#131

Post by Tichy » Sat, May 01, 2010, 9:05 AM UTC

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…

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't add the links, they are free, therefore it would be legal for them to add the links (or do bad thing X). Then suddenly they wouldn't be free anymore, and they would have to remove it again.

I don't think that makes much sense.

Re: Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links

#132

Post by pilif » Sat, May 01, 2010, 9:16 AM UTC

This would really annoy me if I had a posterous blog. In my writing I always intentionally make sure links don't contain any affiliate tags to make a point that I'm not writing about some product with the intention to make money but strictly out of interest or because the product is awesome.

If that tag is added for me I lose that advantage in credibility AND I don't earn the money either, but somebody else does with my content and apparently without my knowledge.

That is annoying.

Re: Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links

#133

Post by jacquesm » Sat, May 01, 2010, 9:56 AM UTC

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 month.

Links should point to their destinations, any trickery under water to redirect links to something else than what the browser says it will do is well across the line of what's ok and what is definitely not. If you did that on your own content it would be bad, to do it on other peoples content is even worse.

Maybe YC should add a 'business ethics 101' as applied to the web with their investment package ?

Or do they encourage this sort of thing ?

Why not simply shut it off by default and allow your content producers to enable it, that way you take the sting out of it.

Re: Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links

#134

Post by jacquesm » Sat, May 01, 2010, 10:33 AM UTC

milkshakes wrote: post #49

floodfx wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FF makes money off revenue generated when you search and click on google ad. They do not replace links on content that you generate without telling you. Apples/Oranges my friend... Personally I use posterous as my personal site and I don't appreciate this.

would you rather have banner ads? they have to make their money somewhere. as long as they're not rewriting existing affiliate links, this is about as unobtrusive as it gets [edit: rewriting the links directly, instead of using a third party that necessarily obfuscates the url would be less obtrusive, but the principle is still the same]

Of course posterous has to make money somewhere. But they should clearly spell out in the terms of service of the free product how they intend to do that.

And they should allow people to opt out of this, either by going for a premium product or by switching it off on an account-by-account basis. And given the nasty way in which this was introduced the default for all old accounts should be OFF, new accounts know presumably what they're getting in to after the terms of service are modified to reflect reality.

Nobody wants to withhold income from posterous, it's just that this is about as bad as it gets when dealing with the trust of your users.

I'm personally pretty pissed off about it, I did a speech here in NL not that long ago comparing Ning and Posterous and presented posterous as a very good alternative without any of the nasty tricks that Ning has used over the years to lock in their users.

I wished I could eat my words now.

Re: Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links

#135

Post by jacquesm » Sat, May 01, 2010, 10:36 AM UTC

csomar wrote: post #113

milkshakes wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

would you rather have banner ads? they have to make their money somewhere. as long as they're not rewriting existing affiliate links, this is about as unobtrusive as it gets [edit: rewriting the links directly, instead of using a third party that necessarily obfuscates the url would be less obtrusive, but the principle is still the same]

>> they have to make their money somewhere I'm not against Posterous making money online to provide me a free service. However, they should be transparent and clear about it. When I sign up, I want to be notified about this. I'm going to create a blog, publish posts, make readership and stay a good time there; so I want to know whatever thing happens in my blog and not only be surprised about it when it happens. Poin…

Yep. And for all the handwaving about transparency and 'going forward' there is no real offer of a solution for what they've done to date, in other words, they did it and intend to continue to do it.

If they're serious about this they'll switch the feature off for all accounts up to the moment of modifying their terms of service, and make sure that new signups are properly informed.

This so called apology seems to mix up the meanings of the words 'unobtrusive' and 'sneaky'.

Re: Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links

#136

Post by jacquesm » Sat, May 01, 2010, 10:43 AM UTC

codyrobbins wrote: post #60

floodfx wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FF makes money off revenue generated when you search and click on google ad. They do not replace links on content that you generate without telling you. Apples/Oranges my friend... Personally I use posterous as my personal site and I don't appreciate this.

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…

I really don't like the downvotes just because you express an unpopular opinion, instead let me try to show you what is not good here.

A free service does not mean there is no understanding between the parties, it simply means the price is '0'. Even if you paid or got paid, there would still be an unwritten set of expectations underlying your usage of the service, and these should be clearly expressed in the terms of service (not the corporate blog).

If the service goes out of its way to make it seem as though your content is still intact, but in fact changes it underwater then that is 'sneaky'. If the service profits from that they're not 'clever', 'smart' or merely trying to make ends meet, they've changed the terms of the unwritten agreement, after the fact.

That is what is wrong here, not that they decided to charge you.

By your logic google can turn around next month and suddenly charge you for your gmail account, after all, you don't really have any say on the matter. Or they might decide to decrease the size of your mailbox to 10 MB. But that breaks the unwritten contract, just like this does.

Sure, your 'service' continues uninterrupted, but the fact is that they added something that changed users content without 'informed consent' on the part of those users, and they did everything they could to cover their tracks. The latter is advertised as being 'unobtrusive', I read it as 'we tried very hard to make sure we got away with it'.

It's double speak to present it as a way to make it transparent to the user, after all, changing the links inline and visibly would have been more transparant, not less.

Any change to the content, especially one that you profit from should be made explicit, it's part of the 'terms' of the agreement between the users and the owners of the service.

Re: Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links

#137

Post by avar » Sat, May 01, 2010, 11:06 AM UTC

As of March 4, 2010 posterous has no way in their interface to delete your account.

If you want it deleted you should mail vince@posterous.com or help@posterous.com and ask for it to be deleted. I've just done so.

Citation: http://inbtwnrthedoors.posterous.com/3604263

Re: Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links

#138

Post by jacquesm » Sat, May 01, 2010, 11:15 AM UTC

Silhouette wrote: post #71

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? Well, legally speaking, they probably are, yes. You get what you pay for, and the current entitlement culture because a lot of "free" on-line services don't come with financial strings does not negate this basic fact of life. Now, whether they should disclose that they are doing this so that those using their service can decide…

Incorrect. Free services have terms and conditions just like paid services. If they change your content on the fly that's part of the agreement and it should be disclosed. Whether you pay or not is immaterial, if you paid they could do it just the same.

There is no 'legally speaking' here, this is not a lawsuit, it's just against the expectations that you create in the heads of your users, and that is always bad for your business.

That's why you disclose stuff, to make sure everybody is on the same page.

Re: Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links

#139

Post by jacquesm » Sat, May 01, 2010, 11:16 AM UTC

avar wrote: post #137

As of March 4, 2010 posterous has no way in their interface to delete your account. If you want it deleted you should mail vince@posterous.com or help@posterous.com and ask for it to be deleted. I've just done so. Citation: http://inbtwnrthedoors.posterous.com/3604263

One more thing they should mention in their terms of service.

Re: Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links

#140

Post by jacquesm » Sat, May 01, 2010, 11:17 AM UTC

rantfoil wrote: post #73

xelipe wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. There is a big difference between getting a cut from generated search result (which is expected to change over time) and a users' blog post (which is often static after written). And don't get with the problem with will cause to the linked sites in term of Google juice.

There's no Google impact here -- Viglink is javascript behavior. Link juice is utterly unchanged.

The google bot is capable of running some javascript, whether link juice is unchanged or not does not really apply here because they're simply adding affiliate codes, the destination page is unchanged.