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He admitted it in his response here: >in response to referral link comment: I host the site on my own dime so I didn't think getting $.25 from DO would make me

He admitted it in his response here: >in response to referral link comment: I host the site on my own dime so I didn't think getting $.25 from DO would make me a bad person...also, I really don't have time to learn windows to make instructions. I'm a grad student and make slightly above minimum wage annually, if I were to be evil and greedy I'd probably not be doing what I do with my life. I'm giving away thousands of hours of work and data I could make money off of doing evil things. >its not worth putting the link there and have people judge you / your intentions. This makes no sense to me. His intentions are clear. Far more clear than the intentions of third party HTTP requests on the big websites you visit. And you didn't even need to hear it from him himself to know that he hosts his site and needs a few shekels to support it. Of course, you're entitled to your own opinion, but I could really care less if people "judge" me for a DO link, and I hope the tilbert feels the same way. I don't understand in general this hate for people who post referral links. Do you not hover over a link before you click it? See all the garbage appended to the query string in the URL? If I don't want to click it, I don't. I don't hate the person for adding a referral link. I don't understand the hate for the people who do. Again, you're entitled to your own opinion but I'm not a fan of this minutiae being hammered in this HN thread. I'll just go to the website on a clean window and search the same product/website/service. Finally, the third party advertisers are judging him far more harshly for this software, anyways. Their corrupt model is (in a small way) subverted. If he was worried about "judgment" he wouldn't have offered this software in the first place.

Tinyyy 11y ago
Huh? What provoked this strong response? I'm not hating anyone here. I'm just thinking about this from his / my potential perspective where if you've already put so much effort into the project expecting zero returns, why 'taint' your own product? Its like putting ads on personal blogs that's gonna get you a few bucks in a year. Maybe I'm just particular about these kinda stuff and want to keep things 'pure' and 'clean'.
- FilterSweep 11y ago
  I didn't find the response strong at all. It was far less strong than the initial attack on his adding a referral link in the first place. A referral link is (arguably, again, opinions here ;) ) much cleaner and more transparent than having your analytics data being pushed out to a dossier tracking your behavior, emotions, and extrapolating patterns on the two. You can hover your cursor on a referral link to see what it is. You can even open up a Javascript console and see where the true location of any given link is taking you to, should you click on it. You can't see what's being done with third party gathering information about you. And funnily (read: ironically) enough, its the entire point of this software in the first place. I repeat that I'm confused about the concern over this minutiae considering the fact that when you go look up something online, someone is getting paid in some way, shape, or form. I don't mean to come off strong, and I apologize if you took it in that way. A referrer gets paid in creation of a consumer whereas an advertising company gets paid as a spy, essentially. Using Amazon as an example, isn't the purpose of the service to sell you something? Instead of selling you as a product?[0] [0] https://medium.com/@unsetbit/dear-amazon-you-dropped-something-fc82375a5bb0 https://medium.com/@unsetbit/dear-amazon-you-dropped-somethi...
tlibert 11y ago
thank you.

Tinyyy 11y ago

Huh? What provoked this strong response? I'm not hating anyone here. I'm just thinking about this from his / my potential perspective where if you've already put so much effort into the project expecting zero returns, why 'taint' your own product? Its like putting ads on personal blogs that's gonna get you a few bucks in a year. Maybe I'm just particular about these kinda stuff and want to keep things 'pure' and 'clean'.

FilterSweep 11y ago
I didn't find the response strong at all. It was far less strong than the initial attack on his adding a referral link in the first place. A referral link is (arguably, again, opinions here ;) ) much cleaner and more transparent than having your analytics data being pushed out to a dossier tracking your behavior, emotions, and extrapolating patterns on the two. You can hover your cursor on a referral link to see what it is. You can even open up a Javascript console and see where the true location of any given link is taking you to, should you click on it. You can't see what's being done with third party gathering information about you. And funnily (read: ironically) enough, its the entire point of this software in the first place. I repeat that I'm confused about the concern over this minutiae considering the fact that when you go look up something online, someone is getting paid in some way, shape, or form. I don't mean to come off strong, and I apologize if you took it in that way. A referrer gets paid in creation of a consumer whereas an advertising company gets paid as a spy, essentially. Using Amazon as an example, isn't the purpose of the service to sell you something? Instead of selling you as a product?[0] [0] https://medium.com/@unsetbit/dear-amazon-you-dropped-something-fc82375a5bb0 https://medium.com/@unsetbit/dear-amazon-you-dropped-somethi...

tlibert 11y ago

thank you.