6 ms·

LiveJournal stripping users' affiliate links

83 points by daleharvey 17y ago

swombat 17y ago
Stripping affiliate links from freely hosted blogs = dubious, but just about defensible Stripping affiliate links from freely hosted blogs AND replacing them with your own links = unacceptably sleazy Stripping affiliate links from paid blogs and replacing them with your own links = outright offensive? Extra serving of fail? What's next? Inserting porn ads into people's blogs?
- barrkel 17y ago
  It's even worse - not only is it stripping links, it's often actually breaking them. The www.glutenfreebay.com example actually should redirect to glutenfreebay.blogspot.com, but instead it's heading to ebay.com.
  - zaatar 17y ago
    It's actually any domain with the word "bay" that redirects to ebay.com: http://www.crittersbythebay.com http://www.crittersbythebay.com for example.
    - djcapelis 17y ago
      Uhm, you're aware that link has "ebay.com" as the last 8 characters of the domain, right?
      - mbreese 17y ago
        What does that have to do with it? If I put to a link to "ifreakinghateebay.com" would it be okay if they rediected it to ebay? No, of course not.
        djcapelis 17y ago
        Oh, it's clearly broken, it's just the comment I was replying to asserted that anything with the word bay in it triggers the breakage. This seems to be unlikely. The fact that the behavior was broken and links unrelated to ebay were being redirected to ebay was already well established by that point in the thread. Understanding which links are affected by this issue and the scope of the problem might be relevant. In fact, one might go ahead and leap to the conclusion based on our revised understanding (that it does in-fact likely need ebay.com in the url to trigger) that this error is being caused by an unfortunately constructed regular expression or overaggressive pattern match and one might even learn something. But far be it from me to assume that such a far fetched conjecture has anything to do with it.
        dandelany 17y ago
        !!"eBay.com".match(/ebay.com/i); //true !!"CrittersByTheBay.com".match(/ebay.com/i); //true !!"ThePirateBay.com".match(/ebay.com/i); //true
Willie_Dynamite 17y ago
They've disabled it. http://www.livejournal.com/support/see_request.bml?id=1060179 http://www.livejournal.com/support/see_request.bml?id=106017...
- timmorgan 17y ago
  "The issues you describe were caused by some new LiveJournal code which produced these unexpected effects." I'm not sure how any of that could really and truthfully be "unexpected."
  - Legion 17y ago
    It was the backlash that was "unexpected". As usual.
    - ohashi 17y ago
      When will companies learn to stop lying to their users and just issue real apologies?
      - tumult 17y ago
        When an apology that admits you made a mistake cannot be used as evidence against you in a lawsuit.
      - ErrantX 17y ago
        It could be that they intended to redirect ebay.com links and a mistake ended up redirecting everything with ebay.com in it? From what I've read that seems a possibility.
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
- bbatsell 17y ago
  They've claimed to disable it, but it's still active. (Just click the "glutenfreebay" link in the OP.)
jonknee 17y ago
http://drivingrevenue.com/ http://drivingrevenue.com/ was the firm running the redirector... Looks shady as hell.
- ramchip 17y ago
  Driving Revenue is full service affiliate marketing solution comprised of online marketers, developers and analysts. Our mission is to equip site owners with a variety of powerful and innovative tools designed to maximize their online ventures. We use cutting-edge solutions that provide a compressive and customized approach to your Internet environment. In short: we help you monetize your existing traffic. Well, it sounds like they leverage core skillsets and world-class team synergy to provide clients worldwide with robust, scalable, modern turnkey implementations of flexible, personalized, cutting-edge Internet-enabled e-business application product suite e-solution architectures that accelerate response to customer and real-world market demands and reliably adapt to evolving technology needs, seamlessly and efficiently integrating and synchronizing with their existing legacy infrastructure, enhancing the e-readiness capabilities of their e-commerce production environments across the enterprise while giving them a critical competitive advantage and taking them to the next level. Joke aside I do seriously wonder how they came up with the "compressive and customized approach to your Internet environment"...
  - ktsmith 17y ago
    Someone seriously misspelled comprehensive and when they ran it through spell check it came out with compressive.
  - gyardley 17y ago
    Heh, I know this company. What a godawful way to say 'we provide software that inserts affiliate links into vBulletin installs so your forum can make a bit more money', which is what they actually do.
dotBen 17y ago
Ok serious question... What do people feel about url shorteners doing this? Also, what about free twitter clients - as a mechanism for monetization?
- jrockway 17y ago
  Shady. Shady.
- pyre 17y ago
  If you read the whole thing (links and all) you'll find this nugget of a comment: Ooh, wait, I can do one better: I'm telling Amazon. (Anybody with me? A plurality of e-mail speaks louder than one.) This is in strict violation of the Operation Agreement for the Associate program, which forbids attempts to hide links, links being processed through redirects, failure to disclose use of the Affiliate program, and tampering with other Affiliate links without disclosure. I'm sure there are plenty of similar clauses in the affliate programs from other e-commerce sites (and if there aren't it's an oversight for sure). Assuming that you're asking about stripping affilate ids and replacing them with your own, then that's a shady, shady business and I wouldn't touch any VC with a ten-foot pole that would fund you that idea. How would you even propose to grow such a business seeing as you're in clear violation of the terms of the programs you would be relying on for revenue? It would be like proposing a startup where you hire ex-cons to mug people nightly in parks nationwide for a cut of their 'earnings.' Would you really think that such an idea had any thought put towards the future of the business? If you're talking about pattern-matching URLs and redirecting to the wrong site (e.g. DownByTheBay.com -> eBay.com), then that kind of breaks the idea of a URL shortener. The shortened URL is supposed to take you to the location of the full URL.
  - jrockway 17y ago
    What is Amazon going to do about a Russian company?
    - mbrubeck 17y ago
      Cancel their affiliate account and refuse to pay any earnings from their referrals?
mixmax 17y ago
It's interesting to note that the sites that are most successful in the long run are the ones that take the higher ground and employ some basic ethics and decency - and actually live by it. This is a perfect example of a sleazy practice that, while it might make them some petty cash in the short run, will end up costing more in bad press and fleeing customers than the gained revenue.
mumrah 17y ago
I will always remember LiveJournal as the reason for Memcache being invented. It's funny how you can be nostalgic about a key-value system...
jasonwilk 17y ago
Blackhat Tactics FTW!!!!
invisible 17y ago
It may very well be malicious, but it really sounds like someone made a boneheaded mistake. It was not suppose to "strip" affiliate links. I believe that - I really do. The intended purpose was to add affiliate links to links that do not have affiliate codes attached. I would totally do that if I ran LiveJournal and it makes perfect sense.
ugg 17y ago
Laboratory Evaluation, <a href="http://www.shoesgroups.com/reebokanswer-c-70.html>wholesale http://www.shoesgroups.com/reebokanswer-c-70.html>wholes... reebok answershoes</a>, pump technology can support the players affect the soles of the feet and legs friction weight, these <a href="http://www.shoesgroups.com/reebokanswer-c-70.html>wholesale http://www.shoesgroups.com/reebokanswer-c-70.html>wholes... reebok answer shoes</a> are the perfect combination of speed and passion. This wholesale reebok answer shoe has launched an all-star red, black and the world, these two limited edition colors. Series, as fans should not miss the fine, We are free shippmtand a week to your door.004
mseebach 17y ago
This has the taste of a troll, but I mean it as a sincere question: Why are people still on LiveJournal? I get that they more-or-less invented the blog as we know it, but what do they bring to table today? Doesn't pretty much any other free blog service offer a superior experience?
- allenbrunson 17y ago
  livejournal really isn't in the same category as blogs. it's got a much greater community aspect. you have a friends list, and you can make entries that only people on your friends list can see. lj has threaded comments that actually work, which is untrue of most of the rest of the blogosphere. there are standalone lj communities, which blogging platforms don't have. and so on.

83 points by daleharvey 17y ago

Stripping affiliate links from freely hosted blogs = dubious, but just about defensible Stripping affiliate links from freely hosted blogs AND replacing them with your own links = unacceptably sleazy Stripping affiliate links from paid blogs and replacing them with your own links = outright offensive? Extra serving of fail? What's next? Inserting porn ads into people's blogs?

barrkel 17y ago
It's even worse - not only is it stripping links, it's often actually breaking them. The www.glutenfreebay.com example actually should redirect to glutenfreebay.blogspot.com, but instead it's heading to ebay.com.
- zaatar 17y ago
  It's actually any domain with the word "bay" that redirects to ebay.com: http://www.crittersbythebay.com http://www.crittersbythebay.com for example.
  - djcapelis 17y ago
    Uhm, you're aware that link has "ebay.com" as the last 8 characters of the domain, right?
    - mbreese 17y ago
      What does that have to do with it? If I put to a link to "ifreakinghateebay.com" would it be okay if they rediected it to ebay? No, of course not.
      - djcapelis 17y ago
        Oh, it's clearly broken, it's just the comment I was replying to asserted that anything with the word bay in it triggers the breakage. This seems to be unlikely. The fact that the behavior was broken and links unrelated to ebay were being redirected to ebay was already well established by that point in the thread. Understanding which links are affected by this issue and the scope of the problem might be relevant. In fact, one might go ahead and leap to the conclusion based on our revised understanding (that it does in-fact likely need ebay.com in the url to trigger) that this error is being caused by an unfortunately constructed regular expression or overaggressive pattern match and one might even learn something. But far be it from me to assume that such a far fetched conjecture has anything to do with it.
        dandelany 17y ago
        !!"eBay.com".match(/ebay.com/i); //true !!"CrittersByTheBay.com".match(/ebay.com/i); //true !!"ThePirateBay.com".match(/ebay.com/i); //true

Willie_Dynamite 17y ago

They've disabled it. http://www.livejournal.com/support/see_request.bml?id=1060179 http://www.livejournal.com/support/see_request.bml?id=106017...

timmorgan 17y ago
"The issues you describe were caused by some new LiveJournal code which produced these unexpected effects." I'm not sure how any of that could really and truthfully be "unexpected."
- Legion 17y ago
  It was the backlash that was "unexpected". As usual.
  - ohashi 17y ago
    When will companies learn to stop lying to their users and just issue real apologies?
    - tumult 17y ago
      When an apology that admits you made a mistake cannot be used as evidence against you in a lawsuit.
    - ErrantX 17y ago
      It could be that they intended to redirect ebay.com links and a mistake ended up redirecting everything with ebay.com in it? From what I've read that seems a possibility.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
bbatsell 17y ago
They've claimed to disable it, but it's still active. (Just click the "glutenfreebay" link in the OP.)

jonknee 17y ago

http://drivingrevenue.com/ http://drivingrevenue.com/ was the firm running the redirector... Looks shady as hell.

ramchip 17y ago
Driving Revenue is full service affiliate marketing solution comprised of online marketers, developers and analysts. Our mission is to equip site owners with a variety of powerful and innovative tools designed to maximize their online ventures. We use cutting-edge solutions that provide a compressive and customized approach to your Internet environment. In short: we help you monetize your existing traffic. Well, it sounds like they leverage core skillsets and world-class team synergy to provide clients worldwide with robust, scalable, modern turnkey implementations of flexible, personalized, cutting-edge Internet-enabled e-business application product suite e-solution architectures that accelerate response to customer and real-world market demands and reliably adapt to evolving technology needs, seamlessly and efficiently integrating and synchronizing with their existing legacy infrastructure, enhancing the e-readiness capabilities of their e-commerce production environments across the enterprise while giving them a critical competitive advantage and taking them to the next level. Joke aside I do seriously wonder how they came up with the "compressive and customized approach to your Internet environment"...
- ktsmith 17y ago
  Someone seriously misspelled comprehensive and when they ran it through spell check it came out with compressive.
- gyardley 17y ago
  Heh, I know this company. What a godawful way to say 'we provide software that inserts affiliate links into vBulletin installs so your forum can make a bit more money', which is what they actually do.

dotBen 17y ago

Ok serious question... What do people feel about url shorteners doing this? Also, what about free twitter clients - as a mechanism for monetization?

jrockway 17y ago
Shady. Shady.
pyre 17y ago
If you read the whole thing (links and all) you'll find this nugget of a comment: Ooh, wait, I can do one better: I'm telling Amazon. (Anybody with me? A plurality of e-mail speaks louder than one.) This is in strict violation of the Operation Agreement for the Associate program, which forbids attempts to hide links, links being processed through redirects, failure to disclose use of the Affiliate program, and tampering with other Affiliate links without disclosure. I'm sure there are plenty of similar clauses in the affliate programs from other e-commerce sites (and if there aren't it's an oversight for sure). Assuming that you're asking about stripping affilate ids and replacing them with your own, then that's a shady, shady business and I wouldn't touch any VC with a ten-foot pole that would fund you that idea. How would you even propose to grow such a business seeing as you're in clear violation of the terms of the programs you would be relying on for revenue? It would be like proposing a startup where you hire ex-cons to mug people nightly in parks nationwide for a cut of their 'earnings.' Would you really think that such an idea had any thought put towards the future of the business? If you're talking about pattern-matching URLs and redirecting to the wrong site (e.g. DownByTheBay.com -> eBay.com), then that kind of breaks the idea of a URL shortener. The shortened URL is supposed to take you to the location of the full URL.
- jrockway 17y ago
  What is Amazon going to do about a Russian company?
  - mbrubeck 17y ago
    Cancel their affiliate account and refuse to pay any earnings from their referrals?

mixmax 17y ago

It's interesting to note that the sites that are most successful in the long run are the ones that take the higher ground and employ some basic ethics and decency - and actually live by it. This is a perfect example of a sleazy practice that, while it might make them some petty cash in the short run, will end up costing more in bad press and fleeing customers than the gained revenue.

mumrah 17y ago

I will always remember LiveJournal as the reason for Memcache being invented. It's funny how you can be nostalgic about a key-value system...

jasonwilk 17y ago

Blackhat Tactics FTW!!!!

invisible 17y ago

It may very well be malicious, but it really sounds like someone made a boneheaded mistake. It was not suppose to "strip" affiliate links. I believe that - I really do. The intended purpose was to add affiliate links to links that do not have affiliate codes attached. I would totally do that if I ran LiveJournal and it makes perfect sense.

ugg 17y ago

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mseebach 17y ago

This has the taste of a troll, but I mean it as a sincere question: Why are people still on LiveJournal? I get that they more-or-less invented the blog as we know it, but what do they bring to table today? Doesn't pretty much any other free blog service offer a superior experience?

allenbrunson 17y ago
livejournal really isn't in the same category as blogs. it's got a much greater community aspect. you have a friends list, and you can make entries that only people on your friends list can see. lj has threaded comments that actually work, which is untrue of most of the rest of the blogosphere. there are standalone lj communities, which blogging platforms don't have. and so on.