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I have to say, I vehemently disagree on all points. The largest valid reason people dislike affiliate links is because it changes the motivation for posting.
by ryangittins 10y ago
I have to say, I vehemently disagree on all points.
The largest valid reason people dislike affiliate links is because it changes the motivation for posting. When you see someone recommend a product behind an affiliate link, you can be certain that they are motivated in part by money. That may not be the whole reason; they could very well be recommending the product because they actually believe in it, but you only know for sure that they intend to make money off the recommendation.
A secondary reason people don't like affiliate links is because people don't like the idea of someone "making money off of" them. In my opinion, this is kind of irrational. It doesn't cost the user anything extra.
Interestingly, Reddit's plan is pure in this regard. They are simply making money off recommendations people are already making. Their not posting the affiliate links, they're simply seizing the opportunity presented when someone else honestly and organically links to a product.
Lastly, you mention a revenue share. Ironically, this proposal would do what you are actually concerned about: incentivize users to post something inauthentic which they normally wouldn't. I think your proposed solution would actually turn this non-issue into the very issue you're trying to prevent in the first place!
In the interest of full disclosure, I run websites which profit from affiliate links. I suspect my opinion would be the same if I didn't, however.
- arielm 10y agoI see your points, but I think you are speaking about this at a higher level that isn't necessarily specific to this particular implementation. I agree that when used by the direct posters, affiliate links cause a misalignment of incentive because the poster isn't necessarily adding value to the community but rather to their affiliate account. This can be done very naively or be abused. Users suffer both ways. This however isn't the case here IMO because if Reddit is auto tagging all links the posters are pretty much in the same boat that they were of Reddit hadn't tagged those links. You could say that because this is a revenue channel for Reddit they'd optimize tagged posts over non tagged ones when promoting content. That however mostly gets resolved by the same logic as above, plus we all know how stuff gets to the top of Reddit... Lastly, communities making some revenue is, again, not a misalignment. Using the same logic as above, all auto tagged links are again just links. Hence, a community that generates good content would get some revenue. It's pretty straight forward in my opinion. Lastly, most affiliates pay commission on sales and not impressions (and if they do it's really tiny). So the context and the targeting are the most important pieces.