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I hate it whenever an article mentions a service or drops an affiliate link and someone's verdict is that the article looks like advertising. Do you prefer your

by B-Con 13y ago

I hate it whenever an article mentions a service or drops an affiliate link and someone's verdict is that the article looks like advertising. Do you prefer your reading content to be devoid of mentioning any products or brands? Should bloggers never make a dime off affiliate links? Be concerned with the content and only the content. If the article has it, it's legit.

eli 13y ago
I'm not a big fan of the content either. If you're going to imply Dropbox is doing something sneaky then I think you owe them the basic courtesy of a chance to comment or explain before you hit publish.
- bigiain 13y ago
  "Sneaky" or not – it's definitely unexpected behaviour. I certainly didn't expect .doc files I store in a Dropbox folder to magically go and fetch remote resources. Whether it's "explainable" or not (and I guess the "they're generating PDF thumbnails" is a plausible explanation), Dropbox haven't taken any steps to inform users that this happens. There's little doubt that somebody will think up a way to take advantage of this to "leak" information. I wonder if this happens before or after Dropbox's dedupe step? I wonder if that provides an avenue to extract useful data?
mhurron 13y ago
Content is modified by the context. Someone trying to raise warnings about a competitors product should make you question the motives.
- tedunangst 13y ago
  HoneyDocs is a DropBox competitor?
- fleitz 13y ago
  This is equivalent to an appeal to authority. Content is not modified by the context, a fact is either true or it is not. Everyone has a motive, it reminds me of how people call into question research sponsored by corporations as if people who work in government sponsored research are some how automatically saints with no ulterior motive. To trust someone based on affiliate links is a quite silly line of deductive reasoning. From the information provided it seems simple enough to verify, embed an image via URL into a doc file, upload to dropbox, see if the URL is accessed. No need to argue about motive.
  - takluyver 13y ago
    Certainly context is relevant. Understanding who is saying something and what their motives are helps you to judge how likely facts are to be true, and how much weight you should attach to opinions. Calling some work into question because of the authors' motives isn't a claim that some other group has no ulterior motives at all. Certainly everyone has some motives, otherwise we would never get out of bed. But some of those motives will change the discussion more than others. E.g. when HP sponsors a study that finds that their own ink works out cheaper than buying remanufactured cartridges, it's perfectly sensible to be more suspicious of that than if a study by a consumer organisation found the same thing.
smtddr 13y ago
> Be concerned with the content and only the content. If the article has it, it's legit. Wrong. Context is everything. You cannot look at data in a vacuum. You need to look at where, why, when and how - especially when it's sensational; i.e. something that may cause someone to take action.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- B-Con 13y ago
  > You cannot look at data in a vacuum. I never said you could. We're not discussing the philosophy of objective statements that don't require context, we're discussing whether true facts are tainted by subjective elements around them. By definition, they can't be. If the content is good, it doesn't really matter why it's there. But if you believe the context implies that the data is incomplete (aka, biased) or actually wrong, that's obviously relevant. Especially if something was an ad, who cares? The data speaks for itself. You just need to verify the ad is correct and isn't mis-representing itself. In this case, the data is fairly objective, they aren't comparing their product to someone else's, just pointing out an action that a product was able to help perform, and that action produced interesting data about another service. The article didn't come off as an ad, either. My main gripe was that some people complain over any mention of affiliated services. (People also gripe about non-labeled affiliate links by independent-millionaire, popular, respected bloggers.)
biot 13y ago
I translated your comment to Galician: Eu odio iso, cada vez que un artigo menciona un servizo ou cae dun enlace de afiliado e veredicto de alguén é que o artigo parece publicidade. Prefire o seu contido de lectura a ser desprovisto de mencionar os produtos ou marcas? Se bloggers nunca facer un centavo off ligazóns afiliados? Estar preocupado co contido e só o contido. O artigo ten iso, é lexítimo. If you are curious about other languages, I encourage you to test it out on your own! You can sign-up for a demo account at https://translate-o-rama.io/ https://translate-o-rama.io/
- B-Con 13y ago
  That's spam, not useful data. No one upvoted that hypothetical offering of data. People did find this article interesting. And hey, maybe I am interested in learning that language. Assuming your forum was appropriate (say, at a Galician convention), that could be a useful thing.
  - biot 13y ago
    With apologies to Arthur C. Clarke: Sufficiently advanced spam is indistinguishable from useful content.
    - B-Con 13y ago
      That's actually a good quote-analogy. I'm not the most pragmatic person ever, but let me pose this: If you can't tell the difference, do you honestly care?
      - biot 13y ago
        If the utility is high enough, then I might not mind. The problem is when the content's utility is insufficiently advanced and it is followed by a plug for a very related product/service that solves the problem identified in the content. That scenario casts suspicion on the content: "Did the author write this only to plug the product/service?". In this instance, the Dropbox info was sufficiently useful (it appeared to be an original discovery) that I don't see it as a huge problem.

by B-Con 13y ago

eli 13y ago

I'm not a big fan of the content either. If you're going to imply Dropbox is doing something sneaky then I think you owe them the basic courtesy of a chance to comment or explain before you hit publish.

bigiain 13y ago
"Sneaky" or not – it's definitely unexpected behaviour. I certainly didn't expect .doc files I store in a Dropbox folder to magically go and fetch remote resources. Whether it's "explainable" or not (and I guess the "they're generating PDF thumbnails" is a plausible explanation), Dropbox haven't taken any steps to inform users that this happens. There's little doubt that somebody will think up a way to take advantage of this to "leak" information. I wonder if this happens before or after Dropbox's dedupe step? I wonder if that provides an avenue to extract useful data?

mhurron 13y ago

Content is modified by the context. Someone trying to raise warnings about a competitors product should make you question the motives.

tedunangst 13y ago
HoneyDocs is a DropBox competitor?
fleitz 13y ago
This is equivalent to an appeal to authority. Content is not modified by the context, a fact is either true or it is not. Everyone has a motive, it reminds me of how people call into question research sponsored by corporations as if people who work in government sponsored research are some how automatically saints with no ulterior motive. To trust someone based on affiliate links is a quite silly line of deductive reasoning. From the information provided it seems simple enough to verify, embed an image via URL into a doc file, upload to dropbox, see if the URL is accessed. No need to argue about motive.
- takluyver 13y ago
  Certainly context is relevant. Understanding who is saying something and what their motives are helps you to judge how likely facts are to be true, and how much weight you should attach to opinions. Calling some work into question because of the authors' motives isn't a claim that some other group has no ulterior motives at all. Certainly everyone has some motives, otherwise we would never get out of bed. But some of those motives will change the discussion more than others. E.g. when HP sponsors a study that finds that their own ink works out cheaper than buying remanufactured cartridges, it's perfectly sensible to be more suspicious of that than if a study by a consumer organisation found the same thing.

smtddr 13y ago

> Be concerned with the content and only the content. If the article has it, it's legit. Wrong. Context is everything. You cannot look at data in a vacuum. You need to look at where, why, when and how - especially when it's sensational; i.e. something that may cause someone to take action.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
B-Con 13y ago
> You cannot look at data in a vacuum. I never said you could. We're not discussing the philosophy of objective statements that don't require context, we're discussing whether true facts are tainted by subjective elements around them. By definition, they can't be. If the content is good, it doesn't really matter why it's there. But if you believe the context implies that the data is incomplete (aka, biased) or actually wrong, that's obviously relevant. Especially if something was an ad, who cares? The data speaks for itself. You just need to verify the ad is correct and isn't mis-representing itself. In this case, the data is fairly objective, they aren't comparing their product to someone else's, just pointing out an action that a product was able to help perform, and that action produced interesting data about another service. The article didn't come off as an ad, either. My main gripe was that some people complain over any mention of affiliated services. (People also gripe about non-labeled affiliate links by independent-millionaire, popular, respected bloggers.)

biot 13y ago

I translated your comment to Galician: Eu odio iso, cada vez que un artigo menciona un servizo ou cae dun enlace de afiliado e veredicto de alguén é que o artigo parece publicidade. Prefire o seu contido de lectura a ser desprovisto de mencionar os produtos ou marcas? Se bloggers nunca facer un centavo off ligazóns afiliados? Estar preocupado co contido e só o contido. O artigo ten iso, é lexítimo. If you are curious about other languages, I encourage you to test it out on your own! You can sign-up for a demo account at https://translate-o-rama.io/ https://translate-o-rama.io/

B-Con 13y ago
That's spam, not useful data. No one upvoted that hypothetical offering of data. People did find this article interesting. And hey, maybe I am interested in learning that language. Assuming your forum was appropriate (say, at a Galician convention), that could be a useful thing.
- biot 13y ago
  With apologies to Arthur C. Clarke: Sufficiently advanced spam is indistinguishable from useful content.
  - B-Con 13y ago
    That's actually a good quote-analogy. I'm not the most pragmatic person ever, but let me pose this: If you can't tell the difference, do you honestly care?
    - biot 13y ago
      If the utility is high enough, then I might not mind. The problem is when the content's utility is insufficiently advanced and it is followed by a plug for a very related product/service that solves the problem identified in the content. That scenario casts suspicion on the content: "Did the author write this only to plug the product/service?". In this instance, the Dropbox info was sufficiently useful (it appeared to be an original discovery) that I don't see it as a huge problem.