
Posterous silently changes all external links to affiliate links - ash
http://shamrin.posterous.com/posterous-silently-changes-all-external-links#
======
a4agarwal
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 possible 3\. Affiliate codes
are not stripped or altered if they already exist 4\. Copying links is
unchanged

Before deploying this change, we tested it heavily to make sure we weren't
doing anything that would be visible to the publisher or reader. The fact that
it took 4 months for someone to really notice this is a testament to how
unobtrusive it is.

Some people have commented that we should be sharing revenue back to the
users. You are absolutely right. This is something we mentioned to Viglink at
our very first meeting with them and something we will add when it's
technically possible.

Admittedly, we should have announced this on our blog. This was definitely an
oversight on our part. Our goal is to be 100% transparent with everything we
do at Posterous, especially when it affects your blog and content.

From Posterous, we apologize. Going forward we will be sure to notify you of
any changes we make to the site.

With regards to viglink: we really appreciate all your feedback and we're
going to evaluate our use of the service going forward.

-Sachin cofounder, posterous.com

~~~
jfornear
Overall, I think you handled this well, but...

 _> Our goal is to be 100% transparent with everything we do at Posterous,
especially when it affects your blog and content._

I'm sure users will be forgiving, but your credibility may be blown (re:
transparency) by not announcing something like this. Why is it so trendy to be
'transparent'? Why claim to adhere to principles that you clearly didn't
follow?

(Sorry to nitpick! <3)

~~~
TotlolRon
Nitpicking.

You (where "you" is any "you") don't have to be 100% transparent. You are
expected though to be 100% non intentionally-opaque. Not the same.

------
jarin
I don't really see a problem with this as it does not strip off existing
affiliate codes, it only adds them if they are not present. I mean, Firefox
makes millions off of Google searches and nobody seems to complain about that.

~~~
floodfx
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.

~~~
milkshakes
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]

~~~
csomar
>> 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.

Point 2 is that they didn't have a clear strategy how to monetize themselves
(which is crucial since nothing runs for free) from the beginning.

Come on, but this is like saying "Get your free domain here" and then telling
you that the domain is free, but only if you pay for the hosting :(

~~~
jacquesm
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'.

------
sounddust
I don't think there's anything wrong with this, but why would Amazon, Walmart
and others not make this type of linking against their terms of service?

It goes against the spirit of affiliate programs, which is an exchange of
actual promotion in exchange for commission. The stores aren't gaining
anything by allowing it since those links were already published. And it hurts
other affiliates, not only by directly taking their commissions (because the
most recent affiliate click before purchase counts), but also because it
increases the total amount that the stores are paying out.

If this catches on, it will force merchants to lower their commission rates,
causing them to lose publishers. I think that most merchants will end up
forbidding the practice, just as many have forbid bidding against them in PPC
campaigns.

~~~
greendestiny
Also there is no guarantee that in a blog post that people will adhere to the
conditions that affiliates impose when they aren't aware they are part of an
affiliate program. For instance Amazon requires that the product be described
accurately and that it doesn't seem to be endorsed by a third party. Other
sites probably have other requirements, though of course I have no idea what
Amazon's arrangement with Viglink is.

------
compumike
I too don't actually see it via copying like the article mentions... however a
quick View Source on this and another Posterous blog does reveal some
javascript to call these guys:

<http://www.viglink.com/>

Pretty neat, I think! Assuming they're not overwriting existing affiliate
URLs, then this seems like a reasonable game to play.

In my mind, Posterous is providing free hosting / platform for the blog, so
they have at least some claim to having helped make the affiliate sale.

This isn't going nearly as far in bending the rules on affiliate programs as
Browsarity (another YC company):

<http://www.browsarity.com/about.php>

(And good for Browsarity -- but I'm still surprised that various affiliate
programs haven't disconnected them yet because of their much more tenuous
connection to the underlying transaction.) [EDIT: clarifed this last sentence]

------
Tichy
Scary how many people thing that kind of thing is OK. Isn't it at the very
least very sneaky?

"They need to make money somehow" is not an excuse for being sneaky.

The only thing in their favor is that customers should probably expect a catch
since the service is "free".

------
huhtenberg
Thank you for the heads-up. Just added *.viglink.com to the AdBlock list.

~~~
jseliger
Ditto.

------
kylecordes
It is on days like that, that I am happy that my blog and company sites are
hosted on normal web hosting. I can run whatever blog or CMS I like, whatever
versions I like, whatever ads I like (none), whatever affiliates I like
(none), and never worry that an otherwise slick platform starts rewriting my
links, adding ads, or whatever.

------
daeken
As a Posterous user, I'm happy that they did this. It has essentially no
effect on the end user, potentially makes them money (to support their
excellent, free service), and doesn't kill existing affiliate links.

Keep up the good work, guys.

~~~
danieldon

      It has essentially no effect on the end user
    

Sure it does. Users get inconsistent and bizarre behavior when trying to copy
and paste links. It would be tremendously confusing to try to copy and paste a
link only to find out that what ended up on the clipboard was a completely
foreign link that's totally different from what was displayed in the status
bar.

------
obxerve
First, personally, I think the use of "oversight" as the reason is
oversimplifying. You need more than one "oversight" for this to happen the way
it has evolved until caught red handed. And the collective of them looks
"weird".

Second, I sincerely agree that I would love to see Posterous earn a profit for
such a great service. But "free is free", not "free if I exploit the links on
your blog unaware to you". The blog content is the property of the blog owner
(except if the owner explicitly makes it public property). I do not think it
wise for Posterous to earn income from the blog content without the blog
owner's explicit permission.

Third, the response from Posterous does not make it clear the plan to rectify
the issue - it is just an apology. The apropriate response, I think, VigLink
should be disabled immediately for all blogs. Then each blog owner can be
given the option to either opt in (and hopefully gets a cut) or take their
content elsewhere.

Just some observations.

------
billclerico
while it would have been nice to get a heads up, this doesn't bother me in the
least. props to posterous for having a revenue model that doesn't interfere
with the user experience whatsoever

~~~
jon_dahl
Absolutely. What's wrong with a business having a revenue model? Better this
than advertising or a crippled free version.

~~~
jamesbritt
The problem for me is that visitors to my site may think that _I'm_ the one
who is using this affiliate code, and that I'm looking to make a buck off my
links.

Is that a problem? Depends; some readers are put off by this sort of thing.
Witness the comments on HN when someone discovers an affiliate link in a
article posted here.

You can dismiss this as a fairly benign way to increase revenue, but I'd
prefer no one alter my content, benign or not, without telling me right up
front.

~~~
patio11
Well, apparently these are fairly hard to discover if they can do it sitewide
for millions of people and not have it seen for four months. This suggests an
obvious opportunity for folks who want to promote their affiliate links on HN:
clean links in HTML, dynamically retarget to affiliate link via Javascript.
Nobody will see it. (Particularly for merchants who 301 their affiliate links
to the standard pages -- you'd have to be watching your HTTP headers very
carefully to see that.)

Seriously, the possibilities for abuse of this are endless. Which is why the
Powers That Be are going to come down on it like a ton of bricks.

------
avar
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>

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

------
minouye
To confirm for yourself:

1\. Go to this post (the result of a Google search for Posterous and Amazon) -
<http://adeb.posterous.com/ubuntu-one-music-store-vs-amazon>

2\. Fire up a browser extension/add-on to monitor HTTP requests like HTTP Fox
or HTTP Watch.

3\. Click the link "here" at the end of the line: 1 install the rpm/deb from
here

You can clearly see a request to:

[http://api.viglink.com/api/click?key=8eb8c964d427e97a1567cec...](http://api.viglink.com/api/click?key=8eb8c964d427e97a1567cec6532655f0&v=1&libId=1272666511906..).

~~~
jamesbritt
I was wondering why I wasn't seeing this for myself when I looked at the no-
script settings.

The code for this is coming from viglink.com. If you disallow or block such
scripts you do not see the added affiliate info.

------
bgreenlee
If it bothers you, you can add rel="norewrite" to your links (editing as
HTML), and it won't rewrite them.

------
bravura
What happens if the user is already trying to monetize their posterous content
using affiliate links? Does Posterous steal the affiliate credit, in that
case?

~~~
rantfoil
Viglink does not strip existing affiliate codes.

~~~
bravura
Okay. Could you clarify more what happens if there are existing affiliate
codes? Does Posterous only get an affiliate fee if there is no existing
affiliate code?

~~~
buro9
That's pretty much the deal. Only URLs that don't yet include affiliate info
gets re-written.

There are a couple of companies in this space, viglink, skimlinks, etc. They
all operate on the basis that they sign up to _every_ affiliate scheme and
they become the single publisher with which the merchants have a relationship
(or more likely, the merchants use a marketplace that puts all merchants
together so that they can be found).

For any affiliate program that viglink/skimlinks is signed up to, should
someone click through from your site a 45 to 60 day cookie is usually set by
the affiliate provider to show who the last publisher is that made the
referral. Should a subsequent purchase be made viglink/skimlinks is credited
with the sale and receives the 3.5% > 15% affiliate payment.

Catches (there are some)...

1) The cookie. Only the last web site to set a cookie gets the affiliate
reward. In this case it means other sites actually providing value and setting
affiliate click-thrus are going to get their cookie hijacked by posterous
using viglink. So this hurts niche sites that really rely on the affiliate
schemes.

2) The fee. Viglink and SkimLinks both deduct a 25% fee for this service.
That's pretty damn high. They are VERY profitable.

The benefits...

1) As a publisher you get 75% of the money that is currently left on the
table.

2) You didn't have to sign up to every damn affiliate scheme... actually you'd
be declined anyway as whilst a merchant will deal with the big boys they tend
to only like smaller guys who stay in their knowledge domain (if you don't run
an insurance content site, you don't get the insurance affiliate scheme).

Basically viglink and skimlinks are simplifying the whole affiliate thing by
doing for the publishers exactly what the merchants already had in places like
Commission Junction... which is to provide a one-stop-shop.

So... merchants get found via CJ, AffiliateWindow, etc... and publishers get
signed up to all merchants via Viglink, SkimLinks, etc.

What has ultimately happened is that now there are 2 intermediaries between
the publisher and the merchant, both of whom take a slice.

I don't blame posterous for doing this, it is just money left on the table.
But the cookie hijack will hurt smaller sites for whom the affiliate scheme
revenue is a bloodline.

~~~
buro9
It's just occurred to me... Posterous could make themselves THE publishing
platform by simply sharing the revenue again.

All they need do is to act like another viglink or skimlinks and to record the
clicks made per publisher using their platform. Then offer the publisher 50%
of the revenue.

This is then an incentive to use Posterous beyond all of the ease of use.
Anything you posted that included a potentially monetisable link would earn
you revenue.

Now, this isn't as lucrative as just doing it yourself. But to all of the
creative people making cool content who are lost when it comes to affiliate
schemes this would be a killer feature.

~~~
jorgeortiz85
This would turn 90% of Posterous content into affiliate spam.

~~~
buro9
I don't think so. Those who do spam wouldn't be up for giving viglink 25% and
then settling for only half of the remaining 75%.

Spammers aren't entirely stupid, they'd go register direct and do what they
usually do (set up little spam bait sites) as that would be way more
profitable.

This would help small publishers more than it would assist spammers.

------
aeontech
Huh, didn't livejournal try the same trick a month or two ago?

<http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100304/1741458425.shtml>

~~~
unfletch
According to that article LiveJournal was (is?) overwriting existing affiliate
links with their own. According to their co-founder, Posterous is only
affiliating links that aren't already affiliated (ref:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1309604>).

~~~
aeontech
Well, from what I remember in followup coverage, lj claimed that overwriting
existing affiliate links was a bug, and they were also just trying to
affiliate links that aren't already affiliated.

------
chris24
Looks like my /etc/hosts file just got one line longer. :)

~~~
mahmud
/etc/hosts is for your systems, use AdBlock for the junk ;-)

------
pilif
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.

------
urlwolf
Well, I'm not as torn as the author. They are altering the original content of
the author, even if the result is the same.

Imagine that someone's religion believes that you go to hell if you use
affiliate links... posterous would have condemned them! (dramatizing works)

~~~
jmtulloss
That's a bit silly, their whole draw is in the fact that they change your
content. If you have a youtube link, they turn that into a youtube embed. If
you have <http://...>, they change that into an anchor. There are dozens of
examples of content that you can put in an email and they will transform into
something more useful, and this is generally regarded as being quite valuable.

If you have a problem with posterous manipulating your content, you should
probably be hosting your own content.

~~~
jtarud
I agree here, Posterous is free and a dam great service. If you want full
control code your own blog or go the wordpress custom install way. They need
to monetize somehow.

------
mehta
If you have ad blockers installed, you'll probably not see this. I can't see
this on FF3.5+ with AdBlock plus

------
NathanKP
I couldn't repeat the link copying trick mentioned in the article. When I
right clicked on the link and copied it there was just google.com, no
affiliate link.

I can see the viglink JavaScript in the source code for the page, though. Yet
the dynamic DOM inspector shows that the link href has not been changed, nor
is there an onclick handler added. Perhaps it does not work on Safari, or only
works for specific users?

~~~
ErrantX
I get the affiliate link when copying in Google Chrome on XP.

~~~
NathanKP
Ah, so it may only work on specific browsers. Safari seems immune.

~~~
chris24
The copy link trick only works on certain browsers. I'm using Safari, and copy
link copies the actual link, not the affiliate link. Clicking it, however,
takes me through the affiliate link.

Seems to me like some browsers take the URL that gets opened through the click
event when you copy the link, but Safari does not.

------
jrockway
Is there a good browser extension that removes all affiliate links? I use
Amazon a lot, and I don't feel that Amazon should be paying someone to refer
me there, as I already buy everything from Amazon anyway.

------
DanBlake
This isn't anything that uncommon. It doesn't strip off a existing affiliate
link either (last i checked) so I dont really get the outrage. The firefox
reference quoted earlier seems pretty similar.

------
ALee
I for one have no problems with this. I mean these guys host my stuff for
free, right?

Well, people probably don't know that wordpress.com and a bunch of services
that host your content for free also use services very similar to this.

Everyone's getting angry at something that has been happening on sites for the
past 2-3 years already.

------
invisible
There is nothing wrong with adding affiliate links if there is no affiliate
link there currently. It is only when it goes horribly wrong (livejournal)
that it is a bad thing. Why should they not get paid for a free blogging
service. Don't promote free models if you think this is a bad idea.

~~~
cgranade
There is nothing wrong as long as it is done in a transparent way. Without
that transparency, authors are potentially subjecting their readers to click-
tracking without being able to give appropriate disclosures.

~~~
invisible
I don't understand how far they need to go to show that they do this without
being obnoxious. If they show the affiliate link instead it may confuse users
(even in the status bar).

~~~
cgranade
At least show the authors, so that they can decide how much to disclose to
their readers.

------
cj
You can't click links with the track/scroll ball (which normally opens links
in new windows) with Viglink.

This is the only thing that bothers me.

~~~
greyman
Hmm..that's not very good, is it? I for one almost always open links this
way...

------
jarin
Let me ask you guys something: would you be upset if HN did this?

~~~
mahmud
Not at all upset. It would give me a 30-minute project to circumvent it.

~~~
Tichy
How could you possibly circumvent it? Hacking the HN servers?

~~~
mahmud
No, my own browser.

On the wire, it's just headers followed by \n\n followed by body the size of
Content-length :-)

HTTP is a child's play.

------
jorgecastillo
If anyone intends to change his blogging service I recommend
<http://my.opera.com/>. Although they don't have automatic blog import, so if
you have lots of stuff you might want to back it up first and you will have to
transfer all your post manually.

------
qq66
If this becomes big enough of a revenue model for enough companies, the big
affiliate payors will change their TOS and refuse to pay third-party hosters.
They're trying to pay the people who promote their content directly.

------
icey
If this works, doesn't overwrite existing affiliate links and doesn't end up
in a bad experience for users then I'm all for it. Posterous has to make money
somehow, this is better than banner ads if you ask me.

------
FluidDjango
The OP says that using right-click to copy a link to google.com gives instead
a link like:

http: // api.viglink.com/api/click?key=8eb8c964d...

But I am _not_ experiencing that with a right-click in either Safari/Mac OR
FF/Mac. He mentions Safari not being a problem. I find that FF/Mac isn't
either.

EDIT: Any chance that they have disarmed this after getting all the bad press
(at least on HN)?

~~~
dschoon
Looking at the code, the hooks are DOM listeners that intercept the click to
do the redirect. They don't modify the anchor tag, so there's no reason anyone
should see them on mouseover or right-click-copy.

------
jat850
I'm not sure if I'm missing something, or doing something wrong, but following
the author's directions, none of my links are mangled whatsoever - copying the
google.com link simply pasted google.com.

I do have Javascript enabled as stated.

I tried with each link in the article, and not a single one of them is
redirecting via Viglink.

(edit) Using Firefox 3.5 on Linux

~~~
josefresco
It probably only picks up links where it _can_ insert an affiliate code like
Amazon. Linking to just google.com probably does not trigger the systen.

------
LiveTheDream
Didn't LiveJournal do this recently?

------
iamwil
Yeah, I don't know how I feel about this either. Especially when they don't
tell you.

------
suhail
We have a blog on Posterous and we have no issues with these guys doing this--
totally support them making money while giving us a great place to post
content.

I don't honestly see what the big deal is. You can barely tell anything is
happening.

------
lm741
I posted about this a while ago: <http://lm741.posterous.com/16766453>

Two easy ways to get around it: url shorteners and redirect services.

------
ash
_Update:_ After several hours after posting this I couldn't repeat "copy link"
trick. Neither in Chrome, nor in Internet Explorer. And middle click now works
as intended in Chrome. It seems Posterous and/or VigLink changed some of their
algorithms. They didn't get rid of affiliate magic (VigLink javascript is
still there). But thanks for fixing bugs - the most annoying for me was non-
working middle-click in Chrome.

------
wooster
Did anyone else here read this and immediately install VigLink on a site?

~~~
al_james
Yes!

------
TotlolRon
There are two issues here:

a. The links.

b. The disclosure.

Item a is very well debated. What about b? Why aren't users notified of it? If
it is a recent change, why wasn't it announced? Etc.

~~~
chacha102
They _should_ have posted something on their Official Blog. However, there are
a lot of things they _should_ have done before releasing this...

~~~
Tichy
You should be informed of this when signing up for a blog.

------
vishaldpatel
There can be only one explanation. Posterous was hacked!

------
dave1619
Weird. I posted a simple link, <http://www.apple.com/wwdc> on our blog
(<http://gpapps.com>), and I get this crazy sequence of forwards:

[http://clk.tradedoubler.com/click?p=2554&a=1503186&g...](http://clk.tradedoubler.com/click?p=2554&a=1503186&g=17981984&epi=skim725X556513&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.apple.com%2Fwwdc)

[http://registration.euro.apple.com/cgi-bin/trade-
cookie.cgi?...](http://registration.euro.apple.com/cgi-bin/trade-
cookie.cgi?aosid=p204&siteid=1503186&program_id=2554&cid=OAS-EMEA-
AFF&tduid=3c4d29bc25f11b282b35eba6cf83c3e6&url=http://www.apple.com/wwdc)

[http://developer.apple.com/wwdc/?aosid=p204&siteid=15031...](http://developer.apple.com/wwdc/?aosid=p204&siteid=1503186&program_id=2554&cid=OAS-
EMEA-AFF&tduid=3c4d29bc25f11b282b35eba6cf83c3e6)

All I want is my readers to go to the simple <http://apple.com/wwdc> link and
not all that junk. Posterous was awesome before this.

~~~
rantfoil
Your blog <http://gpapps.com/> is not hosted on Posterous.

This is unrelated to the discussion at hand.

~~~
dave1619
I post on our blog via postereous. Meaning, I email my blog post to posterous
and posterous posts on my wordpress account. My original link in my post was
<http://www.apple.com/wwdc>, but it does this crazy URL forwarding that
viglink added in. It clearly affects users.

~~~
tino
Even if you are somehow using Posterous to post to WordPress (I'm not familiar
with Posterous' features), they're not the ones doing your redirect.

It actually looks like WordPress is doing the same link affiliation as
Posterous. They're using Skimlinks, not VigLink, but the result is the same.
(Open a javascript console while on your blog and take a look at the skimlinks
function.) FYI, Skimlinks is based in the UK. That probably explains why the
original apple.com link bounces through euro.apple.com.

As easy as it is to miss, I bet there are a lot of sites doing this now.

~~~
dave1619
Thanks, that's helpful. I didn't know wordpress does affiliate links too.

