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.
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.
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.