Livejournal are adding affiliate IDs to your links

[andrewducker]

Go here for details on what it does and how to turn it off.

Thanks to marrog for pointing this one out.

Comments

Dunno

[zornhau.livejournal.com]

LJ has to make its money. I don't object to e.g. amazon links making a buck for a free service.

Re: Dunno

[andrewducker]

LJ isn't free for me :->

Re: Dunno

[cdave]

Sending data from all mouseovered links in locked posts to a third party is a bit off. Especially as they should have learned from last time they did this.

Re: Dunno

[zornhau.livejournal.com]

Yes indeed.

Re: Dunno

[despotliz.livejournal.com]

Yup - it's not that they're doing it, it's that they did it in a hidden and particularly stupid way, which was unpopular, and all they learned from that was that they should be less stupid but no more open next time they try it.

Compare this with Metafilter, who replace all Amazon affiliate links with their own, but are upfront about it and discussed it with the users first.

Re: Dunno

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Hm. Well, to be explicit, I don't necessarily object to livejournal monetising their assets. But what I do object to is:

1. Someone knew many people are going to be extremely, extremely upset about this, and easily could have been open about it, but instead chose to just hope it would be ok. Many friends are more connected to the livejournal community and know about the internal politics, but even if there are well meaning people, empirically this sort of thing is getting more and more common. Even if it's justified economically, I think people should know what they're getting, sometimes they want something reliable, sometimes they're happy with something half-arsed and insecure and full of adverts because it's cheaper. But it's dishonest to pretend to be #1 if you're going to become #2.

2. Whether or not this particular script is a security hole, adding badly-thought-out javascript with no thought of security is likely to be a security hole sooner or later. (Why on earth is it javascript at all? Surely it should be rewritten on server side?)

3. Livejournal is still convenient for me, and I can live with this sort of mistake for the time being, so I continue using it. However, I'm not getting any sense of trust that it will go on being convenient, and that sooner or later there will be a mistake I can't live with. If the livejournal company don't want my presence because it's not worth it to them, then fair enough, but if so it obviously behooves me to pave the way to jumping ship SOMEWHERE.

Re: Dunno

[zornhau.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think they should pull their socks up. Using the opt out seems like a good way of getting their attention.

Re: Dunno

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Indeed. Although honestly, I get the impression that the owners don't really care what the sort of people who care about this think, and making a fuss will at best result in them admitting it rather than trying to gloss it over. If the company still wants its users, then kicking up a stink may get them to recognise and meet the users needs. But I get the impression here that the ship has sailed, and further complaint is just expressing feelings, and not actually moving toward any useful relationship between user and business.

But I may be too pessimistic.

Re: Dunno

[rahaeli.livejournal.com]

If the livejournal company don't want my presence because it's not worth it to them, then fair enough, but if so it obviously behooves me to pave the way to jumping ship SOMEWHERE.

If our kind host will allow me one brief moment of self-pimpage, we at Dreamwidth would love your presence and treat it eminently respectfully, so if you choose to jump ship to us, I can provide invites to anyone who wants or needs them :)

(And editing because I forgot to add: we make it very easy to migrate from LJ, with the chance to completely import your LJ with comments and entries attached, and we make it easy to crosspost back to LJ. Soon we will also have the ability to read your LJ friends page from inside your DW reading page. These are but a few of the awesome upgrades we have, many of which have been suggested multiple times on LJ and gone nowhere. I'll hush now, really.)

--D (co-owner)

Re: Dunno

[andrewducker]

Sorting out the migration to DW is on my list for the next couple of weeks, when I get some free time.

Re: Dunno

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I should probably repost an account of my experience of starting to crosspost to dreamwidth; for the benefit of other people who would like to; I signed up a while before that, but only switched when it was really easy.

Re: Dunno

[cdave]

I was waiting until the LJ reading went live first. Then I planning to move to DW, and start paying for hosting.

Re: Dunno

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Oh, hello, pleased to meet you. Don't worry, I already HAVE jumped ship to dreamwidth (jack on dreamwidth, beau of liv on dreamwidth) and think you/we've been doing an awesome job there, but am still reading and crossposting to livejournal as long as many of my friends are here.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

> It had no way of distinguishing amazon.com from fucklikeacrazyamazon.com, or target.com from crossbowandtarget.com

That's really, really, REALLY shit code. I mean, it's about a single extra character to the regexp to check that.

(And heh, some people paid for it! ;)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I'd seen it before, but not explained as clearly :(

[phillipalden.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the heads-up. I have followed the instructions and "executed."

[dreema.livejournal.com]

thanks