Reason number ten billion why I prefer DW to LJ

[beatrice_otter]

The Affiliate Thing (ganked from rydra_wong):

LJ would like you to know:

Last week, we became aware that a recently-implemented script was overwriting affiliate referral fees for some of our users. Once we confirmed this, our Ops team quickly removed the script. Please be aware that, while we may beta-test other affiliate scripts down the line, we will take greater measures to ensure that no existing user-referral arrangements are impacted in any way.

In other words: they will be redirecting your links to slap affiliate codes on them and make money out of them in future.

As comments from the reps indicated, the "mistake" this time was that it stripped existing affiliate codes (thus massively violating the affiliate agreement with Amazon and pissing their lawyers off).

But hijacking your links and redirecting them through a third-party site for fun and profit? That was the point.

Stay classy, LJ.  Stay classy.

Comments

[jedibuttercup]

I caught that, hunted down the way to turn it the eff off, and rolled my eyes. Of course they're going to be trying to make money off their users; they're a business. I guess I have a higher tolerance for that kind of BS, as long as there's a way to disable it.

The very thought of duplicating my entire journal over to DW has kept me mostly on LJ, not to mention all the communities I'm involved in/reading. One of these days I suppose I'll finish the move, but I'm not annoyed enough yet, I suppose.

[beatrice_otter]

I have no problem with them making money off of me, I just don't like the way they choose to go about it. I used DW's content importer when I first got my journal, and it worked just fine and was easy to use. If I'm posting anything, I use DW; I only use LJ for my f-list and communities.