LJ: Still Classy
So, for those of you not aware... LJ found a new way to make money off of you. Specifically, they seem to have signed up with a third party to redirect links to about 150 major e-commerce sites, and add "affiliate IDs" to them. Basically, this means that they'll get revenue for links posted by users and followed by anyone (including paid "never see ads" folks) as though LJ were sponsoring these links.
What's more, the third party through which they did this, "Driving Revenue", is not good at their job. Their bad code broke links that almost match websites with affiliate programs (so e.g. "ChesapeakeBay.com" or "GlutenFreeBay.com" would be changed to "eBay.com/?refid=LJWntsMny"), and actually stripped affiliate IDs added by users from links - so if, for example, there was a Haiti/Chile charity with an Amazon affiliate, and you shared the links to help them make cash? LJ got instead. You had an affiliate ID of your own to make some money off referrals? LJ got it instead.
Now, just to make it clear that LJ's aware this is somewhat shady, there was no announcement when they rolled this out, and they ran third-party scripts on all non-secure (not https://) webpages so that you would not see it happening before you clicked a link. The link would look exactly the same, perfectly normal, if you moused over it, then the code would sneak in and change the address you were headed to only as you clicked it. Not shady at all.
Now, if that doesn't annoy you enough, realize this means that LJ was pretty much directing their outbound traffic through a third party who wasn't bound by their terms of service, and specifically allowing them to inject code into the site to do so. Broken code that simultaneously went beyond what we'll charitably assume was the stated goal (monetize links no one else had monetized), and bollocksed up unrelated links. So one can assume the code wasn't exactly well-reviewed by LJ before it was deployed. I hear it was quite an eyesore of either poor practice or good obfuscation, but LJ has commented it out, so I can't say for sure.
On the plus side, LJ is apparently not going to continue to use this service. On the minus side, it's got to wait for the next code push, and it's not because of the privacy concerns or the issue of monetizing user content so directly, but rather because "Driving Revenue" was sloppy enough to break links and get caught, and there was no good support solution to deal with it when users found out.
If you'd rather just opt out now, apparently all you have to do is open your Admin console and enter "set opt_exclude_stats 1". Very user-friendly opt-out, ne? Other suggestions (in the various links collected by the link up top) include setting your ad blocker to include "outboundlink.net" and "l-stat.livejournal.com/js/pagestats/dRev.js". More info in the many aforementioned links.
What's more, the third party through which they did this, "Driving Revenue", is not good at their job. Their bad code broke links that almost match websites with affiliate programs (so e.g. "ChesapeakeBay.com" or "GlutenFreeBay.com" would be changed to "eBay.com/?refid=LJWntsMny"), and actually stripped affiliate IDs added by users from links - so if, for example, there was a Haiti/Chile charity with an Amazon affiliate, and you shared the links to help them make cash? LJ got instead. You had an affiliate ID of your own to make some money off referrals? LJ got it instead.
Now, just to make it clear that LJ's aware this is somewhat shady, there was no announcement when they rolled this out, and they ran third-party scripts on all non-secure (not https://) webpages so that you would not see it happening before you clicked a link. The link would look exactly the same, perfectly normal, if you moused over it, then the code would sneak in and change the address you were headed to only as you clicked it. Not shady at all.
Now, if that doesn't annoy you enough, realize this means that LJ was pretty much directing their outbound traffic through a third party who wasn't bound by their terms of service, and specifically allowing them to inject code into the site to do so. Broken code that simultaneously went beyond what we'll charitably assume was the stated goal (monetize links no one else had monetized), and bollocksed up unrelated links. So one can assume the code wasn't exactly well-reviewed by LJ before it was deployed. I hear it was quite an eyesore of either poor practice or good obfuscation, but LJ has commented it out, so I can't say for sure.
On the plus side, LJ is apparently not going to continue to use this service. On the minus side, it's got to wait for the next code push, and it's not because of the privacy concerns or the issue of monetizing user content so directly, but rather because "Driving Revenue" was sloppy enough to break links and get caught, and there was no good support solution to deal with it when users found out.
If you'd rather just opt out now, apparently all you have to do is open your Admin console and enter "set opt_exclude_stats 1". Very user-friendly opt-out, ne? Other suggestions (in the various links collected by the link up top) include setting your ad blocker to include "outboundlink.net" and "l-stat.livejournal.com/js/pagestats/dRev.js". More info in the many aforementioned links.