Great post! Its helping me to get my head around how I feel. I’ve read BB long enough to trust them not to do anything sketchy-- hell, I’ll click the links harder now knowing they’re making BB money, and it won’t affect my future clicking–but I guess I had a knee jerk, maybe naive, expectation that when there’s financial gain to be made in an opinion/editorial piece, it’s mentioned close to the link, and there was a weird bit of dissonance when I realized that wasn’t the case here. But you’re right, the real question is does it matter, and I can’t say that it does–it’s clear they are affiliate links for anyone taking 2 seconds to think about it. (I just never did, thus the “huh!” moment that led me to read this entire. freaking. thread.).
If I had to lay some money down, I’d place it on the subscription model with “10 free articles per month” or the “complete this short survey for 2 days free access” add-on packs.
If there were micropayments, where we couldhad to pay $0.02 to read an article? pffft. That’s nothin’! Clicky-clicky-click-click-click!
And BB would finally rake in the dough so CD could stop having to lecture and write books and get back to collecting rare Libby’s Tiki-ware. JLW could get a decent van that doesn’t need repairs every other week, and Rob could finally medically transition to being a flesh-and-blood hobbit. Everybody wins!
Seriously, I post and go back to edit, and by the time I’m done editing there are likes? YOU PEOPLE NEED JOBS!
Or a job with a manager that walks by your desk once in a while. Thank g-d mine works remotely.
A certain uncertainty? I don’t agree that the whiff of change is in the air any more than it always is.
There… could be… another reason for the whiff…
There could also be a reason for the fixation
I suspect another form of fixation:
or just a mid-morning snack:
Shout-out to my homies in the Rolling Stones!
My new band name:
#Grip-Spreader
It’s gonna be something like Norwegian black metal, with lyrics from classic Frankfurt school texts.
All this means is that I now have to follow you around clicking on Like as fast as I can.
A tangential thought related to the concern about affiliate links - it would seem that a better consumer-focused solution might lie at the browser level than relying on the integrity of any given website. I imagine a browser plugin that would detect affiliate links and highlight them for the users, either as a different color as Patrace said, and/or perhaps providing more info via hovertext. Perhaps such a plugin already exists?
I could see such a plugin being something that most bb-ers would freely point to as a tool to promote transparency (like Ghostery), but would also allow blogging professionals to continue with their revenue models.
Well, a plug in certainly would be easier than trying to get what I thought was a somewhat socially progressive website to follow the national guidelines for disclosure…
I wondered if such a thing already existed but all I found was a plugin that surreptitiously inserted its own affiliate links into Amazon links.
So, ironically, the technology and databases needed to identify a wide range of affiliate links in a web browser already exists - it just happens to have been written as malware for purposes of hijacking the referrals. I guess it is a proof of concept, in a way.
We appear to have run out of things to say about the topic and are now into personal attacks between community members. Those have been deleted.
This topic is now closed. New replies are no longer allowed.
