What to do about clickbank, adfly and similar "referral" programs?

Question

There's been a discussion in the past about URL shorteners, and I've argued that they're actually not that evil, given that sometimes they're the only way to link to the more obscure URI schemas (mumble, steam, mms, magnet, etc.)

There are, however, even eviler places in the internet that allow you to "make money" (somehow) by "brokering" links.

Image courtesy of Pekka's Reputation Bordello. ohhhh baby!

Now, if I make a .zip file with my super awesome thingadongdong calculating spreadsheet (updated to version 5.9f21 of Thingadongdongingfierfest SE+) and put a paywall in front of it so that I can get some money back from it... it's my choice. It wouldn't be right for us to skip this paywall and offer the direct link straight away. So we can't outright ban such services - adfly is e.g. commonly used by the Minecraft modding community as a legitimate paper-thin paywall.

However, what we actually got today is just a good ole referral program where people are encouraged to spam about a service and get a split (or whatever else) out of every purchase going through their link; all of this wrapped into some clickbank spamming operation thingadongdong. I replaced the affiliate link with its actual destination with extreme prejudice.

How do we balance the goods and evils of this?

Answer 1

I'm somewhat uncomfortable with this - it seems to go against the ethos of "great answers to great questions" and marks a shift towards rent-a-coder.

There are a lot of scenarios where this seems wrong:

• If the answer can't stand without the link then it's NAA, or spam depending on how the affiliation was presented.

• If the thin paywall was put up by someone other than the owner of the content itself (as I believe some of these thin paywalls make easy) then it's definitely spam, of the worst kind.

• If the paywall link was edited in by someone other than the poster then it's definitely spam, but not appropriate for a spam flag since that penalises the poster rather than the editor.

• If the link isn't obviously marked as "I stand to benefit from this" then it's probably spam, even if the answer works without the link - in that case removing the link completely seems like the sensible solution.

• Even if the all of the above are satisfied but all/most of the posts from the user do this then I think it's probably spam also.

So in conclusion then it might be OK, if it's up front and honest, a rare occurrence and the answer has significant value without the referral link. Otherwise I'd remove without circumventing or treat as spam depending on the answer.

(I'm fine with SE re-writing links to add referrals like they currently do with Amazon links though - that seems like a sensible and fair way to monetise the network, which needs to happen for it to last long term)

Answer 2

It wouldn't be right for us to skip this paywall and offer the direct link straight away.

You write this as if it was a fact, but I don't understand the reasoning. Everything you post on SO is no longer your content since you've licensed it away, why do you think that other users shouldn't edit the link in a way that they think improves it, and as far as I understand, the consensus is that URL shorteners should not be used, at least for http links, so replacing with the real link would be an improvement.

From a practical point of view though, the few times I've spotted one of the ad sponsored shorteners it's been fairly obvious spam answers without any kind of disclosure so I just flagged as spam.