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Affiliate links in every 'recommendation'

General Discussion by techmei 27 replies 3.6K views
techmei

Member OP

#1

Notice pattern in recommendation thread. Three "user" post same provider within one hour. All account create within two day. All signature have same link, different shortener.

grep -I "Contabo" recommendation_thread.html | wc -l
# result: 47

This is not organic. Will report to mod, but want ask community: what disclosure norm you expect? Affiliate link okay if say? Or complete ban? I think HIDDEN affiliate is THEFT of trust. FULL DISCLOSURE minimum. XD

olespete

Member

Trust No One

#2

This is EXACTLY what could go wrong!

- Undisclosed financial motive corrupts "community" advice
- Tracking parameters in links fingerprint your browser
- Shortener hides final destination, could redirect to malware
- Coordinated posting = botnet or paid shill operation

WARNINGS: Check every signature. Check every "helpful" PM. Fail2ban for forums doesn't exist but SHOULD.

I block all shorteners at firewall level. You should too.

airgapped, encrypted, faraday'd, still worried
kate3

Member

#3

The virtualization tax on trust is what undisclosed affiliate links extract. Same problem as oversold OpenVZ nodes: information asymmetry benefits the seller.

Disclosure standard should match academic citation. State relationship. State compensation type (CPA, revshare, flat). Anything less degrades signal quality.

I've seen "independent" benchmarks where the tester ran KVM on EPYC vs OpenVZ on decade-old Xeon. Not fraud, but framing. Affiliate without disclosure is framing without label.

virsh list --all | wc -l: 47
marcus_qc

Member

#4

Hey folks gonna admit I didn't check signatures until this thread

@techmei you got me curious so I looked at EVERYONE here and uh

@olespete your signature has "github.com" which redirects through three hops to what looks like a masked affiliate landing page for Hetzner? Am I reading that right

Super stoked to be wrong about this but if I'm not this is some premium drama

42U and still growing
lucgone

Member

Le Baguette

#5

Hetzner redirect? That's the same hop pattern techmei flagged

Vive la résistance... électrique
AL

Member

#6

Wait pete's signature goes through three hops? Got a trace

olespete

Member

Trust No One

4 #7
marcus_qc said:
@olespete your signature has "github.com" which redirects through three hops to what looks like a masked affiliate landing page for Hetzner?

That's my dotfiles repo. The redirect chain is GitHub -> raw.githubusercontent -> my WireGuard config generator which pulls Hetzner's installimage because I maintain automation scripts. No affiliate parameter. No cookie. No commission.

I pay Hetzner. They don't pay me.

If you want to audit: 

curl -I -L https://github.com/olespete/wg-hetzner

The "three hops" are GitHub's own CDN redirects. This is why I block shorteners at firewall level -- you can't inspect the chain. My chain is inspectable.

airgapped, encrypted, faraday'd, still worried
marcus_qc

Member

#8
olespete said:
The "three hops" are GitHub's own CDN redirects.

Fair enough, I stand corrected. Should have run curl before posting. The similarity to the Contabo pattern made me jump.

Still think the broader point stands though -- signatures are where we hide stuff because nobody looks.

42U and still growing
techmei

Member OP

#9
olespete said:
My chain is inspectable.

This is difference. Inspectable chain vs bit.ly -> 302 -> 302 -> affiliate parameter buried.

I check olespete claim. curl shows exactly what described. No ref=, no aff_id, no clickid.

But marcus_qc instinct was right to check. Community audit works when people actually look.

AL

Member

#10

So what's the actual trace on the Contabo spam accounts? Anyone save the links before mods nuked them?

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