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Affiliate links in every 'recommendation'

General Discussion by techmei 27 replies 3.6K views
kate3

Member

8 #11
alpha26 said:
Anyone save the links before mods nuked them?

I have three from archive.org captures. All terminate at contabo.com/?aff= followed by 6-digit numeric. Two different IDs, suggesting either multiple affiliates or same operator rotating to avoid pattern detection.

The shorteners were different services: one t.ly, one short.io custom domain, one ow.ly. Spread across accounts makes fingerprinting harder.

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

Member

Le Baguette

#12

I run small VPS for personal VPN in Lyon. Contabo price is tempting but Nuremberg latency from France is fine, St. Louis is joke. Why would French user be pushed to Contabo US datacenter? Because affiliate cookie pays same regardless of user experience. This is my problem with hidden affiliate: incentive misalignment.

Vive la résistance... électrique
HA

Member

#13

From Cologne: Hetzner Falkenstein is 15ms. Contabo Nuremberg is 25ms. Both fine. But Contabo affiliate spam pushes everyone to cheapest plan with worst routing because payout is percentage. I tested their Singapore node once, 180ms to here via some weird path through Moscow. No thanks.

Jakarta

Member

#14

In Indonesia the affiliate game is worse. Local "review" blogs rank for "best VPS Indonesia" but every link is Exabytes or Niagahoster affiliate. Actual quality comparison? Zero. Just whoever pays highest CPA.

At least Contabo spam here is obvious — https://contabo.com. Local language spam is harder to detect for mods.

SN

Member

#15

Following.

Chen

Member

☁️ multi-cloud mess

#16
kate3 said:
Two different IDs, suggesting either multiple affiliates or same operator rotating

Or affiliate network sub-IDs. Same account, different campaigns to A/B test which forum section converts. This is standard affiliate hygiene, not sophistication.

My five-provider mess includes Hetzner and Contabo both. Contabo for bulk storage, Hetzner for compute. No affiliate links anywhere because my employer would fire me for undisclosed financial relationships in technical recommendations.

LU

Member

8 #17

Has anyone checked if the spam accounts used same IP range or ASN? Mods usually see that, regular users don't.

techmei

Member OP

#18
Luka48 said:
Same IP range or ASN?

I ask mod. They say three account from two residential ASN in Vietnam, one from commercial proxy service. Not same operator necessarily, could be affiliate "coaching" group where new recruits given template and link.

This is worse than botnet. Botnet is automated. This is manual spam with human plausible deniability.

zoekyo

Member

Less Is More

7 #19

One small server, one quiet mind. Also one browser with uBlock Origin and every URL expanded before click. The web was simpler when recommendation meant someone liked something, not someone was paid to simulate liking.

rm -rf / --no-preserve-root ☯
marcus_qc

Member

#20
techmei said:
Manual spam with human plausible deniability

This is the thing though -- is it against rules? Most forums allow affiliates in signatures. The undisclosed part is ethics, not always ToS violation.

Should we push for rule change or just better community antibodies?

42U and still growing

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