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Comment by arielm | Hacker News Reader

I think this is a great attempt by Reddit to become sustainable that isn't purely based on display advertising.

I personally dislike affiliate links just like most others but unlike ads they don't ruin my browsing experience and are generally very transparent.

The real issue here in my opinion is how this was announced, as a "we're doing this, FYI". I'd instead open up a discussion with mods of large communities to get feedback and once they understand the goal get them to show support.

And if they had gone the route of involving large communities they could have also done a tiny rev share, similar to how YouTube compensates content creators.

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I have to say, I vehemently disagree on all points.

The largest valid reason people dislike affiliate links is because it changes the motivation for posting. When you see someone recommend a product behind an affiliate link, you can be certain that they are motivated in part by money. That may not be the whole reason; they could very well be recommending the product because they actually believe in it, but you only know for sure that they intend to make money off the recommendation.

A secondary reason people don't like affiliate links is because people don't like the idea of someone "making money off of" them. In my opinion, this is kind of irrational. It doesn't cost the user anything extra.

Interestingly, Reddit's plan is pure in this regard. They are simply making money off recommendations people are already making. Their not posting the affiliate links, they're simply seizing the opportunity presented when someone else honestly and organically links to a product.

Lastly, you mention a revenue share. Ironically, this proposal would do what you are actually concerned about: incentivize users to post something inauthentic which they normally wouldn't. I think your proposed solution would actually turn this non-issue into the very issue you're trying to prevent in the first place!

In the interest of full disclosure, I run websites which profit from affiliate links. I suspect my opinion would be the same if I didn't, however.

I see your points, but I think you are speaking about this at a higher level that isn't necessarily specific to this particular implementation.

I agree that when used by the direct posters, affiliate links cause a misalignment of incentive because the poster isn't necessarily adding value to the community but rather to their affiliate account. This can be done very naively or be abused. Users suffer both ways.

This however isn't the case here IMO because if Reddit is auto tagging all links the posters are pretty much in the same boat that they were of Reddit hadn't tagged those links.

You could say that because this is a revenue channel for Reddit they'd optimize tagged posts over non tagged ones when promoting content. That however mostly gets resolved by the same logic as above, plus we all know how stuff gets to the top of Reddit...

Lastly, communities making some revenue is, again, not a misalignment. Using the same logic as above, all auto tagged links are again just links. Hence, a community that generates good content would get some revenue. It's pretty straight forward in my opinion.

Lastly, most affiliates pay commission on sales and not impressions (and if they do it's really tiny). So the context and the targeting are the most important pieces.

> unlike ads they don't ruin my browsing experience

It's yet another piece of javascript that connects to some other site that will cause degraded responsiveness. Worse when Viglink's servers are unreachable.

The ads on reddit ruin your browsing experience?

Ads in most contexts are intrusive and more often than not aren't targeted and irrelevant. Yes, they ruin the experience.

They rarely ruin it enough that is just close the tab and not use the site, but that doesn't really mean anything. If we can do without them I think we should.

As an online entrepreneur I am curious as to why you dislike affiliates?

Because it changes the motivation for recommending recommending a product when you're getting paid for it. The perverse incentive structure is why most of Reddit bans them.

In Reddit's case, it means they have an incentive to silently promote posts and comments that have affiliate links because it makes them money.

If a review of a product has affiliate links then I'll immediately distrust the review because it's not possible for me to know whether they actually like the product or because they get paid if they convince people to like it.

I have so many reactions to these thoughts that I hardly know where to start! My first reaction is that this means all sales functions are to not be trusted. Is that accurate for you?

Primarily because when they are done at the post level, meaning, when those that post add them there's a misalignment of incentive in many cases.

In this case however, since the posters aren't putting them in there's no incentive.

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