Hacker News Reader

Comment by urlwolf | Hacker News Reader

Well, I'm not as torn as the author. They are altering the original content of the author, even if the result is the same.

Imagine that someone's religion believes that you go to hell if you use affiliate links... posterous would have condemned them! (dramatizing works)

View on HN

That's a bit silly, their whole draw is in the fact that they change your content. If you have a youtube link, they turn that into a youtube embed. If you have http://..., they change that into an anchor. There are dozens of examples of content that you can put in an email and they will transform into something more useful, and this is generally regarded as being quite valuable.

If you have a problem with posterous manipulating your content, you should probably be hosting your own content.

I agree here, Posterous is free and a dam great service. If you want full control code your own blog or go the wordpress custom install way. They need to monetize somehow.

They could be more transparent about their usage of this, since it isn't indicated anywhere on their admin pages, especially for people who may have been using their own affiliate links which are being overwritten.

Having a paid version which would disable this would be another nice option for them to provide.

Imagine that my religion believes I'll go to hell if I read silly comments — you would have condemned me!

This game can turn into an infinite recursion.

I just rofl'd. But well, I'm still with Posterous. Not changing anyone's affiliate links seems pretty far and making use of the free money on their table is also reasonable.

The idea is actually pretty good. I'd definitely love a blog-engine plugin that would make sure I don't forget my affiliate ID whenever I'm linking something.

(just found something to look into)

If you're gonna get all bent out of shape about your "original content" staying "original", host the blog yourself...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com