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Comment by mcwm | Hacker News Reader

Hello: author here! I honestly have no idea what that tracking tag is, but 07/20 was the date I started writing this story! Guessing it's just Amazon tracking to see where traffic is coming from. But if you have any other questions about the story or my journalistic integrity, I'm here to answer them!

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That tracking tag is an affiliate ID allowing Quartz to receive a small cut whenever someone clicks through and buys something. Most likely it was added automatically by the Quartz CMS, as is common practice.

Probably just ignore the guy questioning your journalistic integrity.

Hi Mike - can you clarify this sentence from near the end of the article? I'm only seeing two payments to Amazon.

It’s now gotten to the point where it’s quite easy to pay Amazon three times in one order: for shipping, which you get access to through Prime, and for a product that’s actually just an Amazon-made product.

Depends on how you're shipping, but if you do overnight/expedited shipping, you still have to pay for that on top of the cost of your Prime membership.

The way I understand it is that Prime membership doesn't just pay for shipping (even if many people only use it for that).

As others have mentioned, this was likely added automatically by Quartz to get a few extra cents/dollars from any story linking to an Amazon product/page.

Quartz probably has a page somewhere disclaiming their affiliate linking policy (which is likely: "we have affiliate links. They are separate and do not change the content of a story.") You can see an example of Wired's policy here: https://www.wired.com/2015/11/affiliate-link-policy/

How would Amazon change the URLs on your article? More likely, if you didn't do it on purpose, is that Quartz's CMS automagically appends that tag into any Amazon.com links.

Likely the writer is just that - a writer. He has demonstrated (harmless) ignorance of how tracking tags work. The other posters betting on the website he writes for automatically adding affiliate tags to amazon links is the most likely guess here.

Or Amazon may have added the tags as the writer was copying the URLs.

Honestly, it doesn't seem like something to fault the writer for.

Small Parts used to be an independent store - it was acquired in 2005[0]. I wonder how many of the other brands came in via purchase? Not that it matters; it's been 12 years, I'd expect Small Parts to be fully integrated.

[0] https://www.geekwire.com/2012/amazoncom-push-nuts-bolts/

How would Amazon know the date you started writing the article?

I'm honestly not sure ! It could've been a CMS thing — will need to enquire.

Confirmed through several sources that `tag=` links are definitely referral links.

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