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Comment by nagyf | Hacker News Reader

So how can I trust that after paying for the link, I will get the content that was advertised? What happens if it just redirects me to google.com after that? How do I get my money back?

How do you ensure the paid links are safe to visit, and it won't redirect me to a malicious website?

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If you trust the seller giving you the link, why would you doubt you'll get the content after paying?

Any link you click on a page could lead to a malicious site. But again, if you trust the seller, why would you think they would link you to a malicious site?

Why would you trust the seller?

Why would you buy anything on the internet if you don't trust the seller ?

Are you serious?

You'd probably do a credit card chargeback - same as if someone failed to provide any other good or service you bought online.

The problem here is that credit card companies do not like chargebacks in the least. A few too many and you'll see penalties; more than that and you lose your merchant account. Since there's no vetting here, this will be a magnet for both the clueless and scammers, meaning that I think it's not long for this world.

That's a fair point. I'll be curious how they handle that. Maybe you could get away with booting any user from the platform whose links generate too many chargebacks? But yeah, if paidlink.to is ineffective at preventing chargebacks, they'll get booted from stripe or whoever.

Which in turn will cost the paidlink service lots of money. A chargeback typically costs $15 or so to process.

I wonder how they'll police that?

Seems a similar issue to: how can you trust someone you buy a physical product from online?

Do they have a reputation? If a third party mediates the sale (eg eBay) do they have policies in place to handle such issues?

> How do you ensure the paid links are safe to visit, and it won't redirect me to a malicious website?

Is it up to this website though? It's like asking URL shorteners to check the malicious activity of original links.

I think it is, supposing it wants to be useful.

Imagine this catches on. Now I'm not sure why would it, but let's suppose we have a paid link to a book, or song, or download, or something else useful. If this link is ever shared anywhere public, there's an incentive for spammers and trolls to create their own links and try to get paid for nothing.

Probable end result: platforms start banning links to paidlink.to, because a lot of people get cheated out of their money.

I think it can exist with the limited scope of not being responsible for the content it redirects to.

More cynically, if it catches on like you mentioned, the OP probably already made a shit ton of money from a simple and IMO elegant idea.

You'll have to be sure to obtain the link from a credible source.

That's the same as for any other sale over the internet. There are lots of fake web stores that scam people.

this isn't saying that the product is wrong, it's saying we accept you and then offering a gentle gesture toward the center of the circle to commence your nerd beatdown. this is the initiation process.

also we're nerds, we ask questions and shit. it's fine. nobody means anything by it.

You don’t pay a URL shortener to redirect you.

There’s a number of shady “services” like AdFly that are just that.

I guess people characterizing such services as "shady" is probably a good reason to try and vet the links people submit :)

It might make sense if the website let you log in directly and manage your payments. Trust ratings on vendors, etc.

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