Author Topic: FA signs up for Affiliate Link service, breaks federal law?  (Read 2026 times)

Conan

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FA signs up for Affiliate Link service, breaks federal law?
« on: August 31, 2011, 02:54:41 am »
Basically FA inserted some Javascript in their site for Viglink, the "easiest way to monetize your content". It "Track where users are going when they leave your site, understand which links and pages are driving the most revenue and to which merchants, and much more" and "If one of your users clicks through to a product or service and buys something, you earn a commission. You only pay us a share of what you earn. "

Only problem is, FA's ToS/privacy policy says they do not engage in data collection and definitely don't share these things with third parties.
Quote
Fur Affinity does not engage in active data collection of its users. Your personal information will not be resold or distributed except within the Fur Affinity network (main site, forums).

And the best part, straight from the Viglink site:
Quote
Most users do not notice on their own although we highly recommend you disclose it. VigLink does not change the user experience one bit. No links are inserted or removed on the page, there are no double-underlines or pop-ups, and mousing over a link looks "clean."

The US Federal Trade Commission requires that you disclose use of affiliate links. More information and tools are available.

Even if you are not subject to FTC jurisdiction, we strongly recommend you disclose. Our customers have found that readers are completely understanding if they are informed and can be upset if they are surprised. Informing your users will give those who desire it the opportunity to permanently opt-out. Although VigLink is unintrusive, it is easily detectable by savvy users.

It's too late for me to see if they're under FTC jurisdiction, but "The Federal Trade Commission requires that you disclose to your readers when you endorse a product or service and have a "material connection" to the seller." which I think means any "[Furfag's] book is on Amazon! Go and buy it!" things would count.
« Last Edit: September 02, 2011, 03:37:02 pm by Conan »

Jim Demintia

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Re: FA signs up for Affiliate Link service, breaks federal law.
« Reply #1 on: August 31, 2011, 09:01:47 am »
I'm pretty sure the current interpretation of the commerce clause pretty much means a website can't *not* fall under Federal jurisdiction.

Also, remember when LiveJournal did exactly this? Except IIRC they went through Amazon, not some skeevy thing from Dubai or wherever Piche always manages to find these things.

I swear he's finding these things by clicking on links in spam e-mail.
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Fiz

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Re: FA signs up for Affiliate Link service, breaks federal law.
« Reply #2 on: August 31, 2011, 09:32:52 am »
Quote from: Dragoneer
We need to update the Terms of Service to reflect the changes, as well as the clause there. I'm working on a minor update to that right now, and this was just added as a small test. The initial test of Viglink was done as a trial after they contacted us.

Any user can opt out of Viglink, and the information on how to do so is here:
http://help.furaffinity.net/article/AA-00617/16/What-is-Viglink.html

From here.

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Re: FA signs up for Affiliate Link service, breaks federal law.
« Reply #3 on: August 31, 2011, 11:33:37 am »
It's like he has priorities, the other way!

Seriously though, this is skeezy as hell, so it's totally in line with business as usual.
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dracovixen

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Re: FA signs up for Affiliate Link service, breaks federal law.
« Reply #4 on: August 31, 2011, 12:01:44 pm »
My question is...Is this even ethical at all?

It's not like Dragoneer is creating ANY of this content that he'd potentially be profiting from.  All he's doing is providing a website for people to post their content.  Everything I'm reading on viglink's webpage seems to indicate it's aimed more at people who are creating their own content/webpage with their content...not things like this, public forums, etc.

ColeTrain

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Re: FA signs up for Affiliate Link service, breaks federal law.
« Reply #5 on: August 31, 2011, 12:05:09 pm »
http://forums.furaffinity.net/threads/106567-Someone-explain-this-and-someone-explain-it-now?p=2672001&viewfull=1#post2672001

It may sound silly when I say this; but this one smells like a sockpuppet.

Well, actually when you think of it...

Conan

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Re: FA signs up for Affiliate Link service, breaks federal law.
« Reply #6 on: August 31, 2011, 12:44:08 pm »
So they've done the usual "Oops, sorry!" and swept it under the rug by closing the thread and posting this to the mainsite:
Quote
Fur Affinity is currently using Viglink, a service which allows Fur Affinity to use affiliate programs (such as Amazon) to help generate revenue for the site (pay for coding, software, bandwidth). Any funding generated will go towards coding efforts, hardware procurement over to cover bandwidth costs.

Our Terms of Service has been updated to reflect this change.

Users can Opt Out of Viglink tracking by clicking here:
http://www.viglink.com/optout

Viglink's privacy policy can be found here:
http://www.viglink.com/policies/privacy

Someone pointed out how shitty the "opt out" is. It simply opts you out by giving you an opt out cookie, so if you clean your cookies you must opt out again. Classy.

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Re: FA signs up for Affiliate Link service, breaks federal law.
« Reply #7 on: August 31, 2011, 12:53:37 pm »
Has Dragoneer been fitted with a shock collar that zaps him every time he says or types the phrase "I'm sorry"? 

People can say what they want about everybody begging for an apology.  If Dragoneer would've just said "I'm sorry" in the first place, it would've stopped the begging.
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Re: FA signs up for Affiliate Link service, breaks federal law.
« Reply #8 on: August 31, 2011, 12:57:39 pm »
I guess his ego is just too big for him to let him even apologize properly.

Conan

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Re: FA signs up for Affiliate Link service, breaks federal law.
« Reply #9 on: August 31, 2011, 03:20:03 pm »
Dragoneer has explained what they plan on doing with this:


How they plan on funding expensive things with "very small" revenue is beyond me. Again we also hear about how they need to bring in "trust[ed]" coders, apparently implying Gavin's team refuses to work for free or he can't trust them either?

Also, they've started using CloudFlare:
Quote
DNS servers
sid.ns.cloudflare.com
ivy.ns.cloudflare.com
Quote
TraceRoute to 173.245.60.44 [furaffinity.net]

Hop   (ms)   (ms)   (ms)           IP Address   Host name
1       0      0      0         206.123.64.154     - 
2       0      0      0         64.124.196.225    xe-4-2-0.er2.dfw2.us.above.net 
3       4      2      2         206.223.118.61    equinix.tge9-3.ar1.dfw1.us.nlayer.net 
4       0      0      0         69.31.63.230    as13335.ge-0-0-42.ar1.dfw1.us.nlayer.net 
5       0      0      0         173.245.60.44    cf-173-245-60-44.cloudflare.com 

Trace complete

Jim Demintia

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Re: FA signs up for Affiliate Link service, breaks federal law.
« Reply #10 on: August 31, 2011, 03:55:52 pm »
Let's see how long that lasts. Because I guarantee you they're using CloudFlare's free service, and I'm sure that there's a clause in there that deals with what happens when your site becomes the repeated target of massive DDoS. And anyway, the users of Cloudflare's free service generally get what they pay for in terms of the claimed privacy/security benefits. One is also left to wonder how much bandwidth Cloudflare will allow its (free) users, since it is well known that FA is a bandwidth hog.

Anyway, the above screencapped comment makes me wonder. Piche is smart enough to know by now that the set of "trust[ed] coders" is the null set- as far as Yak is concerned at anyrate. So, since we all know better than to believe the usual line(s) about what the money goes to...who is getting this money, what are they using it for...and why now? Piche says the revenue is small- and I'm sure it is- so why are they doing this? If he isn't gonna back off of it after the uproar, it suggests this was more than an impulse thing he did after clicking on a link from a Nigerian prince.
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Conan

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Re: FA signs up for Affiliate Link service, breaks federal law.
« Reply #11 on: August 31, 2011, 04:43:34 pm »
Let's see how long that lasts. Because I guarantee you they're using CloudFlare's free service, and I'm sure that there's a clause in there that deals with what happens when your site becomes the repeated target of massive DDoS. And anyway, the users of Cloudflare's free service generally get what they pay for in terms of the claimed privacy/security benefits. One is also left to wonder how much bandwidth Cloudflare will allow its (free) users, since it is well known that FA is a bandwidth hog.

Cloudflare is apparently only caching the mainsite. facdn.net (and anything that's not www.furaffinity.net thanks to their wildcard subdomain) remains uncached and loaded directly from their servers. They've basically stopped the 12 year old skiddies that enter "furaffinity.net" into their LOIC. Anyone with a brain could figure out how to get around their CloudFlare setup.

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Re: FA signs up for Affiliate Link service, breaks federal law.
« Reply #12 on: August 31, 2011, 10:20:37 pm »
PS vivisector.org is now using tracking cookies with our affiliates in the Monolithic Antifurry Conspiracy to bring you the best ads possible for discerning users of your tastes.

You'll find the appropriat...wait, what do you mean we don't have a ToS?

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Re: FA signs up for Affiliate Link service, breaks federal law.
« Reply #13 on: September 01, 2011, 12:18:53 am »
This is not a scandal. It's not even a Thing. It's the FA administration trying out a new toy and fat-fingering the setup, as usual. Happens all the time. The feds have better things to do, they are not going to give a shit about a two-bit cartoon porno site.

The revenue from this affiliate program, had it been set up fully, once it is set up fully, is likely going to be measured in pennies. The closest thing to entertainment value in this particular "scandal" is that Piche thinks this scheme could eventually give him the revenue stream he needs to hire a "trusted coder". On a site that can barely even pay it's bills as it is.

Think about that for a second. The fact that he's STILL talking about "trusted coders" after the supposed Furocity merger (you know, the one that should be GIVING him a "trusted coder" or two otherwise what the fuck was the point) means that deep in the back of his mind he knows (or thinks) he's screwed.

Why? Because there is simply no such thing as trust when it comes to Dragoneer. ANYONE he gets that would even come close to working for free would eventually screw him over. They'd do it because they would get screwed over by him eventually, and everyone damn well knows it. Even barring that, there would be a tremendous incentive to grab the keys and run once they're handed over - everyone would benefit, and the number of people who would take Dragoneer's side in such a dispute is dwindling.

Funny thing is, we all knew all of this before even MURRYLEAKS - it's not exactly news.
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Re: FA signs up for Affiliate Link service, breaks federal law.
« Reply #14 on: September 01, 2011, 08:37:29 am »
I'm kind of surprised the sycophants didn't show up talking about how "he deserves to monetize the site however he can" and/or "maybe if you donated more he wouldn't have to" etc etc.

But yes the idea that any official agency is going to give half a shit about a furry porn site is just as idiotic as the idea that similar agencies would give two fucks about the ~slanderous nature~ of posts on Viv.  Or to throw this in Rodox's face for maximum humor, that any agency will give two fucks about a random nutjob talking about fucking his dog.

As hilarious as it would (will?) be to see FA go down in flames, this isn't going to cause it.  And at the moment there really aren't any viable alternative sites for its users, so even if they got thrown out of their datacenter for repeated DDOSes or whatever, the userbase would still cough up a veritable mountain of cash to 'save the site'.  Remember what happened when Yerf's hard drive mysteriously crashed?  Oodles of cash flowed in to 'save' it (and were subsequently used by Dingo to buy Speed).  But then other sites came along and the one thing Yerf offered became vilified by the new herd of furfags, and thus it is no more.

If some people would actually follow through on their own projects there might be a viable alternative to pull users away from FA, leaving Piche with tens of thousands of dollars of underutilized overpriced hardware, a terrible harpy of a wife, and no influence among ~the community~ he purports to serve.  And that would be the best thing ever.