[jlgaddis]

> The site openly disclosed that they use affiliate links to amazon.

Did it? I was on an iPad and only realized they were affiliate links after I clicked on one and it took to Amazon. Immediately, I looked at the URL to see if there was a referral tag in there. I then went back and noticed "DISCLOSURE" at the very bottom, in the footer, but I don't recall seeing any mention of it before that.

> If you think that all for-profit pages should be banned from mention then this here would be a barren place, devoid of links to useful services.

Did I say anything even remotely close to that?

[lovelearning]

I wanted to ignore this since I don't enjoy subjective arguments, but since you seem to be virtue signalling about disclosures, I'd like to point out that your own page with Amazon affiliate links [http://evilrouters.net/bookshelf/] does not disclose your affiliation to Amazon (which is itself a violation of section 5 of the Amazon affiliate program agreement), nor does your DISCLOSURE page (whose link is also at the very bottom right of your page). The other commentator's disclosure page (http://rooftopbazaar.com/disclosure/) comes across as a proper honest disclosure to me. Sorry, your comments seem like hypocrisy to me.

[jlgaddis]

Thanks for pointing that out. With the exception of a couple spontaneous, hastily written blog posts, that blog has been pretty neglected for about the last ~5 years. I've been meaning to remove the Adsense ads and add HTTPS for a long while too, but I haven't got around to doing either. Before just now, it's probably been several months since I even looked at that site.

Anyways, the "disclosures" page has no references to Amazon because I removed them several years ago when I quit being a part of the Amazon Affiliate program. I thought I had removed the affiliate tags as well but apparently not. They were still there but they haven't been valid for at least three or four years now (and, thus, not generating any commissions).

Here's a screenshot showing that the account was closed: https://imgur.com/c3rmZ5F

Regardless, I have removed them from the page. The page is cached and I don't remember the magic incantation to force varnish to purge the cached version but rest assured it'll get refreshed in the near future.

I'm sorry you had to spend your time searching through my web sites to try to find something that made me look hypocritical. Also, I'll point out that I don't go around posting links to that "bookshelf" page on HN comments. That is what would have made my statements hypocritical, not the fact that I had affiliate links on some random web page somewhere.

[Xylakant]

> Did it?

It says first thing on the top that links go to amazon. There's a link at the bottom to the full discussion. What's the issue if the links to amazon are affiliate links? It's not like they're forcing you to buy or that the value you get from the site is reduced by that. They don't hype a specific device either.

> Did I say anything even remotely close to that?

I very much understood your complaint about "spammy, since he links to a page that he's affiliated with" to go in the direction that nobody should link to a monetized service he's somehow affiliated with, yes.

[megaman22]

I'm of the oppinion that all links to amazon, for example, should be affiliate links. Somebody should be getting that cut.

[EwanToo]

Ideally I think it would be https://smile.amazon.com/ but I know it's never that simple..

[TheSpiceIsLife]

This is a great comment. It disrupts the whole argument and turns it on its head.

[mikeash]

It talks a lot about Amazon, but there's no mention of using affiliate links.

The issue is that there's a conflict of interest when a page that gives you advice on what to buy uses affiliate links. If they get a cut of my purchase, then they're incentivized to get me to buy the most expensive alternative rather than the best one, and to buy something rather than stick with what I have if what I have is adequate.

This is not an insurmountable problem, but disclosure is important so I know what's going on.