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by hajimuz 850 days ago
why affiliate is disgenuous?
1 comments

1. Publishing a tracker for RAM prices out of passion for open source and/or computer hardware is noble. Exploiting this for personal monetary gain, however, is not.

2. From my read of how the affiliate program works, the author is basically pocketing some change for every sale made from an outbound click from this website. I can see this being valid for content like an in-depth review or benchmark of a particular model. But here, 100s of links are plastered with no context--extracting affiliate revenue from this feels scummy, cheap, and low-effort. Unlike a review, for example, there is no additional value being contributed that one can't already find directly on the product page.

If there's supposedly no value from this project that you can't find on the product page, then don't use it. An affiliate link is appropriate here - you're using their work to find a specific product. One that you may not have found without this site. If the site helps amazon make a sale, then the dev can feel free to take their cut in making that sale happen.
I feel the opposite is true. Individual reviews are ever closer to marketing, astroturfing on today's internet. This is an honest view of multiple products, distinguishing them on price rather than subjective/anecdotal factors.

I don't see any problems with affiliate links as long as they are disclosed (apparently they are).