Affiliate links are advertisements, the best kind, they have a call to action "buy this" and a built in tracking mechanism. When you watch CSI on television and they drink pepsi (not coke, not generic cola) that creates a link in your brain that the 'cool kids' on CSI drink pepsi, and a billion studies have shown that this influences peoples choice when they are sitting in the soda aisle at the store buying soft drinks.

She writes a blog, it has loyal readers, she recommends things. People who click on her recommendations and buy them sends her money. Similar studies have shown that when the amount of 'reward' you get from your actions is easily tied to those actions, you modify your actions to maximize your reward, even without thinking consciously about it.

That is why journalists try to put an impermeable wall between the money they are paid, and what they write. They are no more incented to write good things than they are bad things, they are more likely to write the truth as they see it.

She is on record as preaching independence for financial gain, and yet has set up her blog such that she can shade her words to increase or decrease the financial return. So she lies. Probably to herself as much as anyone else, I mean most folks don't start out trying to lose their integrity, it happens slowly over time.

One day she will wake up, reading a column she wrote with a glowing take on a complete piece of crap book with a high resale price because her declining readership is returning less and less money and her need to pump up the sales to cover her bills that just won't go away.

This has caused nervous breakdowns in people, when the fiction they have carefully woven inside their own head to cover their journey down the road into hell suddenly breaks down. Athletes who "don't do steroids" but that one time they needed a bit of HGH to heal up in time for the All Star break or get ready for spring training, a way to just be more of themselves during the post season, not cheating right? They would be this strong/healthy/whatever with regular workouts and physical therapy but the timing is just off, it's not cheating it's just dealing with the schedule that is imposed. The financial trader who just needs a bit more focus on this one day and decides to pop an Adderall or truck driver that does a bit of cocaine to get through just this month's deliveries.

If it were a new story, it might be interesting but it isn't. Its a sad story. It ends badly. And this article gives as good a narrative as any about how these stories start.

Your comment is quite possibly the biggest, most sensationalist jump in logic I have seen on this website. So, because she includes affiliate links in her website (which would have probably linked to Amazon or another seller anyway) she is on a downward spiral to an inevitable and shameful collapse of her readership akin to a truck driver abusing cocaine? What?

You say her story is sad. I'd say your view on life, thinking anyone who neglects to adhere to your strict standards of supplementing income is doing so out of bad faith and a loss of integrity, is the real sad story.

Perhaps we've heard a different number of stories. Have you ever watched a 'monster of the week' type television show in its third, fourth, maybe fifth season? Come to the realization that the plot points, the progression, all sketch a common framework from beginning to end?

I've known a lot of people in my life, I have watched a number of careers start, peak, and end. After a while you recognize them when you see them. Did you read any of the Jason Leher coverage? Did you follow the follies of Shirley Hornstein?

The common thread is that someone lowers the integrity cut-off bar on their own behavior for what seem to be perfectly justifiable reasons, and it works out better than they anticipated. That knowledge eats that them until they do it again, and again, and again.

I observed Maria Popova's story, from the perspective of ever decreasing levels of integrity, reads just like that. I don't know how her story will end up of course, sometimes people pull out of it and get themselves back into the right as it were.

I'm curious why you consider that observation sensationalist. Is it because I asserted it is widely applicable across a variety of people and situations, or something else? Is it sensationalist to say that a dropped apple falls because of gravity and that same principle keeps the moon in orbit?

The problem with your prediction is that you assume what she is doing is lowering her integrity, and the criteria you are using to determine this is entirely your own.

Seriously? Comparing the author of a blog who solicits donations as well as uses affiliate links to someone who falsified their employment history and photoshopped their head into pictures with celebrities? And then you extrapolate those few datapoints you have to represent everyone who has ever "lowered" (by your standards, of course) their integrity?

> I'm curious why you consider that observation sensationalist.

Comparing a blog author using affiliate links to a truck driver abusing drugs or an athlete using steroids is pretty sensationalist. Those examples bring a bunch of extra baggage: a truck driver abusing cocaine is driving impaired and doing something incredibly illegal.

Ok fair enough, lets start here:

"The problem with your prediction is that you assume what she is doing is lowering her integrity, and the criteria you are using to determine this is entirely your own."

I'm going to assume you actually read the article. In that article Ms. Propova espouses to The Guardian the need for journalistic independence, she labels her site 'advertising free" and she uses ads in the form of referral links to support her web site.

When presented with the difference between what she was saying and what she was doing, she dissembles and rationalizes affiliate links as not being advertising. She knows that isn't true, she ran affiliate link farms before she ran this blog [1].

So she is lying. I gave her the benefit of the doubt that she wasn't intentionally being a swindler (she may be but this article doesn't provide enough evidence to support that) and by that reasoning I interpreted her actions which were at a lower standard of integrity than her words to The Guardian as 'lowering her integrity.'

You under sell the reality with this comment:

"Comparing the author of a blog who solicits donations as well as uses affiliate links to someone who falsified their employment history and photoshopped their head into pictures with celebrities?"

The integrity issue isn't with here using affiliate links and soliciting donations here, the integrity issue is attempting to create a perception through lying to benefit herself financially. Had she written on her blog, "This blog is funded by donations and from what ever I make from the affiliate links" or had she written "Note that when you buy an item from amazon by clicking the links here it helps to support my blog, I am also supported by generous donations from people like you." Or something similar, that would be clear. But it would also result in fewer donations which would cut into her income stream. She seems to have demonstrated that with the whole banner-free / non-ads switcheroo and back again. The integrity issue is that she is lying to get more money.

And what did Shirly Hornstein do? She lied about who she knew or who she could make introductions to. Why? Because people who believed that lie did things for her, and helped support her in a lifestyle she believed she deserved. Back before Shirly was photoshopping herself into candid snapshots she was just telling a few white lies to get past the barriers. If you compared her actions then, with Ms. Popova you would be hard pressed to see any difference in the 'level' of integrity loss.

And that was my point, it starts small, it gets out of hand, and it ruins people. Did you watch the interview Lance Armstrong did with Barbara Walters? Did you see why he cheated? How he rationalized his need to "get healthy" and how "others were doing it."

Did you not hear the same plot points in his story? Did you not see his own self belief that it all started out so innocently? Did you listen to any of the testimony on the steroids scandal before Congress? Story after story after story, "It was a small thing" followed by "just one more time" followed by "I had to keep up" followed by "it ruined my life."

Then there was this point:

"Comparing a blog author using affiliate links to a truck driver abusing drugs or an athlete using steroids is pretty sensationalist."

I'm not sure we'll agree here but that is ok, I see the same story in all of them, whether or not you read about it or hear about it depends on your relationship to the people in the story and their relative visibility, but that doesn't make it a different story. Lots of people cheat on their spouses because they are enthralled by an engaging and attractive person, happens all the time, and it happened to General Petraeous. The latter was a "big scandal" because he was the Directory of the CIA, but the story? He let his dick call the shots. That isn't sensationalism, its just sad.

"a truck driver abusing cocaine is driving impaired and doing something incredibly illegal."

I take if you've never used cocaine, it doesn't impair you like alcohol or marijuana might. When I was going to school it was a problem on a par with illicit ADHD drugs today and for much the same reason. I knew several people who used it regularly to keep their energy level up and their concentration sharp, unless you knew they were using you would just think they were smart and quick witted with boundless energy. These days [2] Truck drivers would probably stick with Red Bull or over the counter drugs to avoid tripping up on a drug test.

[1] http://nostrich.tumblr.com/post/36619706595

[2] "In the 1980s the administration of President Ronald Reagan proposed to put an end to drug abuse in the trucking industry by means of the then-recently developed technique of urinalysis, with his signing of Executive Order 12564, requiring regular random drug testing of all truck drivers nationwide, as well as employees of other DOT-regulated industries specified in the order, though considerations had to be made concerning the effects of an excessively rapid implementation of the measure." -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truck_driver#Truck_driver_probl...

I was mostly agreeing with what you said.. until you somehow conflated steroids to ADHD medication.

Steroids are never prescribed by medical experts, ADHD medication is.

testosterone is very frequently prescribed, as is hgh

I had a medically prescribed steroid (cortisone) injection in my shoulder to overcome an injury. It's pretty common

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortisone#Effects_and_uses

Having said that, there are different types of steroids and not all of them are prescribed by (honest) medical experts.

Allergies and asthma are two common reasons steroids are prescribed.

I had a nasty case of poison oak which required steroids to clear up, it was not fun at all.

  > Affiliate links aren't "ads" in any definition a reader would 
  > have unless it is somehow immoral to make a living.

FWIW, Amazon & the US FTC disagree with you on this.

I think it has more to do with hypocrisy.

She bemoans advertiser funded journalism yet makes money from advertisements. She's created an incentive for herself to perform a certain way, and yet writes about the dangers of just such an incentive.

The disagreement is over the definition of "advertisement". Is creating a link to something "advertising" it? If the words were the same, but not hypertext, is it still advertising?

It was kind of funny how most of the page is linked, it's almost hard not to click through to the page selling the book.

For me, linking or "making available" isn't advertising. An advertisement needs to contain content written by an advertiser. Is reviewing a book the same as advertising it?

Receiving money as a result of the link muddies the waters on any discussion of intent.

Arguing over the terms is avoiding the crux of the issue.

Because (much of) the income for the site came from affiliate links, her revenue was closely tied to what she wrote. And not simply in the "I have to write interesting/helpful things to maintain my readership", but in the "Posting a review of a good book will be financially more beneficial to me than posting a review of bad book".

Having those sort of external influences makes it harder to maintain your journalistic integrity. You (are tempted to) get distracted from "which story is best for my readers" to "which story will generate the most income".

Having those (undisclosed) external influences, while also being extremely vocal about how external financial motivations are bad for journalism, is hypocritical.

Reviewing a book is not necessarily the same as advertising it, but most reviews do not directly enable purchase of the products they review.

If a reviewer is paid by the distributor of the books or products they review and they directly contribute to the sale of the book, they're marketing the book.

That's not necessarily hypocritical. You can dislike something that you are benefiting from.

You can also employ a version of selling that is consumer focused rather than business focused; looking at the situation, I believe this is what she is doing.

Most of us may see affiliate links and ads as being one in the same, but I don't think they are, and reading into her views I think she has done a good job of explaining the difference.

It is 100% not about the fact that she makes money. It's about the fact that she is soliciting people to donate under the false guise that doing so is what is keeping her 'in business'.

It's also important to note that if you blanket your site with affiliate links you ARE more likely to favorably review high % revenue items for example. Making your opinion possibly influenced by factors that your readers are not aware of.

These two factors are enough for me to consider her being pretty 'holier than though' in a lot of her statements.

> So she says her site is 100% ad free. It is. Affiliate links aren't "ads" in any definition a reader would have unless it is somehow immoral to make a living.

I would disagree. The presence of the affiliate links within the articles effectively converts each article into an "advertisement". What is being advertised are the embedded affiliate links.

In this way there is created a self-reinforcing feedback loop that likely has a choice effect on what postings are written (advertisements) because there is an incentive to only write postings that will have the largest affiliate click through.

No, the problem is that her site is funded by donations and affiliate links. I'd venture to guess her affiliate links provide most of her income. That's fine. That's better than fine, that's proof that independent publishers and curators can make a living for themselves.

The problem is that while taking that additional form of income (which until last week was NOT disclosed on her page -- but in fairness was obvious to anyone with half a brain and any understanding about how this stuff works -- hint, just look for the affiliate code at the end of her Amazon links), Maria has consistently gone on record about the evils of advertising and sponsored content.

At the very least, it's hypocritical because affiliate links are in some sense, a form of advertising (at least when undisclosed). She says that she would never recommend or link to something she doesn't actually believe in -- and I believe her -- but without the disclosure (a disclosure the FTC actually requires), it raises questions of improprieties. By NOT being transparent as virtually every other person who does what she does is (look at John Gruber, Marco Arment, Merlin Mann, Jason Kottke and the many, many, many others who came before her who have always made it clear that they get a kickback from Amazon affiliate links), she at the very least loses the right to be as judgmental as she is about how other writers make money, as well as the state of advertising in general.

Then there is the unspoken issue, which was the fact that it was discovered back in November that she had maintained a number of spammy (pure, straight-up spam, no ifs ands or buts) affiliate link sites[1] until it was figured out and pointed out by another blogger. Then, magically, the sites disappeared and she made no public comment about it[2]. In light of that, it looks like a pattern.

And that pattern, honestly, wouldn't even be an issue for MOST people were it not for the whole attitude of "advertising is teh evil" that she has about other writers and other sites.

Then, of course, the other unspoken part is that there is a certain level of schadenfreude for people that are still annoyed over the whole Curator's Code bullshit that happened last year. And I'll be honest -- I made fun of her (and the Curator's Code) endlessly. It was a stupid, self-important, insipid and ill-thought out idea. Maria didn't invent the idea of a link blog and Maria doesn't get to dictate how and in what matter people hat-tip, link back or give a virtual hand-job to other "curators."

To be clear -- I'm not condemning her for any way she wants to make money -- I hope she makes $1 million a year off her site, if she does she deserves it -- but I do understand why for some people, it smells bad when someone who is vocally against traditional advertising and sponsored advertising is at the same time making significant money from affiliate links.

It isn't about "your band sold out because people like you" - it's more "you condemned other bands for signing to big labels while secretly taking big label money on the sly."

My personal feeling: This is unimportant drama that won't matter to the people that visit Brainpickings, like Maria and her work and click on her links. It also won't matter to the editors that commission her work for The Atlantic or the New York Times or whoever.

It matters to a small group of pedants who take Poynter's rules of "ethics" as gospel (don't make me laugh) and to a subset of the blogging community who enjoys needling people who they feel have unfairly condemned them in the past.

I guess it also appeals to people like myself who enjoy the melodrama and entertainment this episode provides, as it pulls us out of the daily ennui that is tech news the third week of February.

[1]: http://nostrich.tumblr.com/post/36619706595 [2]: http://nostrich.tumblr.com/post/36674349201

I think it has more to do with influence. Is her choice of topic influenced by her affiliate links? Would she write about a topic if there were no affiliate links to be had. Is her topic influenced by the reward of the affiliate link, would she chose a pricier product to link to over a cheaper link.

The OP is upset because they believe Maria Popova is being influenced and is not being open and honest about how she is being influenced.

The accusation is that the site is recommending things that are likely to sell (are already selling to people who click one affiliate link), not things that are good, all the while lying (to themselves?) that "these are things we'd recommend anyway!" If I were a reader, I'd be angry at being lied to in this way.

OP is mad that Popova is claiming to be ad-free when they believe affiliate links constitute ads. I think it's reasonable to disagree on that point, but that's not what you spent your rant doing.

You honestly don't get it? You don't see the hypocrisy in this behaviour? You don't see how people who felt the site truly was supported solely by donations and who gave because of that might feel mislead?

The issue isn't she makes n amount of money. The issue is what she is saying to her readers isn't actually true.

I don't get this at all.

So you write a comment on HN about a blog you read about another blog? Get a life.