Reddit will use onclick handlers to redirect URLs from select merchants through third-party VigLink, which will rewrite the URL to add Reddit's affiliate code, and then redirect the user to the new link. There will be an opt-out option in your user preferences.
Currently, Amazon is not on the list of rewritten URLs.
http://www.businessinsider.com/reddit-affiliate-links-2016-5
When I was the editor of Shopping / Books @ DMOZ the Amazon spam from affiliates got so bad the Rich Skrenta had it programmed to an Amazon affiliate account of DMOZ and the proceeds went to a charity.
[History]
Right after we saw this news we contacted Viglink and told them to turn this off for our merchants. Brings absolutely ZERO value to a merchant. Why should we pay commission on sales that would be coming our way anyway?
On Reddit's side of things? Awesome move. Easy way for them to generate some money without adding any advertising or charging people. Might as well make a few bucks for something people are doing anyway. If they start manipulating the visibility of posts that have links in them or anything like that it will be a disaster though.
Yeah Doc, I basically see it the same way. From Reddit's perspective it is a great way of making more money without much impact on their user base. I imagine the legacy traffic alone from older posts would be worth a staggering amount given how well their website does in Google.
From the merchant's perspective? Well, you could argue that the traffic it is justified because Reddit provides the medium for the conversations/clicks -- it is not exactly stealing.
I'd be curious to know what they'll do with links that already have affiliate links in them.
>>I'd be curious to know what they'll do with links that already have affiliate links in them.
In theory they won't be overwriting other affiliate links. Only direct links to the merchant.
>>From the merchant's perspective? Well, you could argue that the traffic it is justified because Reddit provides the medium for the conversations/clicks -- it is not exactly stealing.
The traffic is totally justified and it isn't stealing or unethical in any way but there is no value for a merchant to pay for traffic they were already getting. The links are already there, people would be posting the links anyway so without them doing anything proactive to drive traffic to those links or promote them (that would really, really piss off their readers so I doubt they will go down that road) they aren't adding anything on our end. If they wanted to work out a deal with us directly and not go through Viglink that might be a conversation we would have but Viglink makes it very, very easy to implement.