Workaround!

[telophase]

Ah-hah! You can fool the LJ affiliate-link-removal script (see previous two posts) by using a URL-shortening service like bit.ly!

Example: rachelmanija's affiliate link to the Mabinogion. If the script is at work on your LJ, then her "racmanbro-20" tag will be replaced with a number. But if I shorten the link with bit.ly first, then her tag stays when you end up at Amazon: http://bit.ly/cmwLvX

I think I'll be implementing this for any and all Amazon links I post. It'll be easier on your end than clicking through Dreamwidth to get to the Amazon page.

Now off home!

Comments

[coraa.livejournal.com]

Oh, clever!

[telophase.livejournal.com]

We crossed in the mail! I just commented this to your LJ. XD

[chomiji]

Someone else reported this, and LJ has answered.

Don't know whether I believe the answer ... haven't we heard this "Oh, it's just an error in our new code" thing before?

In haste (I'm trying to leave the office for home ... ) ...

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I'd be more likely to believe them if they hadn't told someone else (sorry, lost the link) that it was malware on their system. :/ That's probably a case of one branch of LJ not telling another branch what it's doing, but GAH.

And "An error in our new code!" Yeah, like you didn't notice that theenture point of the script is to replace all affiliate links... if that's true, there's even more stupidity there than usual.

[chomiji]

BTW, here at home, on the Mac running Firefox, the links behave as they should. But at work, on Windows, both IE and FF, they got hijacked.

I have a feeling that LJ doesn't have a very good system for a nimble response in the case of controversial situations like this, and the responders are tap-dancing for time while an official statement is being prepared.

[viridian5.livejournal.com]

I put in a service request with LJ asking how to stop the routing and complaining about my content being messed with. Thanks for the bit.ly tip because I couldn't quite grasp how to do the more technical solutions offered on my f'lists so far.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

They seem to have stopped it now - or at least my test on the computer that was doing it yesterday has stopped doing it now. I haven't read my f-list yet this morning: I suspect I'll find out what happened about the issue last night and this morning.