Ubuntu will now have Amazon ads pre-installed

[mahesh2k]

Just to keep things straight, amazon and ebay don't collect any personal information for both affiliates and buyers. Hell, for me amazon shows respective regional channel (like link from canada shows me canadian and US shows US shop) so it's not even demographically monetized yet. When that happens we can shout loud about it. Google Content commerce and Skimlinks (Googles new official affiliate link network) tracks user data and is shown to advertisers for monetizing. Same goes for ebay. Using aff links doesn't make software bad, if that's the case then people need to ditch Mozilla and chrome too. If ubuntu is bad, I wonder why not Mozilla is bad. sigh.

[wraith808]

^ It's not in the what...it's in the how.  And someone else is doing it has *never* been a valid reason, especially if no one has said that Mozilla isn't wrong also.

[IainB]

...If ubuntu is bad, I wonder why not Mozilla is bad. sigh.

-mahesh2k (September 23, 2012, 07:07 PM)

Not "bad". I had always considered Ubuntu to be essentially "useful/good" - very good, actually. Same goes for Mozilla.
The issue for me is the degree to which anonymity/privacy can be maintained. That seems to be under threat - e.g., from things such as affiliate marketing systems, because of (see above).

It seems ironic that I use a non-proprietary browser (Firefox) which apparently operates some kind of affiliate marketing model, but before I start to use it I have to burden it with a swathe of add-ons and scripts in an attempt to protect my anonymity/privacy, and even then it's unlikely to be 100% effective. At least Firefox allows me to do this relatively easily, unlike the proprietary IE, and now (with increasing difficulty) the proprietary Google Chrome - both of which seem to be designed to tightly control the user's freedom of action to avoid/frustrate affiliate and other marketing.

Long live Ubuntu! (Though I have only used it a bit.)

[mahesh2k]

It's not in the what...it's in the how.

I didn't get you there.

It's new method of revenue generation from where I see the affiliate links. Not all affiliate links tracker data is shared with the affiliate, network keeps it for their own use. So if we have to go with the anonymity issue, blame has to be given not to mozilla and canonical but the networks. As amazon and ebay are not tracking the links (or not showing it to affiliates) as per their public terms, I don't see point of anonymity here unless ofcourse if the other aff networks like Google and CJ or some installwares are used which are known for such activities. 

[wraith808]

I didn't get you there.

-mahesh2k (September 23, 2012, 08:07 PM)

Is this mentioned on the ubuntu site?  In clear view, in plain terms where you get the distro?

[mahesh2k]

No. It was always there from release 10.04, 3 years back. I am surprised that people found out so late. Same with Mint, gnoppix, mephis and few other distros, none of them have it mentioned on their site.

[wraith808]

No. It was always there from release 10.04, 3 years back. I am surprised that people found out so late. Same with Mint, gnoppix, mephis and few other distros, none of them have it mentioned on their site.

-mahesh2k (September 23, 2012, 08:29 PM)

Then that's the how.  It's not right for any of them, frankly.

[mahesh2k]

The thing that comes with ubuntu 12.10 is however a lens which has amazon's aff code. It was made to search amazon listings from unity. That's the new thing, which looks somewhat like FARR. You can compare it with something like say FARR where mouser's ID shows or the plugin developers ID for every amazon listing.

[TaoPhoenix]

In general I have problems with an OS with tight hooks to Advertisers. It just feels dangerous.

[mahesh2k]

Only if you used that feature it becomes dangerous, however you can drop those components and work just fine. I just came across one post where someone was working over a hack to let user choose which lens to keep and remove. So if the commercial lens gets populated, it would be easy to get them out with such fixes. Not a biggy like candy malware IMO.

[TaoPhoenix]

Conceptually, if it takes expert-level skill to disable dangerous features, then we are already on the wrong path...

[mahesh2k]

LOL. I don't think adding affiliate links is dangerous feature. It's just annoying that's it.

[Tuxman]

Not "bad". I had always considered Ubuntu to be essentially "useful/good" - very good, actually.

-IainB (September 23, 2012, 07:37 PM)

It is not.

[jgpaiva]

This does feel a bit wrong to me, however, I've used ubuntu for two years, and most of our test machines at work run ubuntu, and nor me nor anyone at work have actually donated anything to Canonical. So I guess I can understand that they are trying to find some other means of survival.

However, if I used Ubuntu with any graphical shell (unity in particular), I would disable this "feature". Doesn't make me feel very good about myself, though