Useful tidbit via the ever-smart flist

[sholio]

So apparently, LJ redirects some external links through a 3rd-party server, and, as well as opening in a pop-up window, they don't always redirect correctly. For example, if the URL contains "amazon.com" or "ebay.com" or other vendors who, one assumes, have paid for this, it'll redirect to them rather than sending you to, say, "freebay.com" or wherever you THOUGHT you were going.

Which is really freakin' annoying.

One of the things that got me so fed up with ff.net, back in the day, was the way that it would meddle with user content in really annoying little ways, like stripping out anything it doesn't consider text from stories and reviews (which includes everything from common symbols like "%", to letters that repeat more often than it thinks they should, so that "eeeee!" becomes "e!" and so forth). Dear LJ: plz to not be going down that road, thanks.

Anyway, there's a simple way to fix the problem (for oneself, anyway). I just did it, and then tested it, and it works great, on your own journal or any that you browse when you're logged in:

1. Open the Admin Console at http://www.livejournal.com/admin/console/
2. Execute the following command: set opt_exclude_stats 1

What's really puzzling to me, though, is that it's not doing it to all URLs or even to most URLs, and I'm not really sure what the difference is. I had noticed the occasional outbound referrer pop-ups, and had also noticed that I seemed to be getting an unusual number of weird redirects to Google, which now suddenly make sense. But it's definitely not every outbound link from LJ. So, um. I don't know what gives with that.

Anyway, I'm reposting this as a PSA, for those who'd like to reset their options as I just did, or at least to be aware of it.

Comments

[ladycat777.livejournal.com]

It's a bug in the code and they're fixing it. Not the whole redirect thing - I still don't understand that - but why it's affecting paid users and only sometimes affects people at all is because it's buggier than hell.

Marta says they're getting rid of it. Again, I don't know if that's redirecting in general or just this piece of code.

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

Ah! Thank you. :) I was really curious about that.

The redirect thing ... I assume it's a way of gathering information for advertisers, or possibly some sort of server-load-facilitation thing. It doesn't really bother me much as long as it's transparent.

[rydra_wong]

Basically, the redirect thing makes them money, by adding in their affiliate code (and stripping out any affiliate code that was already there).

Allegedly it's now being removed.

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the info! (Sorry, am horrible at replying to comments right now. *runs*)

[ratcreature]

I already have set that opt out option, but I thought that it was for some kind of statistic tracking thing? At least that is what I vaguely remember why I switched that opt out on way back many years ago when there was some kind of post about it, about them tracking you or something. Arg. I also hate that all these opt out options you have to do in the admin console are not well documented or listed in the admin console reference (which only shows "set" but not a list of all useful properties a user may need). That is of course because they don't want you to opt out easily, but it is really sleazy.

ETA: It was in 2006 they told us in the lj_biz community about HitBox and stats gathering and this option, so that was when I opted out:
http://community.livejournal.com/lj_biz/236586.html

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

Interesting! Thanks for the link. You know, I wonder if that's why so many journals aren't being affected -- because they'd already done that. (I didn't know about it.)

I'm pretty much a creature of great apathy and inertia when it comes to my Internet usage, though. *g* I'm still using Yahoo Mail even though I've hated it for years -- the interface sucks, it's full of ads, it keeps giving me annoying popups and trying to enroll me in chat and such, and Yahoo itself is pretty much evil incarnate in a lot of ways ... but I'm used to it, and comfortable with it, and I'll probably stick with it (for now, anyway) unless it just stops working with Firefox totally. I still use *Eudora*, and I don't think they've updated it since 2004. I'm sure that at some point LJ will annoy me to the point where I'll drag my lazy carcass elsewhere (just as I'm starting to reach that point with Yahoo Mail), but I'm pretty sure it's a long way from it yet.

[ratcreature]

I think the setting is purely a user setting, because it tracks you viewing. So LJ may still mess up my links when other people see them, even though I see them alright having disabled this. So you can't really prevent LJ from changing your content for some viewers as I understand it, which really aggravates me. I mean, I do not often link to commercial sites, but if I linked to some amazon book page I don't want LJ to make money by inserting affiliate program stuff in my links.

Inertia has positive aspects too. It reduces link rot for example. Personally my main journal has been on DW for some time now, but even putting aside the people and comms I still read here, I do not want to pull my content because that would break links. I mean, I still keep my ancient Greymatter blog on my site, even though I copied all posts to my LJ ages ago to have all my journalling in one place.

[wneleh.livejournal.com]

I still use *Eudora*

Me too! My husband laughs and points.

[anniehow.livejournal.com]

Feh! Now, that's... that's... *throws hands in the air* whatever. Thanks for the instructions, I immediately re-set my options.

[flingslass.livejournal.com]

Done, thank you :)