the real issue that should be adressed here is not the addlink sites but the way they force you to allow notifications and cookies, i always look at sites before i decide to link a download, for example addfly wants you to use notifications and others want you to verify by completing surveys, but there are a handfulk that only require you too press 1 buttomn wait 5-15seconds and get the download, NO notifications, NO surveys, just 2 clicks and your done, these add shortners that dont harass you are alot more safe.

before i choose an addlink i test each link from each addsite to make sure my viewer is safe, not getting harassed by forced notifications.

here is how to make money without needing youtube adverts as a reliable sourcce of income.

1) create a website and subscrbe to a domain for about £11/month (for a custom name £20/year on top)

2) create a downlaod gallery for your content on your website then link PMC to your business/site

3)(temporarily) link downloads to addlinks which you have tested and you know is user friendly towards your viewers, DO NOT USE ADFLY or any addlink which forces surveys, long steps or forced NOTIFICATIONS OR COOKIES, should never take any longer than 15 seconds, should be as simple as 2 clicks, i even asked my younger sibblings to see if they can do this before i post to make sure younger audineces are safer.

4)you can skip step 3 if you apply for addsense and get aproved by google to have add banners on your website, (im currently waiting on)

iget roughly 2K downloads on each content i make with very short adds its enough to be fully self sufficient.

after all this platofrm is target for younger audiences a well as bigger content creators such as streamers and youtubers.

as creators we need to keep our viewers safe, i always fully disclose add downloads as well as redirects and even provide step by step help guides for my viewers to avoid clicking on wrong things.

I have always been extreamley careful on the internet most of my safety tip come from here --> [url=<a href=]spreadprivacy.com/[/url]

Ideally, everyone should have an adblocker installed to combat these. Adfly is the worst of the bunch, because when they see you have an adblocker they direct you to a page which forces you to allow their spam notifications to show up. This can still be circumvented manually, but gosh is it annoying.

If a creator wants money from what they made, there are three easy steps that require NO ONE to lose their safety.
1. Create a youtube account
2. Upload your creations on there
3. Activate ads
Simple.

PMC should really be more careful, there is so many ways people can infect computer with malware, ranging from a minecraft folder infected with worms or trojans to links that grab IP's

Adfly, being one of the biggest ones, has a serious issue right now honestly. It used to be fine where yknow it'd to the simple "u need 2 update ur edge", easy to ignore, or whatever and you could skip without issue, but now it either, even with an adblocker, redirects you to a whole new site that's malicious, every time you open it/you can press "skip ad", or it sits you in a loop of "please accept notifications from x" and once you accept them all then get you to the link... the notifications spam you. Why. Or you just get nothing, even if you reload the page.

I haven't had an issue with adfocus yet, and I've definitely not had an issue with mediafire or dropbox itself, so on my end it just seems to be adfly, unfortunately its used a lot. There's times that if there's no link to go around adfly, I can't download things. It sucks when the community has such amazing resource packs and whatnot.

Ah, gah, I could heartily agree. While content creators do like to get a payment for all their hard work, adfly and other malicious ad sites have taken things too far. I've gotten to the point where I'm unable to download and content due to adfly, the most used way to receive money for ads, being taken over by viruses & malicious downloads to the point where I can't access the download without downloading one of these :c

There comes a time when people need to stop and rely on "other stuff" to keep them safe.

Meanwhile people are constantly logged into "social" media networks while browsing without realizing that this too tracks their every move.

Internet security isn't a thing you turn on or off, it's an ever ongoing process.

There's an extension called "Universal Bypass"

https://universal-bypass.org/install

FWIW, if egregious ad site usage is reported and/or we can catch it redirecting to malware, etc, we do ask them to change the link or attempt to talk to the site owners to resolve the issue.

That being said, we are extremely close to banning all ad links altogether. It's become a huge issue.

Some basic tips to go through these sites securely:
1. Install az AdBlocker. (Opera GX has one built-in, Chrome has one to get in the Web Store for free, and Firefox has one too, also free.)
2. Don't click anything other than that Skip Ad button.
+1: Set your browser to ask for a download path everytime before a file would start downloading. So you can cancel the download, or save it to a path of your choice.

Proff_C, every single service tracks you, no matter the popularity or promises. That's what cookies all about. If you open a browser and type something into any of its input fields, your data is going to your Big Data profile. Privacy doesn't exist anyomore, and unless you have to hide something, you shouldn't worry about it. No one will ever be able to find just your data and inside that find useful informations. Only the database-specialized Artifical Intelligencies will be able to process that amount of data, and they don't care about average people watching 3X movies and downloading torrents at home. Don't do stup1d things, and you won't have to worry, simple as that.

Eh no. Banning the adfly links is not a problem, I guess, since they're getting infected.

However, if you were to ban third-party downloads PMC would have to host every single file themselves, which is unrealistic, especially considering the fact people like me tend to have worlds several gigabytes in size.

Although you can’t exactly stop kids from coming on to the website, it is aimed at teens and adults, who are generally expected to be sensible and smart about what they download online. When signing up to the website, you agree that you’re the age of 13 or older. Considering all the benefits of 3rd party downloads, it wouldn’t exactly be a smart move for PMC to remove them altogether.

PMC could possibly add in a rule where you have to have an account to download mods that use 3rd party sites, which will certainly filter out at least some of the kids.


They could also add a verification feature, which gives a clear warning on posts that use 3rd party sites that PMC are not sure is 100% safe. However, they wouldn’t completely block them, just add a warning.

i would be very sad if they blocked adf.ly

I don’t think they should ban it, but instead they need to put more regulations for it.

use an auto ad skipper browser plugin and its solved

PRO TIP- Just don't click on ads you'll be fine.

Maybe just asking PMC to check them all instead ? Or if they remove the possibility of 3rd party links, they have to increase the size limit of files you can upload on the site because man, 15Mo is kinda short

They need third-party websites to host the downloads for maps that are bigger than the maximum file size, lots of mapmakers and modders need them because often they go over that file size even with compression.

I agree though that people should not be able to directly profit off of consumers downloading their map, and something like a bot to detect if the link contains the domain-name of "adfly" or "shorte.st" and other websites that make money from redirecting hyperlinks.

Um, I was able to get to the wixsite for the download of Haven easily. Like, literally no problem and no request to download anything. I think you're just looking at the wrong skip link.

adfly is easy! Just click the damn SKIP AD button and don't click the ad!

I agree, i've got friends who dont know how downloads work and what to look out for and then they end up getting malware downloaded somehow or adware.

"they want you to install a Search Hijacker App from Google Chrome" Sites like Adfly and Shortest do not do that. Maybe the people paying for ads on their sites are, but not them. Should sites like Adfly have stricter rules on what advertisers can advertise? Yes. But I guess they have to make money somehow. Also, it's not like you have to install anything to get to what you want to download. Just click the Skip Ad button.

Link shorteners with ads is the main way a lot of creators on this site make $. If these link shorteners are banned, there would be a lot less motivation for these creators to make content. And this causes a cycle of less content being made and due to that, less people on the site.