The firewall
The promise, in one line
Affiliate links never touch what's recommended.
ShowReco earns a commission on some outbound links — that's the business model, stated plainly. This page is how we keep that money from ever bending a recommendation: what ranks you is your taste; what pays us is a click you already chose to make.
Ranking sees your taste — and nothing else
Your queue is computed from exactly two things: your taste profile (written from your own ratings and notes) and your verdict history. The model that picks and ranks titles receives no provider deals, no affiliate catalog, no sponsorship weights — those inputs don't exist in the ranking layer at all.
That's why every pick carries a “why it fits” citing your own signals. If a recommendation can't be justified by something you told us, it doesn't belong in your queue.
Money only exists after you choose
Your computed queue is stored with plain provider deep links, straight from our metadata sources — no affiliate parameters anywhere in it. When you click a “where to watch” or book-buy button, the link routes through our outbound redirect, which checks the destination against a fixed allowlist of known providers, applies an affiliate tag at that moment (only for programs we're actually enrolled in), and sends you on.
The click counter behind it stores per-day, per-service totals — no user identity attached. We can see that Netflix got clicks yesterday; we cannot see that you clicked.
The boundary is enforced, not promised
In the codebase, the recommendation engine is forbidden from importing the monetization code — an automated test scans every file in the ranking layer and fails if the boundary is ever crossed. Affiliate decoration lives in one place: the outbound redirect. It cannot reach the ranking layer, because the code that ranks literally cannot see it.
Why this exists
Most recommendation surfaces are paid shelf space — what's licensed, bundled, or sponsored gets pushed to the front. ShowReco's only product is that its recommendations are yours. The firewall isn't a compliance line; it's the whole point. If you ever catch a recommendation that money could explain better than your taste can, we've broken the product — tell us.