To many people, the Pirate Bay logo is the icon of free entertainment. For more than 15 years, the site has been the goto place for pirate content.
Although the site has faced regular downtime and connectivity issues in recent years, it remains online today.
In recent weeks, however, we noticed that The Pirate Bay’s logo was regularly replaced with something else. This isn’t entirely new, as the site often used to swap the iconic pirate ship graphic to send a message.
The more recent changes are noteworthy though, as they are – at least in part – used to generate revenue.
The Pirate Bay never displayed standard ads on the site’s homepage. And while there are still no network ads, TPB has swapped its logo several times to promote the “Pirate Bay approved” VPN provider AzireVPN, as shown below.
The VPN provider confirmed to TorrentFreak that The Pirate Bay asked to join its affiliate program, which it uses to generate some extra revenue. In addition to the homepage banner that appeared several times, there’s a “VPN” link to AzireVPN on all TPB pages as well.
Another new logo that showed up recently promotes the file-hosting service TMP.ninja. It’s not clear whether this is an advertisement, or perhaps a promotion for a ‘friend,’ but there must be a good reason to show the banner.
We reached out to TMP.ninja to find out more but, at the time of writing, we have yet to hear back. As with the VPN, TMP.ninja also has a sitewide link on the site, under the “filehosting” tag.
Finally, there’s The Pirate Bay’s promotion of the blockchain project Hex, which describes itself as the first high-interest savings account on the blockchain. Like most crypto projects it’s not without controversy. However, TPB believes it can get something out of it.
The torrent site currently displays a Hex.win banner on its homepage which comes with a referral link. This means that TPB gets a 20% bonus minted for everyone who signs up through the site.
It’s unclear whether the logo swaps are a temporary thing or if they will happen more frequently in the future. Over the past few weeks, the ‘promo’ logos have been appearing on an off, with Hex being the most recent addition.
In any case, people shouldn’t be surprised to see a slightly different look when they access the TPB homepage.
