Loophole in the No referral code (ref link) spam rule or not?

[alani123]

Review sites generally will have referral links. I've never seen the referral link enforced on a review site. Also news sometimes have affiliate links.
Keep in mind to write actual reviews you need to either do it yourself or have someone paid to do it. It's not cheap. The affiliate promotion will rarely pay more than the costs for a big website operation. Yeah AI can help now but I don't think users of this forum will like a site filled with AI slop.

Also if your thread is incredibly useful the moderators might allow a referral on occasion as a means for other users to support the OP.
This is very rare but it can be done also.

[LTU_btc]

I don't think so. IMO, rules only talks about what is posted in forum, not outside. What you described in OP is being done since early days of forum.
Actually, I managed to significant money in my early days here by posting ref links of faucets in such way. I made a website full of faucet referral links and I posted link to website on Bitcointalk. Got significant number of referrals that earned me some nice money. Also, posting links here helped me to improve website position on Google search results.