Or, a more cynical take is that I only seemed to get reminders to go to smile.amazon.com if I had arrived via an affiliate link. I always suspected that it was a money-saving strategy, that if I clicked the reminder and arrived at smile.amazon.com, that maybe they wouldn't have to pay the affiliate commission. But I never looked into it at all, so that was just my pure speculation.
The whole point of affiliate links is that they're generating sales that wouldn't have existed without- it is essentially an incentive for people to advertise for Amazon in organic ways. Whether the money goes to the affiliate or the smile program at that point wouldn't really make much difference, and actively undermining the people who post affiliate links seems like it would be a stereotypically idiotic corporate split brain thing to do.
I don't often click on affiliate links, but I also don't recall seeing the smile reminder when I have used them. YMMV I guess.
