[HN Gopher] Honey has now lost 4M Chrome users after shady tacti...
___________________________________________________________________
Honey has now lost 4M Chrome users after shady tactics were
revealed
Author : tantalor
Score : 313 points
Date : 2025-03-31 18:28 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (9to5google.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (9to5google.com)
| Larrikin wrote:
| What is the alternative? Is there an open source version that is
| community curated?
| w0m wrote:
| You'd think there would be a market for something OSS here. It
| would be problematic to keep clean/useful...
| Whatarethese wrote:
| Retailmenot.com
| redserk wrote:
| I want to like RetailMeNot but every time I try it, I very
| seldom come across functioning coupon codes. I don't
| understand what incentivizes people to submit bogus codes.
| RandomBacon wrote:
| Perhaps they are expired codes, or if it's a link (and not
| something to copy-and-paste) -- affiliate marketing.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| It feels like it has been ruined by greed and grift like
| RottenTomatoes and generally everything on the internet.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| The codes are probably legit. There's just no incentive for
| anyone to clean up dead codes nor submit fresh ones except
| for the coupon providers themselves who might see
| retailmenot as a marketing angle, which seems to be very
| few.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I think nowadays some codes may even be limited in usage
| precisely because of such communities. they don't want
| millions to use a good deal with no payoff, so they limit
| certain codes to X000 and they die quickly. The library
| paradox.
| jonas21 wrote:
| They inject their affiliate code just like Honey does. Why do
| you think they open a new tab that loads the retailer's site
| when you click to show the coupon code?
| ebiester wrote:
| The alternative to a company that is hiding real coupon codes
| and stealing affiliate marketing dollars?
|
| Honestly, there's no good answer here because most of the work
| is manual, not automated, and there are a lot of opportunities
| for bad actors. It's just a bad model in general.
| phantom784 wrote:
| I don't think it exists today, but someone could make a
| crowdsourced extension like SponsorBlock. That also eliminate
| the concern about hiding promo codes for companies who pay.
| viraptor wrote:
| There are legit communities which already collect that
| information in structured ways. For example
| https://www.ozbargain.com.au/ is quite Australia-oriented,
| but could be turned into an extension bringing up the coupon
| codes automatically.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| Syrup. https://github.com/Abdallah-Alwarawreh/Syrup
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Looks like that's a frontend for https://discountdb.ch/ which
| is basically a https://www.retailmenot.com/ that nobody seems
| to use.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Signing up for stuff. Pretty much every online retailer will
| pay you via discount for your email address.
|
| I set up a specific junk email address for this purpose and
| give to every retailer I shop with for their initial x%
| discount, and I receive coupon codes going forward.
|
| From what I can tell, this is the best way to get discounts.
| Retailers are generous with people they know a lot about. The
| flip side is that you're going to be a target for their tricks.
| If you click on a link or add something to your cart, they are
| going to send you reminders and even more discounts to get you
| to buy that item.
|
| Personally, I've been happy with this setup. I only see the
| promo spam when I want to. And my email becomes a personalized
| coupon code search engine that contains much better deals than
| you could get by using retailmenot or similar sites.
| dceddia wrote:
| You basically also end up needing a burner phone number for
| these too nowadays. Feels like every one of these I've tried
| in recent months starts with "sign up for 10% off" with an
| email input, followed by "one more step, give us your phone
| number!"
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| I know it's better to do this sort of thing yourself (or just
| set up a domain forwarder) but honestly, iCloud's Hide My
| Email feature is so nice for this. Of course Apple can still
| link your spoof addresses to your parent iCloud account, but
| less-reputable marketing data companies don't have visibility
| into that.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| I toss "10OFF" into almost every promo box when I buy
| something. Works at least 25% of the time. When it does I try
| "20OFF" and that works as well like 5% of the time.
| eisa01 wrote:
| Reminds me of the 777 code on Dreamhost
|
| I set that up on an older web host and got referral credits
| for a few years :)
| noboostforyou wrote:
| Another tip that works especially well on Shopify sites is to
| add the item to your cart and then abandon the page. You'll
| usually get an email or text (depending on your Shopify
| settings) for some discount code to entice you to finish the
| purchase.
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| This is why I'm keeping it for now. I am still better off than
| not having it.
| Tadpole9181 wrote:
| To be honest? The majority of discount culture is a disgusting
| trap where retailers inflate default MSRPs and manipulate price
| histories so they can put big percent signs on the products to
| bring them down to normal and FOMO/gouge anyone with time
| constraints.
|
| T-shirts and vacuums aren't perishable. Make everything cheaper
| all the time, adjust the cost to reflect actual supply/demand,
| and stop the wiggling banners and big signs and calculations
| every time I want to buy _anything_.
|
| It's like an app for finding out the minimum you have to tip
| for a waitress to be able to survive. Maybe that's not the
| solution.
|
| But I'm also just a grouch these days...
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >Make everything cheaper all the time, adjust the cost to
| reflect actual supply/demand, and stop the wiggling banners
| and big signs and calculations every time I want to buy
| anything.
|
| Ahh, so you're JC Penney:
|
| https://www.choicehacking.com/2022/11/24/the-
| psychological-f...
|
| sadly, in some ways engaged customers want to feel like their
| efforts pay off in "smarter" deals. and that mind game
| overcomes any genuine attempts to lay everything up front.
| wabledoodle wrote:
| We've been working on a product called Ketch AI that does some
| similar things but hopefully adds more value further up the
| chain.
|
| We track sales from retailers, and use historic sales
| information to recommend if the sale is good or not (ex some
| retailers always have XX% off, so you only want to jump on
| sales that are better than that). In addition, we'll let you
| sign up for digest alerts, so ideally you get 1 notification a
| day with all the good sales across all the brands you shop at,
| rather than hundreds of spammy marketing emails a day.
|
| We don't clickjack affiliate links like Honey, and don't have
| deals with retailers incentivizing us to promote deals that are
| worse for the consumer.
|
| Check us out at https://getketch.ai, or start browsing brands
| at https://members.getketch.ai/brands to get a feel for the
| product if you're interested
| 0rzech wrote:
| It's ironic that probably the biggest victims were youtubers and
| other "influencers" who mindlessly promoted this extension to
| their viewers, for money of course.
| jjice wrote:
| Genuine question I was wondering when this went down - wasn't
| this completely unknown at the time? If that's the case, I feel
| like I can't blame those who promoted it. I don't have all the
| info though.
| VTimofeenko wrote:
| I believe there were some rumors that it was happenning, but
| not too public.
|
| I think I remember seeing a blogpost about Honey extension
| being a very bad idea from security perspective way before
| the public outcry and it might had mentioned the
| attribution(right term?) too.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| > wasn't this completely unknown at the time
|
| I would have thought was obvious from the beginning that
| Honey was making some of its money from affiliate programs;
| affiliate programs are the _standard_ thing that "shopping"
| extensions use to make money, leaving aside the much shadier
| things that even _more_ malicious extensions do (see the
| various articles on the offers extension authors receive).
|
| I'd always assumed the people promoting it made more money
| from the sponsorship than they lost from lost affiliate
| links. The recent discussions suggest that's not the case.
| OGWhales wrote:
| It was no secret, but perhaps not well known. I was a bit
| surprised when I saw all the recent discussion about it
| blowing up as I was already aware that's how it worked, but
| maybe it didn't get enough attention until the right people
| talked about it.
| pests wrote:
| There is a post on here from a few years ago talking about
| it. When the scandal broke out people linked it but I can't
| find it now. We might understand how it works, being tech
| people, but the vast majority of people most likely have no
| idea.
| 0rzech wrote:
| If they didn't know how it works, then how could they promote
| it as an awesome tool and something good? I expect people to
| have some integrity, not "god money above all" mentality.
|
| You can and IMHO actually should blame them for promoting
| crap. No sympathies on my part towards promoters of Honey, to
| be honest. Especially the so called "tech" channels. But this
| time they've tasted their own medicine.
|
| BTW., here's a very interesting comment about the issue with
| regards to LTT: https://old.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/commen
| ts/1hkbtlr/peop... .
| babypuncher wrote:
| The problem is Honey was dishonest about how it works.
|
| Their marketing claimed that Honey automatically applied
| coupon codes for various online retailers during the
| checkout phase. Nobody really had a problem with this.
|
| What got found out and landed Honey in hot water, is the
| affiliate link hijacking behavior which they did _not_
| disclose. Basically, any time you follow an affiliate link
| with Honey installed, it replaces the original affiliate
| code with their own. Leading to this flow:
|
| 1. YouTuber takes Honey Sponsorship and their followers
| install Honey.
|
| 2. YouTuber posts new content, with affiliate links for
| equipment or parts.
|
| 3. YouTuber sees their affiliate links aren't getting near
| the amount of traffic they used to despite their videos
| performing just as well as before.
| polishdude20 wrote:
| I thi k that's the issue though. The YouTubers promoting
| Honey weren't really telling us what they personally felt
| about honey, they were telling us what Honey wanted them
| to say.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| Shops could also pay Honey to use a lower % off code
| instead of them finding ones and giving that, so maybe
| there's a 10% code out there but Honey only gives users a
| 2% one because they got paid by the shop, and tells the
| user they tried their best. It's a scam in all
| directions.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| LTT found out about the affiliate code changes and dropped
| Honey as a sponsor. The problem is, when they drop a sponsor
| it's usually only announced on their forum page. Linus
| considered making a video for a wider audience but was
| worried he'd get shit on for bringing up an issue that
| _technically_ only impacted him.
|
| Remember: before MegaLeg's video the only thing that was
| known was the affiliate code ripping, and it was only known
| by a handful of YouTubers warning each other in private.
|
| My personal opinion is that they _should_ have sounded the
| alarm, even though the only people getting scammed were
| creators, because it was a broader attack on the whole
| YouTube ecosystem and not just LTT. Hell, there 's even
| precedent for LTT making self-interested YouTube videos;
| remember when their Amazon affiliate account got shut down
| and they had to beg Dread Pirate Bezos to be reinstated?
| YouTube creators that are pushing people to products and
| services should be willing and able to completely trash those
| services if they turn out to be shit - or, at the very least,
| are being shit to them.
| lozenge wrote:
| Let's be real, LTT didn't want to bite the hand that feeds
| him. What future sponsor would sign up if they knew LTT
| might make an expose about them in future for clicks.
|
| Even something basic like exposing how much these sponsors
| pay out in commission instead of towards the quality of
| their products would be hugely negative publicity.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| > What future sponsor would sign up if they knew LTT
| might make an expose about them in future for clicks.
|
| ideally, ones that don't want to secretly sap at his
| revenue stream.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| It's actually a trrickle-down system. Smaller youtubers who
| have never heard of the extension (let alone were approached to
| advertise) may be hurt the most, because a larger youtuber who
| took the deal advertised it. e.g. a tech youtuber could be hit
| a lot if Linus Tech Tips advertise Honey, because they have a
| strong overlap in subscribers.
|
| It was something a youtuber I was subscribed to was talking
| about in how he was still seeing his affiliate numbers drop
| overthe last year or so, and it was actually putting his
| existing deals in danger. Then as a test after the expose, he
| asked a few family members who did use his links if they also
| installed Honey. He definitely never advertised Honey himself.
| cyb_ wrote:
| "down from its peak of 20 million."
| Melonai wrote:
| important context! surprisingly more than i expected! 20% loss
| of userbase is devastating for an extension, although no doubt
| not enough for any long-term change in strategy... :)
| DataDive wrote:
| I had the opposite reaction ... they still have 16 million
| users ...
| xmprt wrote:
| Losing 4M is pretty significant considering that's 4M
| people who actively decided to uninstall something. A
| majority of the 16M might be dead users (installed on an
| old browser) or people who don't realize it's still
| installed but also don't interact with the extension at
| all.
| skyyler wrote:
| >people who don't realize it's still installed but also
| don't interact with the extension at all.
|
| This is still making Honey money through the hijacking of
| affiliate links.
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| In case you missed it, a co-founder of Honey did an AMA on this
| topic a few days ago.
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1jlfms8/im_ryan_hudso...
|
| I'm not a honey user but I thought this section was interesting:
|
| > This gets a bit technical but in the video, Jonathon carefully
| shows you that the 'NV_MC_LC' cookie changes from Linus Tech Tips
| -> Paypal when a user engages with Honey. What he must have seen
| is that there is also a 'NV_MC_FC' cookie that _stays affiliated
| with Linus Tech Tips_ and is NOT changed to Paypal. In this case
| LC stands for 'last click' and FC for 'first click'. In the video
| he seems to claim that there is no first click cookie and only a
| last click cookie - this claim is false.
|
| > In my DM conversation with Jonathon he claimed that he noticed
| the FC cookie but didn't think it was relevant and that he was
| confused by it. I wonder, as an investigative journalist, did he
| think to ask anyone at NewEgg or the affiliate networks to
| explain it to him before he threw damning accusations at an
| industry he didn't understand?
| jmuguy wrote:
| Yeah, somehow I doubt we'll ever see a follow up from MegaLag.
| Well except that he's probably getting sued into oblivion by
| Paypal for libel.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| SLAPP at its finest, eh.
|
| It's time libel laws get reformed, so that not only huuuuge
| ass international newspapers can afford to report shady shit
| by BigCo.
| staindk wrote:
| I got a weird feeling from the MegaLag video, but overall don't
| think Honey are entirely in the clear either. From the AMA it
| seems Honey has been in the business of taking some/all
| affiliate revenue even in cases where it finds no coupons -
| sounds like the sites are fine/happy with this, but I'm sure
| people who post affiliate links are not.
| josephg wrote:
| Yeah, the video wasn't perfect. But honey is clearly a shady
| business. Honourable businesses don't need to trick their
| customers and advertisers about how their business works.
| Honourable businesses don't make an enemy of the truth.
| twostorytower wrote:
| It was never a secret that shopping extensions monetized
| through affiliate. Merchants certainly know what they're
| signing up for.
| dandesim wrote:
| He's blatantly ignoring that most affiliate programs _only_
| payout to the last-click. Okay...great...the first click
| attribution is maintained, but if there is no payout for it,
| then the core issue is still the issue.
| kin wrote:
| What is he blatantly ignoring? He's actually in a comment
| right above directly addressing mitigating last-click with
| stand-down policies.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| Why even claim last click attribution while the user is
| literally on the site?
| charcircuit wrote:
| Only a percentage of people on a site will convert.
| Increasing that percentage is valuable.
| lozenge wrote:
| How does displaying a message "Honey didn't find any
| discounts for your order" on the cart screen, increasing
| that percentage?
| charcircuit wrote:
| A potential customer could leave the site, spend time
| searching for a coupon code, not find anything and give
| up, and then not return to the site to complete the
| purchase. Honey could keep users on the site moving
| through the order flow even if it didn't find anything.
| cbdumas wrote:
| I saw that and I'm not convinced this changes anything. The
| fact that Honey is inserting itself into the affiliate
| attribution chain _at all_ when it did literally nothing is
| still wrong to me.
| layoric wrote:
| This sounds like a distraction. "seems to claim that there is
| no first click cookie". He brought that up, it doesn't control
| the payout and doesn't change the result from what I
| understand. FC cookie is not relevant, Megalag was focusing on
| what was important information to impart to viewers. If they
| clicked on an affiliate link from their favorite creator, using
| Honey hijacked that action of support without disclosing
| anything.
| ketau wrote:
| Ryan here too - will try to respond to some of these with more
| info.
|
| The two biggest missing pieces from both my discussion and from
| the video are: 1) stand down rules for affiliate, and 2) cash
| back to the user.
|
| I was trying to address the claims he raised in the video
| specifically and since he didn't mention either I didn't in my
| reddit post except for a little bit in a couple of the answers.
|
| 1) For the case where the store only uses last click (which is
| most of them) Honey and other browser extensions follow a rule
| set by the affiliate networks called 'stand down'. This means
| they attempt to detect when another affiliate link is clicked
| (e.g. from a creator) and then either fully disable the
| functionality or at least don't use affiliate links. Only
| browser extensions are subject to these rules (e.g. if you
| visit a coupon code website they will use their affiliate link
| and override the creator).
|
| Detecting this can be a bit tricky across numerous affiliate
| networks and I suspect the NewEgg example was selected because
| it used a non-standard way to manage affiliate tagging and
| therefore wasn't detected by Honey's stand down logic.
|
| fwiw I agree with the sentiment that Honey shouldn't have been
| tagging on a 'hey we didn't find any codes' or 'use paypal'
| click and I personally wouldn't have approved that, though it
| probably technically does meet most of the affiliate network
| stand down rules (well, at least it did - I'm sure they've been
| updated which is a good thing).
|
| 2) Jonathon's video is completely silent on the other core
| value proposition of Honey: cash back. Honey, like Rakuten,
| Capital One Shopping, etc, offers cash back funded by affiliate
| marketing. The model is not new - Ebates (now Rakuten Rewards)
| was founded in 1998. Honey added this program in 2015.
|
| When a user is shopping with Honey on a store with affiliate
| commission, Honey almost always gives the user cash back. There
| are a limited number of exceptions, generally because of the
| store's policy, and occasionally because there are so many
| exclusions to the affiliate program that it makes offering cash
| back confusing to a user.
|
| A valid question to ask is: if a user clicks a creator
| affiliate link AND has a cash back tool like Honey or Rakuten
| should they or should they not be eligible for cash back.
| Personally I think absolutely yes, the user's preference is the
| most important. But I've heard reasonable people argue the
| opposite.
|
| What I don't think is that offering it's users cash back makes
| Honey a scam and I think Jonathon was negligent in presenting
| this narrative without even considering this primary use case
| for what is actually the #1 business model in affiliate
| marketing.
|
| I'll stop there. Happy to answer a few more questions here.
| dang wrote:
| Related. Others?
|
| _PayPal Honey extension has again "featured" flag in Chrome web
| store_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43298054 - March
| 2025 (177 comments)
|
| _LegalEagle is suing Honey [video]_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42581108 - Jan 2025 (10
| comments)
|
| _uBlock Origin GPL code being stolen by team behind Honey
| browser extension_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42576443 - Jan 2025 (444
| comments)
|
| _Show HN: Open-source and transparent alternative to Honey_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42535274 - Dec 2024 (10
| comments)
|
| _Exposing the Honey Influencer Scam [video]_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42483500 - Dec 2024 (86
| comments)
|
| _Amazon says browser extension Honey is a security risk, now
| that PayPal owns it_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22016031 - Jan 2020 (6
| comments)
| magicalhippo wrote:
| A couple of YouTubers I watch promoted this and given what I
| assumed it did, I'm surprised that's all it does.
|
| If it seems to good to be true, it probably is.
| ChocolateGod wrote:
| How did people think honey was making money?
|
| I think a lot of these YouTubers are pretending to be shocked
| or caught out.
| ttoinou wrote:
| A comment on HN in 2019 was explaining how it works, it was
| accessible through a Google Search
| magicalhippo wrote:
| Yeah I'm torn. I do get that more income means they can
| invest more and thus grow, leading to more and better
| content.
|
| But promoting products which have such a high likelihood of
| being shady like this...
|
| Another one was the app or similar where you scanned your
| receipts and got some discounts or whatever. Obviously they
| only make money by selling your data, but they mention none
| of that during the promotion, just how easily you can save
| some bucks.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| I thought Honey sold consumer shopping data.
| ziml77 wrote:
| Same. It seems like very valuable data since they have
| access to the individual items in the carts across many
| sites.
| parsimo2010 wrote:
| I didn't even think about how they could be making money
| before this came out (I wasn't a user), but I would have put
| my money on them harvesting your browser history and selling
| it to advertisers, which seems shady but is kind of normal
| for the web today. Affiliate link manipulation and coercing
| websites into paying protection money to hide lucrative
| coupons would have been low on my list of guesses.
| beAbU wrote:
| Honey was replacing their affliate links with it's own. So
| these tech tubers were only really upset that Honey was
| stealing from /them/, they don't give a fuck about their
| viewers.
|
| Anyone who flogs ball shavers, ass wipes or fuckin microwave
| dinners don't give a shit about their viewers, and only care
| about their bottom lines and will shill whatever they can for
| the right price.
| ChocolateGod wrote:
| > tech tubers were only really upset that Honey was
| stealing from /them/
|
| But wasn't Honey paying them?
| QuercusMax wrote:
| Paying them initially, but then if they used any
| affiliate links themselves, honey would rewrite those so
| honey would get the affiliate $$ instead of the tubers.
| Get paid once, then they'll steal from you indefinitely.
| dleary wrote:
| > But wasn't Honey paying them?
|
| Yes, but Honey was also stealing from them. Most
| youtubers make a significant portion of their income via
| affiliate links.
|
| So, consider the following scenario. I made up these
| numbers, I don't know if these are accurate:
|
| Honey pays a youtuber $1k for a single ad spot. Due to
| that ad, many of the youtuber's audience installs the
| Honey extension. Afterwards, the youtuber's affiliate
| link income goes down by $2k/month, because all of those
| affiliate referrals are being stolen by Honey.
|
| Also, Honey never disclosed that they were doing this.
|
| So, of course, you can understand why the youtubers would
| have grievance. Pretty much nobody would ever agree to
| give up $2k/month of income forever to get $1k right now.
| (And it's probably not right now, it's probably more like
| 90 days when they settle their payables).
| jrflowers wrote:
| Seems like a lot of people get value from ball shavers and
| ass wipes though
| thombat wrote:
| It's too late to enter the market now. Let's try for the
| first mover advantage in influencer-favourite ball wipes
| and ass shavers.
| LPisGood wrote:
| > Anyone who flogs ball shavers, ass wipes or fuckin
| microwave dinners don't give a shit about their viewers
|
| I mean what's wrong with selling ball shavers, ass wipes,
| and fuckin' microwave dinners? These aren't really harmful
| things and they provide actual value to people.
|
| Are you just opposed to advertising as a concept?
| cogman10 wrote:
| Those I have less of a problem with. What I actually have
| a problem with is the supplement sales, VPN sales, and
| gambling sales. "Here's a magic multivitamin that will
| make you feel 1000% better!". "You are so unsafe by not
| using a VPN, here use our service which also gets to peak
| at everything you send through it". "Wanna bet on this
| Ping-Pong championship? Well, grab some crypto and go to
| this 'not legal in the US but who's watching' website
| where you can bet on anything!"
|
| Those can actually be harmful things, and a LOT of media
| producers will advertise them as being the best thing
| since sliced bread (Usually having personal endorsements
| required in the copy).
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| What's wrong with VPNs? Seems like the tamest thing to
| sell in terms of ethical impact. any security middleman
| can be skewed negatively if you phrase it as "they get to
| peek at everything". That's what a security app needs to
| properly protect you, and why these apps live and die on
| credibility (see: Crowdstrike).
|
| Fortunately none of the youtubers I watched ever went
| full dark horse and pawned off gambling and scams,
| though. Closest to a scam was probably those "become a
| lord" sites that let you "buy a small plot of land in
| Ireland" or something and a tree gets planted. When the
| reality is you don't actually own the land through
| technicalities and it's questionable if the tree is even
| planted.
| cogman10 wrote:
| > What's wrong with VPNs? Seems like the tamest thing to
| sell in terms of ethical impact.
|
| Well, for starters the actual "security" that is often
| promised from these services is WAY overblown. You are
| already very secure browsing the internet using https.
| The TLS standard grants a huge amount of security that
| doesn't allow for snooping from a MITM.
|
| So, when they start saying "everyone needs to do this to
| be safe". That's simply a boldface lie.
|
| Your security when going through a VPN is from using
| https. If you are unfortunate and get a less than
| scrupulous VPN you might end up with them adding
| themselves as CAs (yes, some VPNs do that). That allows
| them to crack and access data within the secure stream.
|
| Most of these VPN services are also trying to get you to
| do DNS with their DNS servers. Again, a major potential
| privacy leak problem.
|
| > That's what a security app needs to properly protect
| you
|
| VPNs aren't anti-virus software and any VPN selling that
| should be EXTREMELY mistrusted. You are right, they can
| only provide that sort of service by decrypting your
| secure payloads. That is where all the scamminess comes
| into play.
|
| Certainly not every VPN service is bad, but I'd have an
| inherent mistrust in one that has both a cheap fee and
| the seemingly endless budget to advertise everywhere on
| youtube. They are getting money from somewhere and I
| doubt it's from grandmas signing up for the service.
| asdf6969 wrote:
| > What's wrong with VPNs?
|
| Nothing is inherently wrong but I trust my ISP a lot more
| than some random guys in Switzerland or Israel or
| whatever tax haven islands they operate from. They lie
| about what they're good for which is just hiding things
| from my ISP. The rest of the benefits are fake
| cogman10 wrote:
| As you should.
|
| Because a secret you should know about your ISPs is they
| really don't care (or want to care) about what you are
| doing with their service. They don't want to add the
| hardware/software it'd take to spy on your data, that's a
| huge cost to them with nothing but downsides.
|
| I might distrust a large ISP more just because they have
| the extra cache to burn. But a smaller more regional ISP
| will not try and invade your privacy.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| So this perspective boils down to "entrepreneurs are evil"?
| An interesting take to put on a site dedicated to funding
| entrepreneurs.
| luckylion wrote:
| I'd read it more as "influencers are dishonest and
| pretend to not be sales professionals".
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| I thought it gathered data and did some affiliate stuff.
|
| An honest extension could have still made piles of cash. They
| did not need to be so aggressive about taking affiliate
| revenue and they definitely did not need to lie about
| coupons.
|
| This was not a "too good to be true" situation.
| seb1204 wrote:
| No surprise there, engagement is their base of income
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| I think the shock for the youtubers was replacing their
| affiliate "link" (token whatever the correct term is).
|
| Everything else seemed... minor and expected. That was the
| one that surprised me.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| pre-paypal when I used it, I thought they were simply cutting
| deals with the vendors as a middleman for their own affiliate
| links, like any other influencer would. If you can automate
| that process of delivering the affiliate links, then it's a
| big win for that plugin.
|
| I suppose post pay that they dug into darker arts, sadly.
| al_borland wrote:
| I wasn't sure exactly what they were doing, and didn't care
| enough to look into it, but the fact that it wasn't obvious
| made me assume it was something shady that I wouldn't like.
| When I saw that they were doing, it validated my spidey-
| senses. A similar thing happened with Robinhood.
|
| If it's not obvious how a company is making money, and they
| don't explain it somewhere... I'm not interested.
| willy_k wrote:
| Something that has been making the sponsorship rounds now is
| Ground News[0] which I have found very useful with just the
| free tier. But given how many people I have seen sponsored by
| them, I wonder if there is some catch, especially because I
| can't imagine _that_ many people sign up for the paid service.
| I can't think of what that catch would be though, they do not
| have unique access to personal data, and I haven't seen
| anything that would indicate that they have any information
| agenda.
|
| [0] https://ground.news
| briffle wrote:
| ground.news is not a plugin to the browser though. its a web
| site (and app) that aggregate news from multiple sites, and
| let you see multiple sides to an issue. I don't pay for many
| apps (I usually detest subscriptions) but pay for this one.
| ThalesX wrote:
| I've built a local (for my country) news aggregator that
| basically clusters news and summarizes them based on multiple
| sources and gives me the rundown of the most important
| things, and things that can be found between conflicting
| sources. It's mostly a pet project for myself as it doesn't
| seem to have a lot of stickyness without the clickbait.
|
| I gave the 'product' to friends and some of them told me "oh,
| you should do it like ground.news where I can see left,
| center, right". This idea turns me off so much. Why would I
| care if it's deemed left, center or right by some commitee.
| Just give me the information that's there in most sources and
| it's probably be going to be close to some objective overview
| of the situation.
| pixl97 wrote:
| > Why would I care if it's deemed left, center or right by
| some commitee.
|
| Because at the day information can be political.
|
| >the information that's there in most sources
|
| While I don't use ground news myself, aggregators and
| classifiers like them can show you when and where stories
| are being published in very lopsided manners. When a story
| is only really being published by one side you can use that
| as another bit of information.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_balance
| ThalesX wrote:
| > Why would I care if it's deemed left, center or right
| by some commitee.
|
| >> Because at the day information can be political.
|
| Umm. Yes. Which is precisely what placing it left /
| center / right amplifies.
|
| > the information that's there in most sources
|
| >> While I don't use ground news myself, aggregators and
| classifiers like them can show you when and where stories
| are being published in very lopsided manners. When a
| story is only really being published by one side you can
| use that as another bit of information.
|
| Sure, it's another bit of information. I think more
| important are the facts. Did this actually happen? If so,
| what happened? The tl;dr of what happened should give me
| a pretty good idea, without having to become a reporter
| myself, especially if covered by both sides.
|
| I think this is more of an issue of an union, than the
| 'argument to moderation' or 'false balance' might appeal
| to. If I'm left, and report or something and you don't.
| That's probably high noise. If you're right and report to
| something I don't. That's probably high noise. If we both
| report on something, and we report differently on 80% but
| we have the same 20%. I'd say that 20% is high signal.
|
| What if we cut out the left / center / right ideas and
| just take as many sources as we can? Then extract what's
| common between them. Wouldn't that have some sort of
| higher signal to noise ratio than any single viewpoint?
|
| Of course, I'm willing to accept I'm wrong. From my
| personal experience so far, I'm much less inclined to
| extremes than I was since starting to use this system.
| chatmasta wrote:
| Ground.news also gives the information that is present in
| only one side, which is just as high signal - if not higher
| - as showing the overlap IMO. They have a feed for "stories
| with equal coverage" and "stories covered mostly in left-
| leaning sources" and "stories covered mostly in right-
| leaning sources."
| ThalesX wrote:
| I'm seaching for 'equal' on the home page and finding no
| results, nor for 'feeds'. Could you help me identify
| those locations? It's always confusing to me when I go to
| their home page and would appreciate it. I think the
| equal coverage might be what I'm actually looking for.
| 0xCMP wrote:
| I think they're referring to
| https://ground.news/blindspot
| chatmasta wrote:
| Yes, that's exactly it (and aptly named).
| quickymonster wrote:
| I think you misunderstand the feature.
|
| Ground news tells you the bias of publications that have
| published the news item not the slant of the news item
| itself. It lets you see how much news gets completely
| ignored by the right and left (the right is way worse) when
| it isn't favorable to their cause. It's also really
| interesting to sample both sides and see how wildly the
| facts get slanted as you get further from center.
|
| The publishers are biased, not the news item.
| ThalesX wrote:
| I think I understand this feature pretty well. What I'm
| arguing for is taking the common information between all
| news sources (without having to place them in left /
| right / center) is much higher signal to noise.
|
| Honestly your paranthesis that "the right is way worse"
| is already too political for my taste. It makes me feel
| dumb for even writing this reply. Alas, these are my
| thoughts. News should be news. What happened and when.
| Not some attack vector against a group of people or
| another.
| HelloMcFly wrote:
| > What happened and when.
|
| "What" is often a matter of definition and framing,
| especially if you also want news to include "to what
| effect" which is not always black-and-white. "Why" is an
| answer that also must be answered, but will often come
| through a political lens. News cannot be free from a
| political lens if "why" and "to what effect" are
| considered, and probably can't be free from some element
| of a political lens even if just sticking to "what".
| alwa wrote:
| Given that there are at least as many things happening as
| there are humans, how do you suggest the people serving
| as "news sources" avoid editorial judgment when deciding
| what's newsworthy and what it means?
| mossTechnician wrote:
| I did see one YouTuber mention Ground News: FriendlyJordies.
|
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=bfHx4CfKFqQ
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >because I can't imagine that many people sign up for the
| paid service. I
|
| It's new media, and in the grand scheme of things, youtuber
| sponsorships are dirt cheap compared to traditional means.
|
| The news model is well established by this point of ads + no-
| ad premium subscrition, so I don't think there's many
| potential dark arts here. It also feel everpresent simply
| because they are smartly targeting youtubers covering
| politics. And US politics is a burning hot topic right now.
| overfeed wrote:
| > I wonder if there is some catch
|
| Ground News is a startup that had 3 rounds of funding it
| total. If it sees significant uptake, it will become a juicy
| acquisition target for any influence-peddlers you can
| imagine, in addition to the usual data collection and ad-
| monetization risks.
| buckle8017 wrote:
| If you look into the founding of ground news in 2018 it looks
| an awful lot like an intelligence agency operation.
| rurp wrote:
| Care to elaborate? Sounds potentially interesting but I
| doubt many people are going to do a deep research dive
| based on a vague single sentence post.
| lolinder wrote:
| I've found that sponsorship quality varies dramatically by
| channel.
|
| I never saw a single sponsorship for Honey, but I see a ton
| for Kiwico and Ground News. I can't speak for Ground News,
| but Kiwico is a sponsor of basically every educational
| YouTube channel, and it's actually just that good and totally
| worth it for kids of the right age.
| NalNezumi wrote:
| I'm curious about answer to this too. I don't use it, but
| offhand mentioned it to my dad and it took him 30min of
| scouring before he purchased a subscription. (to my big
| surprise)
|
| I hope it's just an "good" product that will (like every
| SaaS) be plagued by enshittification 5 years down the line.
|
| Either case, it's hopefully a silver lining to my dads "don't
| trust MSM" tendencies. (fortunately he's too academic to go
| full conspiracy crazy but you never know)
| totallynothoney wrote:
| The catch is that the premise of the service is faulty.
|
| Their segmentation of news organizations according to bias,
| can be obviously be biased itself. That's not a problem
| necessarily, but the service promotes itself as neutral while
| it's VC funded. You are part of a demographic that will be
| propagandized in the future to recoup costs.
| Sophira wrote:
| Given that the original expose was meant to be a three-part
| series, I'm almost certain this is _not_ all that Honey does.
|
| The remaining parts have never been released. In January,
| MegaLag tweeted to explain what's been going on:
| https://x.com/MegaLagOfficial/status/1884576211554201671
| AzzyHN wrote:
| I figured it just made money by tracking and selling your
| browsing history, it's owned by PayPal after all. I was shocked
| to learn about the cookie-stuffing. That's like, arguably a
| crime.
| Dwedit wrote:
| What about the Capital One extension which was doing the exact
| same thing?
| smitty1110 wrote:
| Honestly, I think they don't have many active users. They're
| offering me $45 to install it as of this week.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Makes me want to switch CC every time I log in and see their
| dumb banner asking me to install the extension.
| thefourthchime wrote:
| Likely, how else do they make money.
| AzzyHN wrote:
| Do you have a source for that? I assume they just sold browsing
| data, since that's the easiest way to make money in this sort
| of space (or, I guess, used it to better figure out what kind
| of credit card you'd consider applying for?)
| MikeKusold wrote:
| Eno? Up until recently, that was the only way to generate
| virtual cards. It's a useful feature for retailers that are too
| small for me to trust their security. I guess I'll need to
| start using their website now that it is an option.
| is_true wrote:
| Never trust Paypal. It's simple
| ryandrake wrote:
| The whole world of affiliate marketing and lead generation seems
| so thoroughly and irredeemably scummy, I can't really come up
| with much sympathy for anyone here. It's just middlemen all the
| way down, and everything is more expensive because they all have
| their little fingers in the pie.
| dvh wrote:
| And yet it still have "featured" flag and 4.6*
| elamje wrote:
| Have a friend high up at one of the "Big 3" in this space.
|
| The entire business model is predicated on injecting themselves
| as the last click for attribution even when they weren't remotely
| responsible for the conversion. Cool business, but can't keep
| going on forever without someone catching on.
| chatmasta wrote:
| I remember when this was called cookie stuffing, and eBay even
| sent a guy to jail for doing it with their affiliate program.
| That's the same eBay that owned PayPal, which now owns Honey...
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Do as I say not as I do.
| gruez wrote:
| To be fair Paypal got spun out in 2015, far before they
| bought Honey, so there actually isn't any point in time
| where eBay was engaged in cookie stuffing.
| cyral wrote:
| Interesting, I found an article about it:
| https://www.businessinsider.com/shawn-hogan-sentenced-in-
| eba...
| chatmasta wrote:
| Yeah he was also the owner of DigitalPoint if anyone
| remembers that forum and era.
| nightfly wrote:
| Now they can just avoid paying for affiliate links for anyone
| who has honey installed
| stevage wrote:
| Didn't the guy that ran Skeptoid go to jail for similar?
| nadir_ishiguro wrote:
| I'm sorry what? Skeptoid the podcast?
|
| Edit: _Yes_. In 2014. How did I miss that? Used to listen
| to that podcast, though probably stopped before that.
| grumbel wrote:
| Yes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Dunning_(author)
| #Wire_fr...
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Marketers monitor the conversion rates very closely. Chances
| are some people caught on to the shenanigans within 24 hours,
| but couldn't figure out which part of the lead generation
| ecosystem was cheating.
|
| What Honey did robbed content publishers of ad revenue,
| advertisers lead valuations, and end consumer confidence (bait-
| and-switch.)
|
| I wouldn't want to be in the blast radius of that legal mess...
| Popcorn ready for when the judge defines the scope of who is
| liable =3
| threeseed wrote:
| > but can't keep going on forever without someone catching on
|
| But despite a lot of coverage they've only lost about 1/5 of
| their user base.
| miki123211 wrote:
| Now what I'd love is an extension that would inject _a person
| of my choosing_ as the last click.
|
| Amazon et al don't allow you to offer this as an affiliate
| program partner, not without a special and custom agreement at
| least, but if the extension was partner-agnostic and released
| by a party unaffiliated with Amazon in any way, there's nothing
| they could realistically do about it.
|
| It'd be one way to bring Amazon Smile back, and on many more
| sites than just Amazon.
| unsui wrote:
| > Cool business
|
| No it isn't. It's predatory (actually, parasitic) by its very
| nature.
|
| I'm all for innovation, but that's just not cool.
| dpbriggs wrote:
| Why do retailers put up with Honey? They're clearly not providing
| value with the attribution theft. Why give them money?
| zonkerdonker wrote:
| Extortion, essentially. Honey will actually give users the
| largest available discount if the retailer doesn't buy into the
| affiliate program (i.e. the retailer loses money). If they do
| agree, then the retailer can limit the coupons and discount
| code shown to customers through Honey.
| gruez wrote:
| Sounds like more of an issue for the consumer than the
| retailer? Suppose the best coupon for a retailer is 20% off,
| and Honey shows that to its users. Retailers want to stem
| that loss, so they bribe/pay Honey, maybe 5%, to post a 10%
| coupon in its place. That way the store loses 15% rather than
| 20%. That might be bad for the consumer, if they thought they
| were guaranteed the "best" deal, but I'm not sure how the
| store has any standing to sue. If so, that would put forums
| like slickdeals at risk.
| ryandrake wrote:
| It seems like the whole system would be so much better
| without coupons. Retailers should charge a single
| transparent price without having everyone have to go
| trawling around the Internet for coupon codes which may or
| may not work, and then being mad because some customers
| found bigger coupons, which you really didn't want them to
| find. And other customers using coupon finders who
| themselves are opaque and sometimes give out good coupons
| and sometimes don't, and then they use the whole coupon
| system to do other opaque things to skim money. Good grief!
| The whole system seems to be set up to reward 1. middlemen
| and 2. customers willing to deal with a ridiculous system
| for a discount.
| gruez wrote:
| >The whole system seems to be set up to reward [...] 2.
| customers willing to deal with a ridiculous system for a
| discount.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination#Coupon
| s
|
| It's unclear whether banning price discrimination as a
| whole is a good thing. Is it really a bad thing that
| people with more money pay more, and people with more
| time can get a discount?
| stevage wrote:
| Yeah I think it's fine. I actually like that people who
| are short of money can put the effort in to knowing where
| and when all the sales are and live a bit cheaper, and
| I'm ok with subsidising them.
| Spivak wrote:
| > Retailers should charge a single transparent price
| without having everyone have to go trawling around the
| Internet for coupon codes which may or may not work.
|
| Then you miss the point of the coupon codes, they're for
| measuring ad effectiveness. The discount is the incentive
| for the customer to reveal to the business where they
| learned about the product and who was responsible for the
| sale.
| elevatedastalt wrote:
| I think it's fine. For things that aren't too expensive
| where I am fortunate enough to not have to be price-
| sensitive, I don't bother with coupons beyond a cursory
| Google search.
|
| But not everyone is equally fortunate, and for some
| people the time investment to find the right coupon might
| be what makes them able to afford a necessity.
| miki123211 wrote:
| > The whole system seems to be set up to reward [...]
| customers willing to deal with a ridiculous system for a
| discount.
|
| That's not all of what coupons are for.
|
| They're also a form of advertising. If you give them out
| to an influencer in your niche who can bring you great
| customers, you can make a lot of extra profits.
|
| Imagine you're making an app for managing hair dressing
| salons. If there's a particular Youtuber popular among
| hair dressing salon managers, you can do a deal with them
| where their viewers get 20% off on the first year of
| their subscription to your app, and the influencer gets
| an extra 3% of that revenue.
|
| You do this because you expect that people watching that
| channel are already hair dressing salon managers, and
| hence are very likely to become big spenders with your
| company once they start using your services. It's a great
| deal for everyone.
|
| Honey turns that on its head by indiscriminately offering
| that influencer's valuable voucher code to everyone,
| reglardless of whether they've seen any of their videos.
| miki123211 wrote:
| And there's presumably also a profit-sharing agreement.
|
| E.G. if the retailer normally pays at 300 bps to their
| affiliates for a particular transaction, Honey may only get
| 100 or 50 bps.
|
| It's a choice between e.g. Honey giving every customer of
| vendor X a voucher code from a particularly valuable
| influencer in X's niche, which gives 30% off on first orders,
| versus giving them a 20% discount and taking 1.5% for itself.
|
| This is a great deal for the retailer, they go from -30% to
| -21.5%, it's a great deal for Honey because that kind of
| money on millions of transaction is a lot of money, and it's
| a great deal for users, as Honey wouldn't even exist without
| this scheme, and they'd get 0% off instead of 20.
| kin wrote:
| This is not true. In the affiliate marketing space, Honey won
| many awards for being great business partners. Yes, there are
| examples of retailers being impacted when Honey picked up on
| a coupon that was not supposed to be public, but Honey always
| cooperated at removing such codes whether you partnered with
| them or not.
| luckylion wrote:
| Great business partner providing ... what value?
|
| They're not guiding the user to shop a or shop b, they're
|
| - redirecting the attribution away from the actual
| affiliate (could hurt shops because their affiliates become
| unhappy and advertise their competitors)
|
| - automatically applying coupons that decrease the shop's
| margin.
|
| How are they "great business partners"?
| al_borland wrote:
| A significant number of users will spend more if they think
| they're getting a deal. Without a deal, even a fake one, users
| will go somewhere else or spend less. Or, if they think they're
| saving 15% on one thing, they'll justify spending 40% more, to
| get more out of that 15% discount.
|
| This is what happened when Ron Johnson tried to rebrand JC
| Penny. JC Penny customers were used to "deals" through coupons.
| He changed the pricing so the prices were lower, across
| everything, all the time. The classic JC Penny customer hated
| this. They ultimately pay the same amount, it would be less
| work for them, but it wasn't a "deal".
|
| Amazon plays on this too with the crossed out inflated "typical
| price", and then showing the actual price you'll pay. No one
| ever pays that crossed out price; it can say anything, but lets
| them put "-40%" so people get excited and buy.
|
| It's all very manipulative. Honey was just another form of the
| same concept.
| gruez wrote:
| Sounds like your ire should be directed at the retailers who
| created the coupons in the first place, not Honey for letting
| people know they exist.
| al_borland wrote:
| The coupon aspect is what pushes companies to sign up.
| Honey had a page on how to sell to companies, and it was
| around increased sales, and things of that nature... pretty
| traditional coupon stuff.
|
| Honey gets additional ire, for what they did beyond that.
| Coupons are manipulative, but Honey was also lying to
| pretty much everyone involved in the transactions, as well
| as their advertising partners.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Online marketing firms already had a credibility problem long
| before Honey showed up.
|
| The only metric business people care about is whether the lead
| converts into sales. People often don't want to think about how
| the hotdog was made at the factory. =3
| kin wrote:
| Retailers have budget to spend and have that spend deliver a
| return. It's just a simple return on investment. CJ, one of the
| biggest affiliate companies even encourages working with
| shopping extensions. https://junction.cj.com/cj-value-of-
| browser-extension-study-...
| daft_pink wrote:
| Why haven't they just been shutdown?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-03-31 23:00 UTC)