If any software ever deserved being sued into non-existence it is the Honey browser extension, and any other scam software they turn out (Pie Adblock in this case).
I thought it was interesting that YouTube, in the midst of trying to crack down on ad blockers, allows ads promoting an ad blocker that is specifically claiming to evade that crackdown.
One thief sold to another , it is like credit card lists or botnets are sold on the dark web .
PayPal is hardly innocent here , they knew what they were getting into , this is the core business model of not just honey but all of the coupon sites.
They are simply codes provided by partnered businesses and may be beaten by codes you can get by searching yourself.
If true, then this is them outright lying to the user.
And you know, if they don't find a coupon code for you, one might still be at least a little annoyed that the original 'salesman' didn't get their affiliate commission; it instead being pinched by another.
It should bother you if 10-30% of your price went to whoever last got you to click on a link.
It's a scam in partnership with the on-line shops. The consumer loses, the reviewer using affiliate links loses, and it turns out the extension goes further by occasionally making up discounts that don't exist (this will be in the next video it seems), so the seller gets screwed, too!
The affiliate networks (CJ, Impact, etc) are the ones who determine what attribution method to use, shopping extensions just comply. The vast majority of shopping sessions don't have any prior attribution and merchants fund all of these commissions (nothing is taken from a creator or a user). Yeah, it does seem like the codes Honey has have gotten worse in recent years, probably just a consequence of PayPal acquiring them and not giving it any attention (and layoffs). But the example MegaLag points out of finding a better code on a coupon website DOES THE SAME THING AS HONEY (overides the attribution).
So are there some problems with the affiliate industry? Probably. But calling Honey a "scam" seems completely unfair and lacks critical thinking. It's saved me thousands of dollars over the years.
Nobody cares that other companies and extensions do the same thing, they're bad too.
You didn’t just say that. You said a whole lot of other things. You lead with the fact that it’s well known within the industry. The implication of your comment is that the companies did nothing wrong, and people are idiots for not knowing this stuff before. If that’s not your stance, you should make your stance more clear.
If you instead simply said “people should also be angry at all these other extensions and companies, they’re complicit and just as bad” then nobody would be calling you out for astroturfing.
> So are there some problems with the affiliate industry? Probably. But calling Honey a "scam" seems completely unfair and lacks critical thinking.
It is a scam. It’s an industry wide scam. Calling it out is important because it’s the calling out of shady practices which puts pressure on industries and people to change.
The only way this could change is if the tech industry is hit with strict regulations. But considering that governments are technically incompetent, and that they're either in symbiosis or plain bought out by Big Tech, this has no chance of happening. Especially in the US, where any mention of regulation is met with criticism even from consumers, and where Musk will be taking the reigns for the next 4 years.
Once this "scandal" blows over and consumers forget about it, PayPal Honey will either continue to exist, or will rebrand as a different company in the same industry, operating the same way it does now.
As for influencers: it's hilarious that you think any positive change could come from them. They only care about getting paid, and could promote anything that lands in their inbox. Hell, they're often the ones who scam their own audience. We're decades away from regulating that whole mess.
Don't hate the player, hate the game is fine if you say it up front. If you leave it for a comment buried down below you just look like a shill to all the people that read only one or two levels deep.
I imagine people running affiliate programs have heard of rakuten, for example, so I suppose they have some reason they haven't banned it (i.e. it actually benefits them/lowers overall costs).
Do all of the upset people work in ads or ad-adjacent industries or something? Are the "influencers" (i.e. propagandists) trying to manufacture outrage and make it seem like normal people care? Please think of the spammers!
For me is mostly the same the disgust when I discovered that hyperparasitoid wasps exist.
It's like crypto - it's environmentally harmful and facilitates ransomware with minimal benefits, but I wouldn't be okay with someone showing up in the comments saying it's totally fine to steal someone's shitcoins with malware (though laughing about it is fine). It seems that you wanted to make a point about the post itself and used my comment as a launching point, which is fine, but don't accuse me of white knighting.
Edit: Forgot to check my writing.
Like I don't particularly like sponsored segments, but I know why they exist: because ad revenue on YouTube is fickle and pretty shit, and I enjoy the creators I follow and want them to keep making stuff, and making stuff costs some combo of time and money. So yes, I want the creator to get that.
I think most normal people would vibe on this train of logic. I don't view and never have viewed business, including my own, as a cutthroat competition between me and everyone else. I view it as mutuality of purpose. I offer my work, and people who need stuff done that I can do, give me money. I think if the broader markets had an attitude like that instead of chasing every last penny at every single intersection, then we'd live in a better world.
I offer my work for money. I don't work for free and tell clients "hey you should support me by using AWS (who will give me kickbacks) for your infrastructure." The conflict of interest is fundamental to such an arrangement, even if disclosed. Instead my employer pays me for my expertise and I do my best to give them my honest, unbiased experience/opinions/analysis. I'm explicit about the boundaries of my knowledge/experience.
Case in point: these "influencers" obviously did not do any due diligence on what this program was doing. They "recommended" something they didn't understand because they were paid to do so. If this were "merely" stealing user information (the monetization method someone else in the thread said they assumed), would there be controversy? What exactly did the people who recommended this thing think it was going to do to the people who installed it? That's the actual story here (though it should be unsurprising).
It is not the industry is shady that made honey standout, it is the fact that they were paying the people to pick from their own pockets is what got YT creators railed up.
It is being singled out, because without that heavy creator promotion they wouldn’t have grown anywhere close to the size they were last month. They have already last 3+ millions on Chrome web store in December .
No other coupon company has been valued or sold at 4 billion honey was, it is by far the largest and most successful. It is not uncommon for largest player to get the most scrutiny even though others do the same