As if Honey isn't already under enough fire with half the youtube world releasing videos about their shady practices.
I'm frankly baffled it weren't more common knowledge, despite being common sense, before the MegaLag video. Did people really think that sites like retailmenot.com or wethrift.com make you open tabs to the shop you're searching for coupons for before you can see the coupon code just for fun??
Affiliate code stuffing is the coupon provider business model, it's not Honey-exclusive at all. I'd be surprised if you find a coupon site/extension that haven't always done that.
I wouldn't mind if they were transparent about what they were doing or gave you the option to substitute your own code specifically. I'm sure there are a lot of situations where I've clicked an affiliate link to check something out and then that affiliate got credit for other things I've purchased hours or days later. I'd really like a toolbar that let me modify or block the affiliate code from those links.
I suppose it's easy for us to forget how an average person really doesn't think about how cookies and referral links work.
The only part that seemed uncouth to me was setting the referral code when they hadn't actually found any coupons, and collaborating with retailers.
... and helping to screw everyone else over in the process. That is what makes advertising for Honey so unethical.
Well, not screwing over their partners and customers?
They didn't have to overwrite existing affiliate codes to make lots of money. And the stuff you list in your last sentence is a really big deal.
1: Honey is doing shady stuff with affiliate links
2: Affiliate links aren't shady, just the stuff they're doing with them
1: So honey is doing shady stuff with affiliate links
It's less that I think it's OK, more that I'm unsurprised.
Bingo.
You want to stick your lawyers on them and try to punish them and extract as much money as you can out of them? Fine. Whatever.
>> not screwing over their partners and customers?
I wasn't around to organically take in this situation, but being introduced to Honey by seeing this blow up today, I can only say: "...no? I don't think so?"
Take, for example, the wild west days of rampant SEO exploitation (I'm talking like 2000s or 2010s era) and its race to the bottom, and Google's subsequent refinement of the SEO program over the years. Why am I supposed to root for one side over the other, again?
Their bottom line purpose is the revenue stream; this is not a FOSS project that does so much as to not even solicit donations.
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I hope the top thread writer from that HN discussion five years ago is having a field day dancing on top of his I-told-you-so mountain :)
I'm pretty surprised that so many YouTube creators pushed Honey without questioning how they were making money off giving away discounts. Did they not ask, or did Honey have a lie for that as well?
https://help.joinhoney.com/article/30-how-does-honey-make-mo...
I guess they say it, but being owned by PayPal I'm guessing there was an assumption that the commissions weren't being stolen from other people, and the codes being provided were organic codes and not ones created for Honey by the merchant to manipulate the user into thinking they were getting the best deal, when they weren't.
The only thing you can know for sure about an actor, is that their profession is pretending to be something they're not.
isn’t it egregious when you make the people who are you stealing affiliate money from to promote the same thing ?
I think the last time I actively investigated how to save pennies with these online coupon things was the 90s when I was a teenager and I suppose that's true for more people.
Perhaps they've guessed that it would shock some people to learn how often they inadvertently use affiliate links and they would be discouraged from shopping or find some way to disable the codes.
That would completely undermine the incentive structure of the whole structure.
> Which would be win for everyone.
Except of course the content creators. It would not be a win for them.
Or then just ban the whole scam.
It is a very different proposition. In the current practice you get the product for the same price as everyone else and the creator gets a small slice of the shop's profit. In the system you are proposing where you could decide to pocket the money it would feel like you are giving the money out of your own pocket to the creator. It literally would make the product more expensive for you to purchase if you decide to not take the discount but give it to the creator. It would feel like charity with weird extra steps and a middle man.
Sure, some people would do it. I guess there are turbo-fans everywhere. But the income from affiliate links would collapse dramatically. Because if there is a button to get a discount easy then people will push the button to get the discount. They will justify it to themselves however they want it.
> Or then just ban the whole scam.
Ban as in with government force? Or ban as in the online shop decides to not engage in affiliate marketing anymore?
The first: ok? Why? I'm not that fussed about it, but I'm also not seeing why this would be a good policy. Or what exactly you want to ban for that matter.
The second: Presumably the webshops made their own calculations that they earn more money with affiliate marketing than without. I don't know how one would do that, but I assume they are not just doing it out of inertia, or goodness of their hearth.
It just seems illegal to replace an affiliate link like. I guess the courts will determine that.
It's one of those open secrets that most youtube-peddled services are predatory in some way, and the creators happily kept pushing them on to their viewers because money talks. Now it turns out Honey is hurting their own bottom lines, so of course they all get on their moral high horses.
I don't care if they do two ads per video (a normal ad and one for their firm), they more than deserve to shout themselves out.
Maybe they should have looked out before taking advertisement deals for products they don't even try to understand.
The only reason all of the "content creator" (influencer would be more fitting) care about this, is for once the product screw over them instead of there audience (just look at betterhelp).
ou don't need have been socially engineered in order to be a part of a company hack. Same deal here.
no you at the very least needed to install the addon for it to swap out your browser cookies.
>And it's effect isn't limited to YouTubers
the reason for the lawsuit based on financial damages very much does only effect them, the people who have referral programs which aren't the audience. ofc it also effects youtuber who didn't have a deal with honey.
Yes, that was my primary point. And It may hurt them even more.
e.g If you're a tech YouTuber and Marquee took a deal, odds are you will feel the effects more than he would a A multimillionaire and industry known influencer. Because you'll probably have a huge overlapping audience with him.
Also, remember that a honey spent billions advertising this. I doubt this level of budget was limited only to YouTubers. Plenty of Instagram and TikTok and Twitter influencers to target.
https://youtu.be/caVSUaB8S3o?si=aTyhH7fsB1W72g-O
But to attempt to summarize it, LegalEagle was trying to file a FOIA request for to DOJ and the FBI for rejecting their request to retrieve documents related to the January 6th riots. And they were rejected in one way that basically suggested that it wasn't read, and one claiming that there were not "part of the media" (which shouldn't matter since anyone can file a FOIA). There's a lot of stalling tactics being done and there's worries that the records could he expunged if too much time passed.
Online advertising is a cesspool that makes things more expensive not less.
Honey isnt a problem it's a symptom.
Because they have absolutely no idea.
Where would they ever run across that information?
The money that "the creators" and Honey are in disagreement over to whom it belongs, should have never left the consumers' pockets to begin with.