YouTuber LegalEagle sues PayPal over 'sleeping leech' Honey extension | TechCrunch
A new lawsuit alleges that the PayPal-owned browser extension Honey is cheating creators out of money. Honey, which PayPal acquired for $4 billion in
You're viewing a single thread.
The very first time I saw an ad for Honey I knew there had to be a catch. Nothing is ever free.
It wasn't immediately obvious how they were going to make money, though. I figured they'd just sell gather and sell user data. I had completely forgotten about affiliate links. But they probably also sell your data for good measure.
The only thing truly free are those little pencils at IKEA.
Those are priced into the products IKEA sells.
I only go there for the free pencils and make my furniture out of the pencils. Checkmate
You can cut down on your pencil quota by also adding free FedEx boxes to your furniture.
Edit: Remembered why I thought of this: http://web.archive.org/web/20060821064958/http://www.fedexfurniture.com/pictures.html
No purchase required, though. You can just take all the pencils and paper rulers you want!
That just means the actual customers are paying for you.
Heh, sucker's more free pencils for me
Do they still exist? In China and Malaysia where I've been living for the last 10 years there are only QR codes at the items that you can scan with the IKEA app.
If you don't want to install the app, all you can do is take photos of the labels, or bring your own pens.
Still exist in UK as of last year, short wooden pencils stacked in a plastic cube, free for as many as you can take before security gets angy
Yeah that's what I'm used to from Germany as well, but seems like they either never implemented it in Asia, or got rid of it a long time ago.
They certainly exist in Ikea here in the Philippines. I've been there a few months ago and the free pencils and paper tape measures (rulers?) are still there and being used.
There are plenty of free things on the Internet. You're commenting on a free social network.
I pay $100/month for internet access.
Lemmy may be free to access, but certainly not free to host. Am I paying for it personally? No, but someone is.
You also don't see Lemmy paying hundreds of YouTubers and influencers for ad spots.
Lemmy may be free to access, but certainly not free to host. Am I paying for it personally? No, but someone is.
Kind reminder to donate to whoever is hosting your instance. Covering a share of costs increases the chances they will continue running it.
I pay $100/month for internet access.
Which you'd also pay if you used Honey.
Lemmy may be free to access, but certainly not free to host. Am I paying for it personally? No, but someone is.
You also wouldn't have paid to use Honey.
You also don't see Lemmy paying hundreds of YouTubers and influencers for ad spots.
That one, that's a valid argument.
You also wouldn't have paid to use Honey.
That's my point? Nothing is ever truly free?
But how does that statement contribute to anything?
I pay $100/month for internet access.
Irrelevant to the point, but damn that feels so high. I pay something like 30 or 40 euros per month for symmetric 500 megabit, in one of the countries with the highest internet prices in Europe.
Lemmy may be free to access, but certainly not free to host. Am I paying for it personally? No, but someone is.
Well yes, someone is, but my point was, there are loads of examples on the Internet where something truly is free to use and hosted by someone who doesn't ask for anything. There is real altruism to be found here.
You also don’t see Lemmy paying hundreds of YouTubers and influencers for ad spots.
Yes, this is where the difference comes in. When something is free AND the people running it have ridiculous amounts of money to spend on sponsorships and ads... Then you can be sure there's a catch.
Wow, internet is expensive where you are. I pay £28 (about $35) a month for 1gig up/down in the UK.
internet in the states and canada can be so expensive :( i’m lucky that my provider has a program for ppl on disability where we pay $10-$20 CAD/mo. I can’t remember the exact amount, nor what up/down we get right now, but it’s pretty decent!
Capitalists hate competition, and ISPs have it down to a science.
It's more expensive in remote areas and areas without competition.
Lemmy may be free to access, but certainly not free to host. Am I paying for it personally? No, but someone is.
"Someone" is paying to host every website. The point is it's free to you.
What lemmy bad?
The catch about Lemmy is that degenerates like me are here
It's not, my point was more that you see a lot of things being hosted on the Internet for free just out of people's goodness and curiosity.
Honey is not one of them. But it's not the fact that Honey is free to use that's the suspicious part. It's the fact that they had an awful lot of money to spend on sponsor spots for a free product/service.
I help pay for my instance to run, nothing is free but there is freeloading. Otherwise someone is else pays for the electricity that powers my server requests as I shitpost on lemmy
It’s definitely not 2005 any more.
It's not, but go look on github. There are so many projects out there that aren't monetized. People just built them for the fun of it.
Hell, the entire KDE software suite is not monetized to the best of my knowledge. They ask for donations, but they don't make a buck off you in any way unless you voluntarily donate.
Lemmy isn't paying out the nose for influencers to hook their stuff. I haven't seen any Lemmy instances advertise at all, much less to the extent that Honey has.
Yes, that's the major difference, but the original comment pointed out you can't have free things without getting assfucked one way or another. You can, but those free things don't spend millions on advertising themselves.
The icing on the cake was lying about the best deals when partnered stores paid them to do so.
There are so many online companies that do this, like Glassdoor. They are willing to share any information they have about a place until they're paid to remove it. Goes for bad reviews and salary info as much as it does for coupon codes.
Nothing is ever free.
TANSTAAFL comrade!
I've never seen an ad for honey, not heard of it's existence before this video.
Ad blocking is the way
Hmm ad blocking is not enough, because many YouTubers sponsor Honey inside of their videos. Maybe you also use Sponsorblock.
I use Sponsorblock, but still hear ads sometimes because it's not applied to downloads.
No I didn't use sponsor block, I often manually skip sponsored sections.
But none of the channels I follow shill for honey, apparently, and that's a big plus.
Tanstaafl
So you don‘t use extensions at all then because you‘re already sniffing the uBlock Origin scandal?
Frankly I’m surprised it took this long for anyone to notice they were swapping referral codes. I always assumed that was what was in it for them. Perhaps the extent to which they’ve done it is greater than we knew, but if you have ever heard of referral codes, it seems obvious that this is how such an extension would monetize.
There was a video years and years ago where they explained their business model and it has either since changed or they lied. Back then it was that they offered deals through sponsorships or something. I don't remember. It was years ago. What's frustrating is that I remember seeing that video and it definitely made me think it wasn't a scam. Probably had the same effect on a lot of other people too.
