YSK "honey", the discount coupon finding browser extensions (owned by PayPal), is a scam stealing commissions from people who actually should get it.
Rent-seeking middlemen. This is the pinnacle of capitalism. Taking revenue while providing nothing is maximum efficiency. You can tell because it raises prices invisibly for everyone.
This is just a baby version of how credit card companies have placed a 1%-5% sales tax on the global economy. You might say "at least the CC companies provide a service", but that tax get's added no matter if your using a CC or not.
How does the tax get added if you don't use a credit card?
Because enough people use credit cards that businesses have felt compelled to raise prices across the board to compensate.
When you get a credit card machine you sign an agreement saying something like transactions under X amount we, the credit card network company, will charge you 50c or any transactions over X amount we will charge your 1.5%.
Now as a business owner you raise prices 1.5% to cover this fee. If someone pays in cash, the extra 1.5% goes to you, if the customer pays with a card, the 1.5% goes to the card network .
Credit card fees get baked into the general price and are averaged between all the accepted cards. Hence cash transactions and lower-fee cards (debit, credit with less benefits) end up paying more of the share of the higher-fee cards.
It's well explained in the following video: https://youtu.be/OceYCEexDqQ
In Italy it's illegal to raise the price if you are using a credit card. The price needs to be the same no matter the payment method
Cause they can't charge more for CC purchases so they raise the prices for everyone.
So the TL:DW version seems to be that honey changes or adds an affiliate link to get a commission on the sale. Similar programs like Capital One Shopping probably do the same thing.
Honestly, I don’t give a shit. I hate affiliate links no matter who gets them. They are the real scam.
Sounds link the real solution is to use it to identify potential coupon codes. Then clear cookies, resign in, and enter the code yourself. But it’s not like that yields a cheaper price, so I’m not even sure I care.
That's just one issue, there's also the fact that they partner with stores to give worse coupons than are actually available, by letting them get affiliate money when doing so. And then advertising that they ALWAYS give you the best codes, while getting paid by stores not to do so....
Theres also another video coming up with stores that have been screwed over by Honey getting hold of codes that are supposed to be hidden/limited. (though that's honestly on the store, make your limited coupons actually limited to avoid this..) But he only teased this, there might be something wkse/more.
I'm torn on affiliate links. I've worked with people in sales before and it's usually scammy unless the contract is done right (flat rate commission, no bonuses for selling "certain" items). I've seen really hard working and informative workers that are actually impossible to replace because of the knowledge of products and handling the customers needs without flair or extra cost. Will inform them of cheaper methods like how easy it is to purchase and install a cable versus paying someone $100 just to plug something in and flip a switch basically.
In those instances, I think the affiliate/commission is warranted. Same with some awesome youtube channels I've ran across where they test the shit out of several products in a category (Torque Test Channel is a good one). If I need the product and I'm buying it off their recommendation I will gladly use their affiliate link if I think about it beforehand.
Now, there are some channels that I've just taken the affiliate link to be basically a form of sponsorship and promotion. Sadly a lot of construction/trade channels end up falling into this eventually. Matt Risinger is probably one of the worse ones, but even lower end guys like The Stud Pack just become a "new product showcase" channel instead of DIY or instructional videos.
Reductive take that doesn't really summarize
not a tldw
Thank you for saying this. I totally agree with your process, and I'd do the very same every time, but something is wrong in an intangible way that makes me feel bad about doing it.
Is that it? Is the fact that the choice is between two entities I'll never know or even recognize again, that offends my morals but satisfies my ethics? And, since Honey is doing something for me in giving me this code, should that not make me want to help them in return?
I'm not saying I've figured this out so much as saying thanks for enabling me.
I do recommend watching the video, it’s a lot more egregious than you might think.
Say that you’re watching an LTT video, and they say that they have a sponsored affiliate link in the description for a product you want to buy.
By clicking that link, you’re basically saying “Thanks, LTT! I hope you get commission off this sale for me, for bringing it to my attention”. Otherwise, you could just go to the site directly, and bring up the product without any affiliate link backs.
So you’ve click on the link, your browser opens up and takes you to the store page with an LTT affiliate link cookie set.
ANY interaction with the Honey pop-up (even clicking ‘Got It!’ when it says that there are no coupons available) will overwrite the cookie to PayPal (Honey’s parent company).
Additionally, Honey works in conjunction with stores to only show certain permitted coupons, even if end users submit better ones. e.g. it might only show HONEY5 for a 5% discount, while there might be a valid BLACKFRIDAY20 coupon code available that aggregation sites show.
There’s also meant to be a Part 2 to this coming out soon, I believe? So there’s probably even more to this story than we know so far.
You mean a free extension that claims to give me discounts seemingly out of the goodness of their hearts that also has access to every website I go to in the browser where it is installed is not exactly on the level? I'm shocked.....well...not that shocked.
I can't believe that something too good to be true was too good to be true!
I tried it in a Firefox container once, while shopping for Xmas gifts. Not only did it want access to absolutely everything, none of the things I was looking to buy got any meaningful discount from it. Surely that would make one question how and why this thing is even still running, unless you don’t ask many questions.
People add extensions and then forget about them immediately, those are the true whales for these companies
Yeah the one that somehow has the money to get the biggest influencers to advertise them.
In the entire time I used Honey, I never once got a valid coupon code for literally anything. Pretty sure they scraped a ton of my browsing data though.
Are you aware that there are other chrome extensions that offer more coupons for a ton of online stores? Dontpayfull Automatic Coupons or Retailmenot always have plenty of coupons available. I don’t understand why everyone is stuck on Honey, which has been of very low quality in recent years.
I need to check this out, sounds pretty interesting to me. I never tried Honey because it seemed way too shady!
For how long, I wonder:
Saw reCAPTCHA on a discount code box the other day - one click per each code tried
Same here. Newer found a single coupon for me. I uninstalled it a few months ago, not because I thought it was sketchy, but because I figured it must be better at finding discounts for things that I don't shop for online, like shoes and pizzas or something.
My wife uses it and I've never seen it find a discount code. I assume it's because we don't buy enough online since money's been pretty tight
I don't shop for online, like shoes and pizzas
How do you shop for pizza not-online? Bro still going with pizzas brochures? Respect bro. If you top that off ny ordering by landline, it'd be perfect.
But yeah I had similar thoughts on Honey, never installed and now I think I definitely won't. Thx 4 i Lemmy
I knew Honey was sketchy, but I just assumed it made it's money from just data harvesting everything
Yeah I always felt something was off with honey. I never downloaded it for that reason, it was just kinda too good to be real or something. Like how are they making enough money to pay all these YouTubers to promote them? Something wasn't adding up
If you have multiple extensions installed honey always secretly steals the revenue from competitors without asking for consent. Most other extensions will ask if you want to activate cashback. Honey just disables their competitors and steals that affiliate revenue. It should be classified as malware
The thing is I think it's feasible to do this in a non gross way...it's essentially a search engine that just looks for promo codes, matches them against brands, and then tries them in rapid succession on the checkout screen. I think they would probably need humans to resolve the many 1-off issues (could work in a crowdsource manner like adblock filters) and a central registry to keep track of which ones fail, but it's not a hugely complex problem.
how are they making enough money to pay all these YouTubers to promote them? Something wasn't adding up
It's not really a mystery.
I see Paypal is the owner, I assume it'll be Enshittified on launch
Afaik honey was acquired by PayPal, they were an independent startup until then. But yeah.
I heard about this extension years ago. I wasn't always suspicious about it, but I still never used it. I can't say I'm surprised that it turned out to be a scam.
I'd rather pay full price honestly than support stuff like this.
I'm glad this information is coming to light because I think that it should be fixed, at least as far as the affiliate link piece goes, but I find myself irritated by the sensationalism of the poster.
They're really pushing to make this seem as evil as possible, and milking it for every drop it's worth. Making this a two-part series and not exposing it immediately feels super shitty to me.
Just post the full information you have, if this is really so bad, stop trying to farm clips.
Also, not enough focus on the timeline. Honey's business model has changed dramatically since it was released long ago, and I feel like the part two video is going to complain about the original Honey business model, which was literally just a coupon code aggregator, just based on the "cliffhanger" at the end
it should be fixed
It's not a mistake, but an incredibly unethical business model. Why minimize the issue?
not exposing it immediately feels super shitty to me
it doesn't change anything to the facts though
It's serialization, as old as printed news. You can dislike that but it's not like he's the only one doing it
If you look at their history, they seem to be a younger YouTube channel. I think he's breaking it up more so that he can actually put out one video a month and not lose subscribers. He seems to be slowly managing to make the videos longer each month.
I suspected it was a smaller channel, but didn't look myself. I haven't heard of them up until this point so this story could be a particularly big opportunity for them, so it makes sense why they are choosing the delivery method that they are
The dude spent a year figuring this out, researching and getting all his ducks in a row. What did you do, whats your contribution? Oh, let's see, you bravely complained in a comments section about the way he chose to release the info, accusing him of the crime of sensationalism for clicks.
Gee, why would he want to get paid for his work?? HOW SELFISH! It's not like there are companies out there trying to steal content creator revenue, right??
The way you complain more about him than the company, makes me wonder, do you work for Paypal, or that new project, Pie? Just weird to see you trying to make him look bad for wanting to get paid for his work. Sounds like a Honey thing to do.
My guy take it down a notch, damn. I'm not calling for his head on a pike, I have legitimate and valid criticisms. I apologize if the tone came off more critical than I meant it but hot hell you came in spicy.
But, to address your issue:
Why does one wrong make a right? Why does him exposing the issue invalidate any criticisms or expectations of quality or integrity? To me it does not, hence why I criticize. And I even said I was glad the information is coming to light, and I'm grateful for him drawing attention to it, I just wish it could have been done a little more tactfully is all. I would like to have all the information right now, rather than waiting for a "part 2".
I also just don't appreciate the stoking of anger, which has clearly worked. Ragebait is toxic and that's what is being done with this story, from my perspective, so I don't love it.
I just assumed it was a scam the moment I saw it. Just thought it was farming data for profit out in the open because everyone else dose that. They went above and beyond and made corpo malware.
Why am I entirely not surprised that LMG knew what the fuck was going on, and didnt say a fuckin thing about it.
Made more public comments over legitimate criticism about his "just trust me, bro" warranty, than about honey being a out and out scam.
Never watched the channel, but I would guess that being tech-themed makes it a worse look that they promoted it for so long before catching the issue, so they were worried it would cast doubt on all other endorsements and tank the value of advertising with them.
They might not be able to say anything. Advertising contract might have a clause saying they can't speak of the details of their deal, or speak negatively about the sponsor.
Wait. How is honey a scam? It's purpose is to give people discounts they didn't know about otherwise, and as far as I can tell, that's exactly what it's doing. Maybe it's in a gray moral area, but a scam?
If you actually watched the video you’re currently commenting on you’d have an answer to your question.
But since you didn’t watch it I’ll give you a hint. It steals affiliate links taking money out of the pockets of those who are getting you a discount. It then uses those stolen affiliate links to take money out of your pocket as well by short changing you discounts (By telling you it found you a 10% coupon that is actually a 30% coupon and is pocketing the difference)
Watch the video, dumbass
Do people not immediately google "How does X make money" or is that just me?
I’m that cynical i just avoid anything being shilled by a YouTuber. I assume if they’re pushing it this hard it must be nefarious in some way and I spend no more time thinking about it.
I will drop my subs for channels that shill this stuff though once it becomes evident it’s shady.
They do, but then a trusted "insider" youtuber or podcaster who they have a years long parasocial relationship with "signs off" on the product and the person says to themselves, "X person has integrity and they are very smart, they wouldn't put their name on Y unless they did a lot of homework, so I don't have to."
And life is difficult, complicated and overwhelming, so you can't really blame "normal" folks for putting the same faith they'd put into their tech saavy nephew into these personalities. The influencers should pause though and accept that if they can't enthusiastically describe the reason a thing is actually legitimate, they should refrain from endorsing it or accept part of the blame for misleading people.
Fuck PayPal and its related entities and all executives past, present and future. And I guess fuck you too now, Will Ferrell - you cosigned Mel Gibson in whatever the fuck that daddy movie series was and now you're the face of these people? The "PayPal mafia" (cringe) literally just bought the US election. I know you need to bankroll a lot of family trips to Sweden, but you h ave too much obviously dirty money now, Will. Hard to chuckle at your comedies now, and that's a bummer.
It is about Honey hijacking the referrals, which wasn't known until a youtuber made a video about it (or at least not widely known)
This is why I don't trust Brave Browser. They did this in the past. Well, I don't know if they replaced referrals but they added them when they weren't there.
Yes, they've been doing this since even before PayPal bought them. This is how they've always made money.
I didn't Google it. I just figured, if it found me a 10% discount, the vendor would also send Honey some % of what I paid for the product.
I feel like I've searched it up for honey, but the search results said the same thing as the YouTubers shilling it. Didn't download it anyway because of how many people were advertising it. Anyone who uses that much money to advertise can't be getting their money in a reasonable manner.
The problem is that a lot of these startups don't make money. The enshittification comes later, first stage is just burning through VC cash to establish market share.
No need to do even that. If a simple piece of software becomes a company, it's 99% a scam.
I have, for some businesses I've wondered about. For example, I use the virtual cycling platform Zwift, which charges a monthly or annual fee to use. The biggest competitor, Rouvy, also charges a fee. Makes sense, it takes money to develop these things, buy and maintain servers, etc. The income and expenses are obvious. (Zwift does offer bike frames and wheels from real world brands; I assume the brands paid something to be included.)
Enter MyWhoosh. Free to use, so the income side is unclear. From some searching, they claim they'll generate revenue via ads - but I doubt that would generate enough to support the platform.
The company is based out of Abu Dhabi, so I assume it's really sportswashing - they're just dumping a bunch of money into it and not really caring that it isn't making money (at least for now).
I'm sticking with Zwift (in part because I have it working under Linux and Wine).
I reckon if you're stupid enough to click a thumbnail like that, you're going to get scammed at some point anyway
If you're wondering how a browser extension got so much money to pay all these YouTubers for sponsorship, well, they're not. They are literally stealing the money they paid the YouTubers right back from them by replacing their affiliate code with their own.
For people looking for replacements, Edge's integratedauto coupon code works well enough. RetailMeNot does the same job and has also been around for a long time.
If you dont know how a business makes money, chances are its some shady stuff
Providing coupons on stuff for free, with zero ads? Thats pretty weird. Being Bought by PayPal for 4 BILLION dollars?!?!? There has to be some real sketchy shit.
While I agree with you, I think we should be careful about allowing the ignorant to be punished. It's unreasonable for a non-tech-savvy person to be aware of all the ways a company can screw you. If they're skeptical of everything, they can't use anything
Was it not obvious that the extension was doing that and scraping your browser data?
Scraping data yes Scraping affiliate links? No
Brian Dunning (Skeptoid podcast) went to prison for wire fraud for doing a similar stunt with EBay. Not sure what makes this any different.
What makes it different is that it was perpetrated by Paypal, so nobody will see any consequences whatsoever.
It's not just Honey swapping the affiliate codes. Practically all the major coupon sites do it too. That's why they require you to click on a coupon code to reveal it. When you click, they usually reveal the coupon code in a new tab, and helpfully redirect the current tab to the store, using their affiliate link.
It's more obvious when websites do it though, since they can't auto-close the tab like Honey does. They also don't automatically pop up at checkout like Honey does.
I imagine some of the other coupon extensions do the exact same thing as Honey though.
Is Camelcamelcamel okay?
Ccc is just an Amazon price tracker. IIRC their revenue is generated by clicks (the outbound hyperlinks have their Amazon affiliate identifier).
WRT to the affiliate program itself, no idea. Last I checked it still does what it says on the tin.
They're actually providing a useful service, unlike honey just telling you that no coupons exist.
Google had that one browser extension that paid $1 per device type (phone, tablet, and computer, up to $3) per week. I signed up 5 accounts and had $10 every week for Starbucks, Amazon, and a few more but I only ever used it at those places. Especially Starbucks. I loved getting a free coffee and croissant every Friday and also getting points off those 🤣
However that time is over. Do not waste your time with money-making or saving extensions.
If you want extra money use UserTesting or Brandbee. Everything else is a waste of time.
The one Google extension I liked they killed years ago. It was Chrome to Phone. Basically when I was at my computer and saw an article I wanted to read later Id click it and it would send it to a new chrome tab on my phone. And when on break at work I could look at / read whatever it was.
OnePulse is legit too. It won't make you rich, but you can earn a bit of cash on it. You're limited to $20 a month, but it's unlikely you'll reach that every month
I fell way off of onepulse since their paid surveys were scarce as hell. They know no one is using that app "to be part of a community"
I am fine with them scamming influencers. I am not fine with them being paid by websites to not give the best deals
Your okay with a large corporation stealing from the working class? Why is that? I'm sure only a very few of the make good money.
Topcashback consistently beats honey and others out (almost all competitors beat honey btw). And they pay out and have customer support. Easily thr best way to sell your personal data to a shadowy data broker
It's kind of ridiculous how long it has taken for people to realise that this is happening... where did people think that their referrals had gone after they cratered?
People realised years ago but didn't really care much. End users generally don't care since it doesn't directly impact them, and "influencers" will often take a sponsorship deal without thoroughly researching the product or service being advertised, and probably just figured that people were buying less stuff due to the economy or whatever.
The tech-savvy people that realised what's happening tend to either avoid afilliate links, or use a cash back service (TopCashback, Rakuten, etc) that requires you to use their affiliate link.
It's not just Honey doing this. Practically all the major coupon sites do it too.
Thats where I'm at, I thought it was fairly obvious it was doing this and theres a hundred extensions like this. Are real people surprised this is how it works?
I knew that shit was up to no good. I never install anything like that. I assumed it would be sniping on me, I’m sure it does that too.
I just bought some local honey. Don't know what this shit is, hopefully I never will.
bee puke
of this I am certain
I wonder what websites think of this toolbar stealing affiliate links from people doing all the work of promoting their prices. I wonder if Honey goes even further and turns vanilla purchases into affiliate purchases, actively stealing actual money from the site. If I were NewEgg or whoever else Honey has created affiliate links with, I think I'd be banning their affiliate account right now, or throwing in some captchas so their link theft doesn't work any more.
If Honey finds a 30% code, supplants its own 20% code and tells you it's a 10% code, both Honey and the store save money.
This only works if the store is in cahoots with Honey and only if they have coupons floating around that people otherwise avail of and only if they want to seriously piss off the people driving actual traffic to their store by letting Honey steal their commission.
The reality is Honey is scamming everyone. Customers by hiding codes, affiliates by stealing their commission and stores by parasitically skimming affiliate payments for no work. It may be Honey has a shakedown "pay us to make coupons go away" but the reality is stores could simply not issue heavy discount coupons if they're worried about that being an issue. Honey is required by nobody and given their parasitic & thieving nature I think they're going to be on the end of some lawsuits.
as a consumer why should I care if I still get a discount ?
isn't this influencer back office bullshit and not my problem ?
The coupons honey applies may not always be the best deal around. Honey works with online shops to only serve you the coupons that specific online shop wants you to see, causing you to be ripped off on occasion.
Simply put, there might be a 20% off coupon that can be applied to your cart, but because Honey is getting paid by the online shop, they are only going to show you at best the 5% off coupon. This makes Honey redundant, because neither Honey nor the online shop tell you when they are working together, which is why you can never trust honey to actually give you the best deal.
I used honey for a few years. in that time i think it found me a working code like twice.
Always wondered why YTers were complaining about lack of commissions and this explains most of it
I knew this shit was too good to be true!!
Can someone ELI5? Does this mean they used refferal codes from people that had these "bring a friend" referal codes?
No, it's a little more complicated than that. How a video explained it was, say someone was trying to sell you a TV, you decide to buy that TV and the salesman gives you a card to let the cashier know who the salesman was to get the commission. When you're at the checkout line, a different sales man comes up and offers to find you a coupon code to help save you money. In the process of looking, regardless of if a coupon code is found, the second salesman takes the original card the previous salesman gives you and switches it with his own unbeknownst to you or the original salesman. Then when you buy the product the second guy gets the commission.
some companies, instead of paying youtubers a lot of money to promote the product, tell them 'we will give you some percentage of every sale we make that was advertised by you' They do this by giving the youtuber an affiliate link. its basically the link to the product, except for that when you open it you get a cookie that says '[youtuber] brought me here' What honey did, was replace those cookies with theirs, meaning they get the cut from the sale, instead of the youtuber.
with for example, NordVPN, you get 35 dollars per sale with your affiliate link. if you watched a youtube video about NordVPN and then went into the description to buy it with the YouTubers affiliate link, honey would pop up and say 'we have no coupons for you' if you clicked on the close button of the popup honey would replace that cookie with theirs; if you would currently buy a NordVPN subscription, the money would go to honey, instead of to the youtuber that advertised it to you (who deserve the money)
YSK the original creators of the Honey extension are the ones who designed it that way from the getgo. The important thing is they are also the creators of the new Pie AdBlock extension that is being prolifically advertised on YouTube. And the Pie extension does the same damn things as the Honey extension, despite being an ad blocker.
YSK the sky is blue
Technically isn't telling anybody anything "stealing"? You're transmitting a copy of the information and whoever created it gets nothing.
That's absurd
No way, big YouTubers are all scumbags? Who would have thunk?
Plz watch video next time so you don't look like a fool again.
I'm waiting for the installment to tell me about what personal Data they're scrapping, and then judge whether or not it negatively affects me. So far the first video in the series details how Honey is screwing creators out of affiliate commissions, which is interesting, but not something I give all that much of a shit about. The coupon stuff is more interesting, but it's not like I'm wading through the popup nightmare of coupon sites to scour the absolute best coupon for any given thing on any given day. Sometime if it's a high dig item i'll look around. The Honey plugin shows me the price history of any given item (on sites it works on) over a 6 month period of time, which informs me as to whether or not there are large downward dips on something I might end up waiting for a sale, which by looking at history, could be reoccuring regularly. Lot's of work went into this vid series, and I'm looking foward to the next one, but so far, nothing to get me to unistall Honey.
I, too, love to support companies that I know fuck people over after they sign contracts. If I find out they're harvesting my data, I'll just love them even more. That's The Art Of The Deal, baby!!
The video shows how Honey doesn't actually get you the best deals, with 'approved' discounts. I don't care about affiliate links either, but I certainly don't want to be making Paypal so much money for no reason.
Aside from a selfish take, you clearly didn’t pay attention to the video if you think honey is giving you the best deal. It literally has a segment on this.