Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

uBlock Origin GPL code being stolen by team behind Honey browser extension

old.reddit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 469 posts

Re: uBlock Origin GPL code being stolen by team behind Honey browser extension

#311

Post by LiamPowell »

Retric wrote: post #305
LiamPowell wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They literally advertise this as a feature on their home page in that they give you X% of what they earn from affiliate links. It says a lot about the influencers advertising it if they did not realise that Honey is taking their affiliate revenue while reading an ad that says they do. More realistically, most of them likely did know that this is what Honey does and determined that honey paid more than any lost revenu…

If a company says they make money “selling cars” you don’t assume they get those cars through theft. Same deal here, saying they get affiliate money doesn’t imply they overwrite existing affiliate links which is about a clear a case of tortious interference as you could find. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortious_interference So, no Honey didn’t disclose what people are complaining about.

I agree that it's likely tortious interference, I just don't agree that they're being deceptive. I think it's reasonable to say that most of the target market would be considered tech-savvy enough to know how these purchase affiliate programs work and the influencers advertising it absolutely do.

If users are not aware of how this works then I have to question where they think the cashback comes from, and if they are aware that it comes from the business they are making a purchase from then I have to question why they think the business would give a commission to Honey on top of the existing commission to wherever a link was clicked from. I think a majority of users would have to be somewhat wilfully ignorant to not question why money is being given back to them whenever they make a purchase.

Re: uBlock Origin GPL code being stolen by team behind Honey browser extension

#312

Post by mikeryan »

LiamPowell wrote: post #297
benjaminl wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

They literally advertise this as a feature on their home page in that they give you X% of what they earn from affiliate links. It says a lot about the influencers advertising it if they did not realise that Honey is taking their affiliate revenue while reading an ad that says they do. More realistically, most of them likely did know that this is what Honey does and determined that honey paid more than any lost revenu…

I think you’re missing the point. Honey is stealing affiliate credits from influencers who don’t have any relationship with them.

If a YouTuber posts an link with their own affiliate code and during checkout the user uses the Honey extension to look for coupons Honey steals the affiliate credit even if they don’t have a coupon the YouTuber gets nothing.

Re: uBlock Origin GPL code being stolen by team behind Honey browser extension

#313

Post by LiamPowell »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #310
LiamPowell wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They literally advertise this as a feature on their home page in that they give you X% of what they earn from affiliate links. It says a lot about the influencers advertising it if they did not realise that Honey is taking their affiliate revenue while reading an ad that says they do. More realistically, most of them likely did know that this is what Honey does and determined that honey paid more than any lost revenu…

It took LTT years to detect this behavior despite it coming up in forums and HN. They then decided to stop accepting sponsorships from them. Sponsored ads also often boasted Honey will get you the best deal anywhere. Yet some have found them knowingly preferring their own coupons even though others users had manually entered and successfully used better coupons from elsewhere (while the extension was installed).

> Sponsored ads also often boasted Honey will get you the best deal anywhere.

I agree that this can be called misleading, or even potentially a scam.

> It took LTT years to detect this behavior despite it coming up in forums and HN.

They're well aware of how affiliate links work, so as I said above, even if they only advertised the coupon part and never the cashback part they'd have to have never bothered to visit the Honey homepage or tried it themselves. I'm sure they just determined that they'd make more revenue than the lost affiliate revenue at first and later determined they no longer would.

Re: uBlock Origin GPL code being stolen by team behind Honey browser extension

#314

Post by Jolter »

manquer wrote: post #235
phoe-krk wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One breaks the criminal law, another breaks the civil law. Both break the law.

Both break the civil law , you can absolutely sue the thief for damages for lost property. Typically this is not done because it is not worth the lawyer expenses as recovery chances are pretty slim unless it is a kleptomaniac billionaire maybe , instead you claim insurance to recover on your losses. Similarly copyright theft is also same as any other property theft, you can charge under criminal law as well , typical…

So what’s the case law for violations of the GPL? Did anyone get criminally convicted prosecuted for violating any software license at all, and was anyone convicted? I’m only aware of civil suits in this regard.

Re: uBlock Origin GPL code being stolen by team behind Honey browser extension

#315

Post by LiamPowell »

mikeryan wrote: post #312
LiamPowell wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They literally advertise this as a feature on their home page in that they give you X% of what they earn from affiliate links. It says a lot about the influencers advertising it if they did not realise that Honey is taking their affiliate revenue while reading an ad that says they do. More realistically, most of them likely did know that this is what Honey does and determined that honey paid more than any lost revenu…

I think you’re missing the point. Honey is stealing affiliate credits from influencers who don’t have any relationship with them. If a YouTuber posts an link with their own affiliate code and during checkout the user uses the Honey extension to look for coupons Honey steals the affiliate credit even if they don’t have a coupon the YouTuber gets nothing.

I very much agree that it's bad in this regard and potentially even illegal, I just don't think they were ever misleading about the fact that they do this.

Re: uBlock Origin GPL code being stolen by team behind Honey browser extension

#316

Post by cavisne »

benjaminl wrote: post #265
tantalor wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we know when Honey started stealing affiliate links? Was it after the acquisition?

[flagged]

Capital one shopping (basically the same thing) definitely originates traffic, like it prompts users to go to other websites for a better deal.

Re: uBlock Origin GPL code being stolen by team behind Honey browser extension

#317

Post by paulryanrogers »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #62
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely! I think this was kind of what OP was driving at with the suggestion to "start demanding better of others." It doesn't work to expect they should do better from their own motivation, we need to fix the broken incentives and consequences that result in those bad decisions being attractive.

While I agree with that ideal I’m not sure how realistic it is. Trump was elected on a populist platform and quickly betrayed his base again, this time before he has even taken office. What are people to do, vote harder? It’s not like Kamala would have fixed this either. If Kamala had a better chance of winning the ‘Tech Titans’ wouldn’t have switched teams. They would have done anything the government asked for so l…

Kamala offered a significantly more honest campaign, and would not have been openly corrupt. It's a giant chasm of difference between her and Trump.

Just because she isn't perfect and wouldn't be all powerful doesn't mean both options were the same.

Owners of platforms can be held accountable, especially if they're turning a blind eye. Disabling message history won't save Google or anyone else.

Re: uBlock Origin GPL code being stolen by team behind Honey browser extension

#318

Post by paulryanrogers »

erikerikson wrote: post #69
teamspirit wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wish we had a democracy that could prevent this but we do not Doesn't this rely on us as the individual? We get the government we allow. We, humanity, could've had anything we wanted, this is what we gave ourselves.

It does and yet this seems to highly simplifying things. Consider the US scoped studies studies showing that the population doesn't get what it wants. They showed that policy follows the whims of the wealthy even in the cases where the population overwhelmingly agrees on a contrary direction. So the data says "no", control has been removed from us. Part of the complication is that the determined action of a few actor…

It's not too late. We've overcome the rich before and can again.

Re: uBlock Origin GPL code being stolen by team behind Honey browser extension

#319

Post by ndriscoll »

drdeca wrote: post #304
tikhonj wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The puzzle case is no different to how you can't sell somebody a rubiks cube without allowing them to "solve" it by taking it apart and putting it back together. You can make a physical item intentionally hard to work with or modify, but I see that as a shortcoming of our current legal standard—that's why we need some kind of "right to repair" framework. Requiring people to distribute human-readable code alongside so…

I wasn’t thinking forbidding them from decompiling it or anything. I don’t think any rights are violated if government doesn’t issue any further copyright protections (even though I don’t think this for the best). I am not saying that the puzzle author should have any legal authority to restrict people from disassembling the puzzle. I’m just saying that the government shouldn’t compel the puzzle designer to distribut…

A reasonable tradeoff to explore is that software ought to work like a halfway-point between copyright and patents: in exchange for an exclusive right to distribute your binaries for 10-15 years, you provide your documentation for how it works (including source code) so others can build on your work after the exclusivity period ends. The exclusive right does not cover the basic idea/independent implementations of the same functionality.

Potentially utilitarian software and creative software could be treated differently, e.g. have an escrow for games (for which user customizations are less important).

Obviously DRM to restrict user modifications is unethical and harmful toward functioning markets and should be illegal.

Re: uBlock Origin GPL code being stolen by team behind Honey browser extension

#320

Post by jzl »

Minor quibble with the linked complaint: the GPL doesn’t require you to post source code, it just requires that you have to provide it when asked, and only to people using your software. (But you’re not allowed to restrict anything they do, like repost it.) Just follow the whole Redhat / CentOS drama for exhibit A in this behavior.
Post reply on HN