Honey has now lost 4M Chrome users after shady tactics were revealed

#1

Post by tantalor » Mon, Mar 31, 2025, 6:28 PM UTC

Honey has now lost 4M Chrome users after shady tactics were revealed
9to5google.com

Re: Honey has now lost 4M Chrome users after shady tactics were revealed

#2

Post by Larrikin » Mon, Mar 31, 2025, 6:52 PM UTC

What is the alternative? Is there an open source version that is community curated?

Re: Honey has now lost 4M Chrome users after shady tactics were revealed

#3

Post by w0m » Mon, Mar 31, 2025, 6:53 PM UTC

Larrikin wrote: post #2

What is the alternative? Is there an open source version that is community curated?

You'd think there would be a market for something OSS here. It would be problematic to keep clean/useful...

Re: Honey has now lost 4M Chrome users after shady tactics were revealed

#4

Post by Whatarethese » Mon, Mar 31, 2025, 7:00 PM UTC

Larrikin wrote: post #2

What is the alternative? Is there an open source version that is community curated?

Retailmenot.com

Re: Honey has now lost 4M Chrome users after shady tactics were revealed

#5

Post by redserk » Mon, Mar 31, 2025, 7:04 PM UTC

Whatarethese wrote: post #4

Larrikin wrote: post #2

What is the alternative? Is there an open source version that is community curated?

Retailmenot.com

I want to like RetailMeNot but every time I try it, I very seldom come across functioning coupon codes. I don't understand what incentivizes people to submit bogus codes.

Re: Honey has now lost 4M Chrome users after shady tactics were revealed

#6

Post by 0rzech » Mon, Mar 31, 2025, 7:06 PM UTC

It's ironic that probably the biggest victims were youtubers and other "influencers" who mindlessly promoted this extension to their viewers, for money of course.

Re: Honey has now lost 4M Chrome users after shady tactics were revealed

#7

Post by ebiester » Mon, Mar 31, 2025, 7:08 PM UTC

Larrikin wrote: post #2

What is the alternative? Is there an open source version that is community curated?

The alternative to a company that is hiding real coupon codes and stealing affiliate marketing dollars?

Honestly, there's no good answer here because most of the work is manual, not automated, and there are a lot of opportunities for bad actors. It's just a bad model in general.

Re: Honey has now lost 4M Chrome users after shady tactics were revealed

#8

Post by cyb_ » Mon, Mar 31, 2025, 7:08 PM UTC

"down from its peak of 20 million."

Re: Honey has now lost 4M Chrome users after shady tactics were revealed

#9

Post by jjice » Mon, Mar 31, 2025, 7:12 PM UTC

0rzech wrote: post #6

It's ironic that probably the biggest victims were youtubers and other "influencers" who mindlessly promoted this extension to their viewers, for money of course.

Genuine question I was wondering when this went down - wasn’t this completely unknown at the time? If that’s the case, I feel like I can’t blame those who promoted it. I don’t have all the info though.

Re: Honey has now lost 4M Chrome users after shady tactics were revealed

#10

Post by jabroni_salad » Mon, Mar 31, 2025, 7:14 PM UTC

In case you missed it, a co-founder of Honey did an AMA on this topic a few days ago.

https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1jlfms8/im_ryan_hudso...

I'm not a honey user but I thought this section was interesting:

> This gets a bit technical but in the video, Jonathon carefully shows you that the ‘NV_MC_LC’ cookie changes from Linus Tech Tips -> Paypal when a user engages with Honey. What he must have seen is that there is also a ‘NV_MC_FC’ cookie that stays affiliated with Linus Tech Tips and is NOT changed to Paypal. In this case LC stands for ‘last click’ and FC for ‘first click’. In the video he seems to claim that there is no first click cookie and only a last click cookie - this claim is false.

> In my DM conversation with Jonathon he claimed that he noticed the FC cookie but didn’t think it was relevant and that he was confused by it. I wonder, as an investigative journalist, did he think to ask anyone at NewEgg or the affiliate networks to explain it to him before he threw damning accusations at an industry he didn’t understand?