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

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

#41

Post by dandesim »

jabroni_salad wrote: post #10

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 t…

He's blatantly ignoring that most affiliate programs only payout to the last-click. Okay...great...the first click attribution is maintained, but if there is no payout for it, then the core issue is still the issue.

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

#42

Post by jonas21 »

Whatarethese wrote: post #4
Larrikin wrote: post #2

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

Retailmenot.com

They inject their affiliate code just like Honey does. Why do you think they open a new tab that loads the retailer's site when you click to show the coupon code?

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

#43

Post by parsimo2010 »

ChocolateGod wrote: post #24
magicalhippo wrote: post #14

A couple of YouTubers I watch promoted this and given what I assumed it did, I'm surprised that's all it does. If it seems to good to be true, it probably is.

How did people think honey was making money? I think a lot of these YouTubers are pretending to be shocked or caught out.

I didn't even think about how they could be making money before this came out (I wasn't a user), but I would have put my money on them harvesting your browser history and selling it to advertisers, which seems shady but is kind of normal for the web today. Affiliate link manipulation and coercing websites into paying protection money to hide lucrative coupons would have been low on my list of guesses.

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

#44

Post by mschuster91 »

jmuguy wrote: post #21
jabroni_salad wrote: post #10

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 t…

Yeah, somehow I doubt we'll ever see a follow up from MegaLag. Well except that he's probably getting sued into oblivion by Paypal for libel.

SLAPP at its finest, eh.

It's time libel laws get reformed, so that not only huuuuge ass international newspapers can afford to report shady shit by BigCo.

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

#45

Post by willy_k »

magicalhippo wrote: post #14

A couple of YouTubers I watch promoted this and given what I assumed it did, I'm surprised that's all it does. If it seems to good to be true, it probably is.

Something that has been making the sponsorship rounds now is Ground News[0] which I have found very useful with just the free tier. But given how many people I have seen sponsored by them, I wonder if there is some catch, especially because I can’t imagine that many people sign up for the paid service. I can’t think of what that catch would be though, they do not have unique access to personal data, and I haven’t seen anything that would indicate that they have any information agenda.

[0] https://ground.news

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

#46

Post by skyyler »

xmprt wrote: post #37
DataDive wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the opposite reaction ... they still have 16 million users ...

Losing 4M is pretty significant considering that's 4M people who actively decided to uninstall something. A majority of the 16M might be dead users (installed on an old browser) or people who don't realize it's still installed but also don't interact with the extension at all.

>people who don't realize it's still installed but also don't interact with the extension at all.

This is still making Honey money through the hijacking of affiliate links.

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

#48

Post by beAbU »

ChocolateGod wrote: post #24
magicalhippo wrote: post #14

A couple of YouTubers I watch promoted this and given what I assumed it did, I'm surprised that's all it does. If it seems to good to be true, it probably is.

How did people think honey was making money? I think a lot of these YouTubers are pretending to be shocked or caught out.

Honey was replacing their affliate links with it's own. So these tech tubers were only really upset that Honey was stealing from /them/, they don't give a fuck about their viewers.

Anyone who flogs ball shavers, ass wipes or fuckin microwave dinners don't give a shit about their viewers, and only care about their bottom lines and will shill whatever they can for the right price.

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

#49

Post by jonny_eh »

jabroni_salad wrote: post #10

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 t…

Why even claim last click attribution while the user is literally on the site?

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

#50

Post by Tadpole9181 »

Larrikin wrote: post #2

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

To be honest? The majority of discount culture is a disgusting trap where retailers inflate default MSRPs and manipulate price histories so they can put big percent signs on the products to bring them down to normal and FOMO/gouge anyone with time constraints.

T-shirts and vacuums aren't perishable. Make everything cheaper all the time, adjust the cost to reflect actual supply/demand, and stop the wiggling banners and big signs and calculations every time I want to buy anything.

It's like an app for finding out the minimum you have to tip for a waitress to be able to survive. Maybe that's not the solution.

But I'm also just a grouch these days...

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