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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

#81

Post by johnnyanmac »

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.

pre-paypal when I used it, I thought they were simply cutting deals with the vendors as a middleman for their own affiliate links, like any other influencer would. If you can automate that process of delivering the affiliate links, then it's a big win for that plugin.

I suppose post pay that they dug into darker arts, sadly.

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

#82

Post by AlexandrB »

chatmasta wrote: post #73
elamje wrote: post #71

Have a friend high up at one of the “Big 3” in this space. The entire business model is predicated on injecting themselves as the last click for attribution even when they weren’t remotely responsible for the conversion. Cool business, but can’t keep going on forever without someone catching on.

I remember when this was called cookie stuffing, and eBay even sent a guy to jail for doing it with their affiliate program. That’s the same eBay that owned PayPal, which now owns Honey…

Do as I say not as I do.

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

#83

Post by overfeed »

xboxnolifes wrote: post #38
ChocolateGod wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I thought Honey sold consumer shopping data.

[flagged]

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

#85

Post by kmeisthax »

jjice wrote: post #9
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.

LTT found out about the affiliate code changes and dropped Honey as a sponsor. The problem is, when they drop a sponsor it's usually only announced on their forum page. Linus considered making a video for a wider audience but was worried he'd get shit on for bringing up an issue that technically only impacted him.

Remember: before MegaLeg's video the only thing that was known was the affiliate code ripping, and it was only known by a handful of YouTubers warning each other in private.

My personal opinion is that they should have sounded the alarm, even though the only people getting scammed were creators, because it was a broader attack on the whole YouTube ecosystem and not just LTT. Hell, there's even precedent for LTT making self-interested YouTube videos; remember when their Amazon affiliate account got shut down and they had to beg Dread Pirate Bezos to be reinstated? YouTube creators that are pushing people to products and services should be willing and able to completely trash those services if they turn out to be shit - or, at the very least, are being shit to them.

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

#86

Post by charcircuit »

jonny_eh wrote: post #49
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?

Only a percentage of people on a site will convert. Increasing that percentage is valuable.

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

#87

Post by polishdude20 »

babypuncher wrote: post #65
0rzech wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they didn't know how it works, then how could they promote it as an awesome tool and something good? I expect people to have some integrity, not "god money above all" mentality. You can and IMHO actually should blame them for promoting crap. No sympathies on my part towards promoters of Honey, to be honest. Especially the so called "tech" channels. But this time they've tasted their own medicine. BTW., here's a ve…

The problem is Honey was dishonest about how it works. Their marketing claimed that Honey automatically applied coupon codes for various online retailers during the checkout phase. Nobody really had a problem with this. What got found out and landed Honey in hot water, is the affiliate link hijacking behavior which they did not disclose. Basically, any time you follow an affiliate link with Honey installed, it replac…

I thi k that's the issue though. The YouTubers promoting Honey weren't really telling us what they personally felt about honey, they were telling us what Honey wanted them to say.

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

#88

Post by lozenge »

charcircuit wrote: post #86
jonny_eh wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Only a percentage of people on a site will convert. Increasing that percentage is valuable.

How does displaying a message "Honey didn't find any discounts for your order" on the cart screen, increasing that percentage?

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

#89

Post by cogman10 »

LPisGood wrote: post #70
beAbU wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Anyone who flogs ball shavers, ass wipes or fuckin microwave dinners don't give a shit about their viewers I mean what’s wrong with selling ball shavers, ass wipes, and fuckin’ microwave dinners? These aren’t really harmful things and they provide actual value to people. Are you just opposed to advertising as a concept?

Those I have less of a problem with. What I actually have a problem with is the supplement sales, VPN sales, and gambling sales. "Here's a magic multivitamin that will make you feel 1000% better!". "You are so unsafe by not using a VPN, here use our service which also gets to peak at everything you send through it". "Wanna bet on this Ping-Pong championship? Well, grab some crypto and go to this 'not legal in the US but who's watching' website where you can bet on anything!"

Those can actually be harmful things, and a LOT of media producers will advertise them as being the best thing since sliced bread (Usually having personal endorsements required in the copy).

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

#90

Post by ThalesX »

chatmasta wrote: post #80
ThalesX wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've built a local (for my country) news aggregator that basically clusters news and summarizes them based on multiple sources and gives me the rundown of the most important things, and things that can be found between conflicting sources. It's mostly a pet project for myself as it doesn't seem to have a lot of stickyness without the clickbait. I gave the 'product' to friends and some of them told me "oh, you should…

Ground.news also gives the information that is present in only one side, which is just as high signal – if not higher – as showing the overlap IMO. They have a feed for “stories with equal coverage” and “stories covered mostly in left-leaning sources” and “stories covered mostly in right-leaning sources.”

I'm seaching for 'equal' on the home page and finding no results, nor for 'feeds'. Could you help me identify those locations? It's always confusing to me when I go to their home page and would appreciate it. I think the equal coverage might be what I'm actually looking for.
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