Honey's Dieselgate: Detecting and tricking testers • Hacker News Board

Re: Honey's Dieselgate: Detecting and tricking testers

#171

Post by constantcrying » Thu, Jan 01, 2026, 10:26 AM UTC

TRiG_Ireland wrote: post #166

constantcrying wrote: post #129

To be honest, the Megalag video really made it clear what a great product Honey is. It is very explicit about the fact that you, as the consumer, can get extraordinary deals by using the extension. This also makes me think that the whole campaign is astroturfed. The only "victims" of Honey are influencers and storefronts, who of course will do their part in trying to get their customers to stop using the product, but…

Honey promises to businesses to let them control which coupons are available, and promises to customers to always show them the best coupons. At least one of those two promises is a lie.

The Megalag demonstrated that they lied to the businesses and enabled extraordinary deals for consumers. I do not think that this is disputed.

Re: Honey's Dieselgate: Detecting and tricking testers

#172

Post by pamcake » Fri, Jan 02, 2026, 12:59 AM UTC

zaphirplane wrote: post #39

Aurornis wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my experience, it’s more likely that the engineers who got far enough in the company to be working on this code believed that their willingness to work on nefarious tasks that others might refuse or whistle-blow made them a trusted asset within the company. In industries like this there’s also a mindset of “Who cares, it’s all going to corporations anyway, why not send some of that money to the corporation that…

Do you know of anyone declining to work on a project For ethical in their view ( non military non killing) ? I’ve led a sheltered life and never met one, people have told me they wouldn’t apply for a role with a company for ethical reasons maybe they even believed they would get the job

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Re: Honey's Dieselgate: Detecting and tricking testers

#173

Post by nerdsniper » Fri, Jan 02, 2026, 1:59 PM UTC

bryan_w wrote: post #22

I used to work for an ad tech company (which I know already makes me the devil to some around here), and even I think that they crossed a line with this. A lot of industry terms are coded in corporate speak to make them sound better (think "revealed preferences" or "enabling personalization"), but I would genuinely like to know what the engineers thought when doing design reviews for a "selective stand down" feature.…

See also: Uber's Greyball scheme. [0][1][2]

Uber developed a software tool called "Greyball" to avoid giving rides to known law enforcement officers in areas where its service was illegal such as in Portland, Oregon, Australia, South Korea, and China. The tool identified government officials using geofencing, mining credit card databases, identifying devices, and searches of social media. Uber stated that it only used the tool to identify riders that violated its terms of service, after investigations by the United States Department of Justice, Uber admitted to using the tool to facilitate violations of local regulations by obstructing law enforcement investigations of their illegal operations.

There were no criminal consequences for Uber (however, it reportedly contributed to a 2 year hiatus from London due to rejection of operating license renewal). So Honey may have decided the risk level was acceptable.

0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13785564

1: https://archive.is/DzQha ( https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/03/uber-secr... )

2: https://archive.is/tqk3W ( https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/03/technology/uber-greyball-... )

Re: Honey's Dieselgate: Detecting and tricking testers

#174

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jan 02, 2026, 2:03 PM UTC

bryan_w wrote: post #22

I used to work for an ad tech company (which I know already makes me the devil to some around here), and even I think that they crossed a line with this. A lot of industry terms are coded in corporate speak to make them sound better (think "revealed preferences" or "enabling personalization"), but I would genuinely like to know what the engineers thought when doing design reviews for a "selective stand down" feature.…

[deleted]

Re: Honey's Dieselgate: Detecting and tricking testers

#175

Post by nerdsniper » Fri, Jan 02, 2026, 2:56 PM UTC

constantcrying wrote: post #171

TRiG_Ireland wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honey promises to businesses to let them control which coupons are available, and promises to customers to always show them the best coupons. At least one of those two promises is a lie.

The Megalag demonstrated that they lied to the businesses and enabled extraordinary deals for consumers. I do not think that this is disputed.

It is disputed. The Megalag video showed that businesses have the ability to delete the best codes from Honey.