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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

#181

Post by buzzerbetrayed »

zonkerdonker wrote: post #91
dpbriggs wrote: post #84

Why do retailers put up with Honey? They're clearly not providing value with the attribution theft. Why give them money?

Extortion, essentially. Honey will actually give users the largest available discount if the retailer doesn't buy into the affiliate program (i.e. the retailer loses money). If they do agree, then the retailer can limit the coupons and discount code shown to customers through Honey.

Why do retailers offer those discounts then? Why not deactivate them instead of allowing honey to give them to their users? Am I misunderstanding what honey does?

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

#182

Post by a4isms »

gruez wrote: post #120
ryandrake wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like the whole system would be so much better without coupons. Retailers should charge a single transparent price without having everyone have to go trawling around the Internet for coupon codes which may or may not work, and then being mad because some customers found bigger coupons, which you really didn't want them to find. And other customers using coupon finders who themselves are opaque and sometimes g…

>The whole system seems to be set up to reward [...] 2. customers willing to deal with a ridiculous system for a discount. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination#Coupons It's unclear whether banning price discrimination as a whole is a good thing. Is it really a bad thing that people with more money pay more, and people with more time can get a discount?

Price discrimination isn't just "rich people pay more." It's also, "Our data shows that people in these demographic locations will pay more."

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

#183

Post by jahsome »

cbdumas wrote: post #57
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…

I saw that and I'm not convinced this changes anything. The fact that Honey is inserting itself into the affiliate attribution chain at all when it did literally nothing is still wrong to me.

There's a very reasonable argument to be made a number of shopers wouldn't convert if they didn't feel like they were getting a "deal." So honey is undeniably aiding in the sale.

It's not "literally doing nothing" to compile and automatically apply/suggest coupon codes. That's literally doing something. Is it valuable? Objectively, yes, hence the millions upon millions of users.

Your statement is either hyperbolic or disingenuous: the very two things people are accusing honey of doing.

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

#184

Post by kin »

luckylion wrote: post #149
kin wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not true. In the affiliate marketing space, Honey won many awards for being great business partners. Yes, there are examples of retailers being impacted when Honey picked up on a coupon that was not supposed to be public, but Honey always cooperated at removing such codes whether you partnered with them or not.

Great business partner providing ... what value? They're not guiding the user to shop a or shop b, they're - redirecting the attribution away from the actual affiliate (could hurt shops because their affiliates become unhappy and advertise their competitors) - automatically applying coupons that decrease the shop's margin. How are they "great business partners"?

The article I linked supports this but to put it simply, Honey delivers a return on ad spend. Your first point is true, but Honey and other extensions practice "stand down" where if detected, they'll not affiliate tag if there's one already there. It's not a perfect system and there are edge cases to prove the system is not perfect. It's ultimately up to the retailer to decide whether or not to partner with Honey. The data in the report shows that users with Honey have lower cart abandonment and higher purchase rate. Looking at the numbers, retailers like these two things so they choose to partner. Automatically applying coupons can decrease margin, but why have coupons at all? Retailers take this into account when putting out coupons. Users who use Honey are typically users who would look for a coupon elsewhere. Retailers would rather the user not leave their website. Honey keeps users on the checkout page.

In terms of being "great business partners". The affiliate space like other industries requires a team of people on the retailer side and Honey's side talking to each other and establishing a relationship. Here is a random article I just Google'd that sheds a bit of light about that relationship. https://www.advertisepurple.com/affiliate-spotlight-a-conver...

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

#185

Post by traes »

buzzerbetrayed wrote: post #181
zonkerdonker wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extortion, essentially. Honey will actually give users the largest available discount if the retailer doesn't buy into the affiliate program (i.e. the retailer loses money). If they do agree, then the retailer can limit the coupons and discount code shown to customers through Honey.

Why do retailers offer those discounts then? Why not deactivate them instead of allowing honey to give them to their users? Am I misunderstanding what honey does?

That would mean deactivating all discounts. Honey actively scrapes for them, so as soon as a discount is available on the internet it will find it. Not an impossible solution, but not a popular one.

You could probably be clever and come up with a more complicated discount scheme that's not so easy for Honey to take advantage of, but that adds complexity for users as well.

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

#186

Post by johnnyanmac »

barbecue_sauce wrote: post #170
johnnyanmac wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So this perspective boils down to "entrepreneurs are evil"? An interesting take to put on a site dedicated to funding entrepreneurs.

Is that really how people view HackerNews? I've always felt the connection to YCombinator to be largely superficial, with the site being mostly for people looking to get news on technology itself, rather than the business thereof.

Given some of the perspectives here, especially with tech fads, absolutely. They are definitely prolific users here who have that feeling that they support or defend certain ideas in tech as they work on their next project in that area.

As well as just some general sentiments you see from browsing here:

- Strongly anti-copyright and seem fine completely abolishing the idea. One that would remove regulations when it comes to selliing ideas.

- Often defends the idea of private marketplaces and their cuts on developers. Which seems odd on the surface. but it makes sense when you consider it is easier to minmax for one monoplistic storefront than develop endpoints to support multiple stores. Why disrupt something you make steady income from as is?

- There's definietly underlying sentiments towards in work-related topics that come from those leading/managing companies. a stronger skew towards employee productivity and a need to aggressively weed out "low performers". A slight skew supporting business decisions like mass layoffs, even suggesting those laid off were low performers or otherwise just freeloading.

little things you catch here and there as you browse a community for years.

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

#187

Post by kin »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #160
kin wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Retailers have budget to spend and have that spend deliver a return. It's just a simple return on investment. CJ, one of the biggest affiliate companies even encourages working with shopping extensions. https://junction.cj.com/cj-value-of-browser-extension-study-...

Except many companies came forward during the expose, explaining how honey loses them money, not makes them money.

Sure, and in those cases those retailers may choose not to partner with Honey. However, Honey maintains an active partnership with quite a lot of happy retailers, even after PayPal took over.

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

#189

Post by jahsome »

echelon wrote: post #179
skyyler wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

The DOJ should fine PayPal for racketeering. This seems like it should be beyond illegal and land people in jail. This extorts online businesses and steals from content creators. There is no good in this tool whatsoever. It probably tracks consumers on top of all their other shitty behavior.

What about it is (or should be) illegal? They're playing by the exact same rules as every affiliate marketer in existence.

I have a dozen or so rhetorical questions I'm not going to bother with, because I doubt there's any progress to be made.

Honey is just capitalism incarnate, baby.

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

#190

Post by [deleted] »

zonkerdonker wrote: post #91
dpbriggs wrote: post #84

Why do retailers put up with Honey? They're clearly not providing value with the attribution theft. Why give them money?

Extortion, essentially. Honey will actually give users the largest available discount if the retailer doesn't buy into the affiliate program (i.e. the retailer loses money). If they do agree, then the retailer can limit the coupons and discount code shown to customers through Honey.

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