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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

#191

Post by ropable »

ThalesX wrote: post #114
quickymonster wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you misunderstand the feature. Ground news tells you the bias of publications that have published the news item not the slant of the news item itself. It lets you see how much news gets completely ignored by the right and left (the right is way worse) when it isn't favorable to their cause. It's also really interesting to sample both sides and see how wildly the facts get slanted as you get further from cente…

I think I understand this feature pretty well. What I'm arguing for is taking the common information between all news sources (without having to place them in left / right / center) is much higher signal to noise. Honestly your paranthesis that "the right is way worse" is already too political for my taste. It makes me feel dumb for even writing this reply. Alas, these are my thoughts. News should be news. What happe…

> Honestly your paranthesis that "the right is way worse" is already too political for my taste.

They're not wrong, though.

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

#192

Post by hooloovoo_zoo »

kmeisthax wrote: post #85
jjice wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wa…

It’s actually quite amusing as LTT used to have viewers bookmark their Amazon affiliate link in place of Amazon.com. Live by the sword…

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

#193

Post by rcxdude »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #166
gruez wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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?

> Is it really a bad thing that people with more money pay more...? Yes, it is. It is blatantly unfair to charge different people different prices. You can illustrate this with a thought experiment: nobody would think it's ok if I charge Joe $5, but charge Bob $10 because I don't like him very much. Price discrimination is very much the same thing, just with the mechanism obfuscated and dressed up in pretty language…

>nobody would think it's ok if I charge Joe $5, but charge Bob $10 because I don't like him very much

Are you sure? People often cheer on this kind of thing if they also think Bob's an asshole. (And there's no rule against it in most places unless you don't like Bob for fairly specific reasons)

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

#195

Post by gruez »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #166
gruez wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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?

> Is it really a bad thing that people with more money pay more...? Yes, it is. It is blatantly unfair to charge different people different prices. You can illustrate this with a thought experiment: nobody would think it's ok if I charge Joe $5, but charge Bob $10 because I don't like him very much. Price discrimination is very much the same thing, just with the mechanism obfuscated and dressed up in pretty language…

>Yes, it is. It is blatantly unfair to charge different people different prices. You can illustrate this with a thought experiment: nobody would think it's ok if I charge Joe $5, but charge Bob $10 because I don't like him very much.

This isn't as airtight proof of "unfair" as you think it is. Moreover this happens all the time without people being outraged. McDonalds might charge Joe $5, and Bob $10 for the same burger, because McDonalds likes Joe very much for using their app, so they send him offers.

Even if we do grant that charging people different prices is fundamentally "unfair", it leads to all sorts of strange conclusions. For instance if some retailer has some product on discount today only. Is that also "unfair"? I don't see how "buys a fridge on Wednesday rather than Thursday" is a morally justifiable reason to give different prices than say, being able to scout out a coupon or not. Should we ban time limited sales as well?

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

#196

Post by paulryanrogers »

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.

Shame so many creators took the Honey paycheck, even while Honey was taking money out of their pocket by stealing affiliate links. I guess few really vet their sponsors. Not even LTT or MrBeast!

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

#197

Post by ketau »

keoneflick wrote: post #178
ketau wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ryan here too - will try to respond to some of these with more info. The two biggest missing pieces from both my discussion and from the video are: 1) stand down rules for affiliate, and 2) cash back to the user. I was trying to address the claims he raised in the video specifically and since he didn't mention either I didn't in my reddit post except for a little bit in a couple of the answers. 1) For the case where…

Isn't the problem that none of this was transparent to the user? That honey takes affiliate commissions and MAYBE gives some of that money back to the user? That honey takes credit for the sale and MAYBE stands down in certain circumstances? I don't think any of this is transparent to the user. That's the scam.

What would you want to see for transparency?

We always tried to be as transparent to our users as possible in the product, in the faq, in our customer support, etc.

You can see evidence of that approach at 6:17 in Jonathon's video in the response that he got from customer service about how Honey works (even when he intentionally removes critical context). He reads a support email that says:

"If Honey is activated and is the last program used while shopping on a site, it is likely Honey will receive credit for the purchase, and Gold will be earned by the member. However, if your favorite influencer's affiliate link was the last program associated with your purchase during your shopping on the site then they will receive the credit for the purchase. Keep in..."

Notably he stopped reading before the "and Gold will be earned by the member" because it didn't fit his narrative.

I know it flashed on the screen faster than anyone could read and was zoomed so you couldn't see the whole thing on one screen but would you consider this level of transparency adequate if he read the whole thing?

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

#198

Post by tyre »

echelon wrote: post #175
miki123211 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And there's presumably also a profit-sharing agreement. E.G. if the retailer normally pays at 300 bps to their affiliates for a particular transaction, Honey may only get 100 or 50 bps. It's a choice between e.g. Honey giving every customer of vendor X a voucher code from a particularly valuable influencer in X's niche, which gives 30% off on first orders, versus giving them a 20% discount and taking 1.5% for itself.…

Sounds like the government needs to rip PayPal a new asshole.

Given that one of the most powerful people with the US Government right now is a member of a group called the PayPal Mafia

well

sigh

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

#199

Post by MostlyStable »

miki123211 wrote: post #137
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.

And there's presumably also a profit-sharing agreement. E.G. if the retailer normally pays at 300 bps to their affiliates for a particular transaction, Honey may only get 100 or 50 bps. It's a choice between e.g. Honey giving every customer of vendor X a voucher code from a particularly valuable influencer in X's niche, which gives 30% off on first orders, versus giving them a 20% discount and taking 1.5% for itself.…

It is _maybe_ a great deal for the average consumer, who might not be putting any effort into finding deals. It's emphatically not a good deal for the (probably small) group of users who _would_ have put in the effort and found the _actual_ best deal, but trusted Honey who said they would provide the best deal and then knowingly gave worse deals (lied, potentially committed fraud?).

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

#200

Post by gruez »

a4isms wrote: post #182
gruez wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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."

Nobody claimed it was somehow 100% accurate. After all, it's not like many stores ask for your tax returns before telling you the price (although they might very much would like to). The point holds even if it's approximately true.
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