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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

#201

Post by sureIy »

ryandrake wrote: post #60

The whole world of affiliate marketing and lead generation seems so thoroughly and irredeemably scummy, I can't really come up with much sympathy for anyone here. It's just middlemen all the way down, and everything is more expensive because they all have their little fingers in the pie.

I dislike affiliate and ads just like anyone else, but without them, people just will never find your product. At some point you just have to hope some reviewer picks you up and gives you some boost, but even then how will the reviewer find you?

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

#202

Post by LelouBil »

jahsome wrote: post #183
cbdumas wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think they refer to the fact that Honey also sets itself as affiliate when not finding any code.

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

#203

Post by MostlyStable »

jahsome wrote: post #183
cbdumas wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

weren't they inserting themselves even in cases where there was no available coupon? Finding the user a deal isn't "doing literally nothing", and the argument for honey inserting itself in that case is at least not crazy. But as I understand it, they inserted themselves in every case even when they very literally did nothing (no deal, nothing).

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

#204

Post by tantalor »

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.

Why stop there? Anybody making deals with Honey is co-conspirator under RICO.

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

#205

Post by maximus-decimus »

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…

Considering eBay also had management that harassed people by mailing them live spiders and dead pig fetuses... https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ebay-pay-3-million-empl...

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

#206

Post by londons_explore »

willy_k wrote: post #45
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 see…

I bet their investors are willing to pay a lot for a userbase alone.

Get a substantial number of users, and it can be used to extract money from publishers to be part of the service, and the information provided can be swayed to investors objectives.

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

#207

Post by whycome »

threeseed wrote: post #121
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.

> but can’t keep going on forever without someone catching on But despite a lot of coverage they've only lost about 1/5 of their user base.

Apathy? Communications spin? Lack of technical understanding? I suspect some people installed it on a whim based on the recommendation of someone and then forgot about it.

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

#208

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

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…

It's totally different you see. This time the fraud was done by a faceless corporation maximizing shareholder returns so this is just an exercise in free speech by an immortal, in the same vein as running an unlicensed lottery.

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

#209

Post by wavemode »

jahsome wrote: post #183
cbdumas wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You're framing this in an extremely slanted way.

> So honey is undeniably aiding in the sale.

First of all, "undeniably" here is hyperbole. At best you could say "possibly, occasionally". You were already brought to site by a content creator, added the item to your cart, and are in the process of checking out. Why would a coupon code aggregator then deserve the commission for that sale?

> It's not "literally doing nothing" to compile and automatically apply/suggest coupon codes.

Even when they don't find a coupon code, they still take the commission for the sale. That is quite literally the definition of getting paid for doing nothing.

> Is it valuable? Objectively, yes, hence the millions upon millions of users.

Well, no. As the investigation revealed, Honey doesn't actually find any coupon code most of the time. In fact, this is intentional - they partner with retailers to limit the coupon codes they provide to shoppers. In other words they are intentionally providing negative value for the end user most of the time (when compared to searching the Web for a coupon code manually).

You clearly either know nothing about the investigation, or are a Honey employee.

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

#210

Post by YuccaGloriosa »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #196
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!

When I first heard all this about honey I was shocked, remembering seeing Linus plug them. Of all the people to have the potential ability to see through it. The way I see it is that anyone who sponsors things like YouTube videos as widely as they do is generally a piece of s** company. Normally up to something, that makes it worth their while to spaff money on such things. 80 quid razors, AI driven news classifiers, VPNs, meh...
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