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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

#241

Post by cbozeman »

jack_pp wrote: post #232
YuccaGloriosa wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Why would Linus have the ability to see through it? He isn't into software, probably can't code at all. His channel is dedicated to hardware

And he's not actually that great at that, if his storage server videos are any indication.

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

#242

Post by wingworks »

cogman10 wrote: post #89
LPisGood wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Yeah this! The day that casey neistat started advertising nordvpn, I lost a lot of interest in his content.

I personally don't mind creators advertising VPNs, but just be honest about it. Don't pretend like it's your favourite VPN you've always used, and it's the bestest, most secure, will make you super safe..

If they'd say like, I've been paid to advertise xyz VPN, I've tried it for a few days, works as advertised. I can watch my US Netflex while traveling out of the US, or whatever. But keep in mind, instead of just your ISP knowing where you browse, now the VPN providers knows, and is probably selling your data. Like, cut the bs.

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

#243

Post by kin »

al_borland wrote: post #125
gruez wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like your ire should be directed at the retailers who created the coupons in the first place, not Honey for letting people know they exist.

The coupon aspect is what pushes companies to sign up. Honey had a page on how to sell to companies, and it was around increased sales, and things of that nature... pretty traditional coupon stuff. Honey gets additional ire, for what they did beyond that. Coupons are manipulative, but Honey was also lying to pretty much everyone involved in the transactions, as well as their advertising partners.

What do you feel like the lie was?

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

#244

Post by kelseydh »

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…

Last Click Attribution is the most common model for affiliate revenue, not First Click Attribution. That the First Click Attribution cookie is still being set is mostly a red herring. Most online sales have 100% of the affiliate revenue going to Last Click Attribution.

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

#245

Post by rs186 »

kin wrote: post #148
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?

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-...

I find it hard to understand -- many of these retailers are struggling, and I doubt affiliate links and cash backs are the best way to spend their market money

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

#246

Post by kin »

dleary wrote: post #69
ChocolateGod wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> tech tubers were only really upset that Honey was stealing from /them/ But wasn't Honey paying them?

> But wasn't Honey paying them? Yes, but Honey was also stealing from them. Most youtubers make a significant portion of their income via affiliate links. So, consider the following scenario. I made up these numbers, I don't know if these are accurate: Honey pays a youtuber $1k for a single ad spot. Due to that ad, many of the youtuber's audience installs the Honey extension. Afterwards, the youtuber's affiliate link…

YouTubers have no idea how much money they are losing due to last click attribution. They're mad that it could be a lot but in reality it is more likely very little.

MegaLag posted a VPN example, which was an edge case, but it was enough to spark outrage. Ironically, there are many YouTubers who have only Amazon affiliate links which Honey never touches.

Many YouTubers that Honey sponsored also didn't have conflicting affiliate links at the time of promotion.

Also, if you work with affiliate links, you should probably know how they work. IMO it'd be condescending if Honey tried to explain to every YouTuber how last click attribution worked.

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

#248

Post by kin »

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.

That's fair.

But consider a retailer who has budget to spend with the goal of increasing sales. Here's a study one of the largest affiliate networks did on shopping extensions - https://junction.cj.com/article/cj-demystifies-shopping-brow...

It boils down to making numbers go up. Maybe for you, Honey doesn't do much. But add Honey to the picture, and retailers are seeing an increase in sales and a decrease in cart abandonment. So you choose to partner with a coupon company and pay them commission and for some percentage of users, seeing that popup pushed them over the edge to make the purchase.

In the attribution chain, when you compare an initial referral vs. the coupon app, it's fair to say that the initial referral has more impact. So maybe you want the initial referral to take most or all of the credit. But what about when there's no referral? Doesn't the coupon app deserve to be a part of the chain if it is ultimately driving positive return?

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

#249

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]
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