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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

#261

Post by sksksk »

chihuahua wrote: post #254
eru wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's no less weird that store running a promotion saying 'If you buy item X today, we will donate one dollar of the proceeds to charity Y.' Also not more weird than the British charity thing of "I'm shaving off all my hair, and that's why you should donate to charity Y." (I suspect Brits need an excuse before they are mentally allowed to do something silly. But any excuse will do.)

I've always been baffled by the British charity thing: You want to ride your tricycle from John O'Groats to Ffestiniog? Fine, do it. You want me to donate to this charity? OK, maybe I'll do it. I just don't see the connection between the two. Please explain the connection to me. You don't actually want to ride your tricycle? But if I donate to some third party, you're going to do something you hate? So you're saying…

The charity you’re raising for sets up the infrastructure to do the activity. Charities, for example, have spots in marathons which are hard to get other wise.

So if you see a friend is trying to do some personal achievement, and you think the charity is a worthwhile one to donate to; why not combine the two and help your friend achieve their goal whilst also raising money for a good cause.

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

#262

Post by cedws »

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!

BetterHelp is arguably worse. Everything I've heard about them sounds terrible, but they're all over YouTube and presumably they're getting a lot of vulnerable customers who will never receive the support they need.

The YouTubers that peddle this shit have no morals.

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

#263

Post by alias_neo »

chihuahua wrote: post #254
eru wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's no less weird that store running a promotion saying 'If you buy item X today, we will donate one dollar of the proceeds to charity Y.' Also not more weird than the British charity thing of "I'm shaving off all my hair, and that's why you should donate to charity Y." (I suspect Brits need an excuse before they are mentally allowed to do something silly. But any excuse will do.)

I've always been baffled by the British charity thing: You want to ride your tricycle from John O'Groats to Ffestiniog? Fine, do it. You want me to donate to this charity? OK, maybe I'll do it. I just don't see the connection between the two. Please explain the connection to me. You don't actually want to ride your tricycle? But if I donate to some third party, you're going to do something you hate? So you're saying…

It's something we've been raised to do from a young age.

I've never thought about it before, but I suppose it's a way for you to provide some commitment from yourself as a condition for those you're crowdsourcing donations from.

If you don't deliver on your part, they don't have to pay.

When I was in high-school we did everything from shaving our heads, to having your legs waxed in front of the whole (boys) school.

I raised thousands of £ for charity this way, more than I could ever raise by myself at that age.

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

#264

Post by arkh »

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.

As a not an American, I can't fathom the love for coupon you all have.

Shit system, shit value for the client, and still it looks like some people would kill for a 5% one-time discount on anything.

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

#265

Post by Ekaros »

kin wrote: post #246
dleary wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 conflictin…

The VPN example really made me to take view that these affiliate cuts are scamming me... Without them I could get stuff significantly cheaper. So faster whole system is brought down the better.

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

#266

Post by oivey »

It’s still shocking to me that in this whole ordeal many reviewers escaped scrutiny. Getting a cut of a sale of a product that you portray yourself as impartially reviewing is insanely immoral. Who cares if these people scammed themselves in the service of scamming me?

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

#268

Post by floydnoel »

YuccaGloriosa wrote: post #210
paulryanrogers wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

My more general rule is that anything being advertised to me must be way overpriced or a scam, in order to pay for the expensive advertisements. I won’t buy nearly anything I see advertised. I don’t run into many ads anyway, but some always get through!

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

#269

Post by matejn »

YuccaGloriosa wrote: post #210
paulryanrogers wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Here I have to chime in and say that a certain YouTube razor is one of my favourite purchases ever. But I guess it's rather niche, being a double edged safety razor.

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

#270

Post by pembrook »

oivey wrote: post #266

It’s still shocking to me that in this whole ordeal many reviewers escaped scrutiny. Getting a cut of a sale of a product that you portray yourself as impartially reviewing is insanely immoral. Who cares if these people scammed themselves in the service of scamming me?

Agreed. You can't even trust Wirecutter anymore due to the incentives of affiliate revenue driven content.

While everybody hates display ads, at least they are clearly ads, and aren't usually mistaken for authentic content. Affiliate marketing on the other hand...well that's the entire point! Trick people into thinking the creator has independently recommended a product because it's good, and not because they're getting paid. The content is the ad.

Affiliate marketing is evolving into a giant Tax on the entire internet economy.

To give you an example, in highly competitive software markets (VPNs, CRMs, Project Management, Email tools, Help Desk Software, etc) affiliate payouts reach as high as 50% of recurring revenue in perpetuity.

What do you think that software would cost if it wasn't paying out 50% of revenue (not profit) to influencers and reviewers to push it on unsuspecting people?

On any list of "The Best [thing] for [purpose]" appearing on Search or Youtube, it's smart to just assume it's a descending rank order of the products that offer the highest affiliate payouts. Often with the creator twisting themselves into a psychological pretzel to pretend like their "opinion" wasn't strongly influenced by the $$$.

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