This is basically the same scam the Brave does
What does Brave do?
Exposing the Honey Influencer Scam [video]
61–70 of 95 posts
Re: Exposing the Honey Influencer Scam [video]
#62This has me wondering if this could be cause for a class action lawsuit by influencers affiliated with Honey or by Consumers who installed the extension.
Looking forward to it.
Re: Exposing the Honey Influencer Scam [video]
#63As an ex-employee, the overriding affiliate links and setting fix discount rates with merchants is sad to see. The original mission was always to help customers make more informed purchases and save money. Seems like a lot of that was lost post-acquisition, and instead of innovating on the core mission of saving money, they just doubled down on exploiting first click affiliate monetization. They should only make money if customers save money and partner with affiliates but instead they hopped on the gravy train.
Re: Exposing the Honey Influencer Scam [video]
#64[deleted]
Re: Exposing the Honey Influencer Scam [video]
#65As an ex-employee, the overriding affiliate links and setting fix discount rates with merchants is sad to see. The original mission was always to help customers make more informed purchases and save money. Seems like a lot of that was lost post-acquisition, and instead of innovating on the core mission of saving money, they just doubled down on exploiting first click affiliate monetization. They should only make mone…
What was the original business model that Honey had? I only know of the current Honey approach, inserting themselves into the checkout page, did Honey work differently before? More like a coupon search engine? That’s the only way I can imagine “first click” makes sense.
Re: Exposing the Honey Influencer Scam [video]
#66At this moment, Honey addon is still in Firefox and Chrome's catalog. Have reported them at both places and gave 1-star as well.
Re: Exposing the Honey Influencer Scam [video]
#67[deleted]
Re: Exposing the Honey Influencer Scam [video]
#68I love how the only historical discussion on the topic he found was a HN discussion from 2019 where at least one person was confidently claiming they don’t steal affiliate commissions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21589273
haha yeah, I went back in time and found that same comment from gamblor956 and was thinking "comments that don't age well"
Re: Exposing the Honey Influencer Scam [video]
#69As someone who has used Honey in the past, while I knew it was taking affiliate commissions in some form or another I had no idea just how insanely deceptive it was. I was completely unaware that it sneakily overrides any existing affiliate codes, AND does this even if it hasn't found any discount whatsoever. It's hard to see this as anything other than fraudulent.
... and also lets stores ensure the end user doesn't get a deal the store doesn't want them to get!
Re: Exposing the Honey Influencer Scam [video]
#70How would you even build a better version of this geared towards consumers? I don’t see the incentives lining up unless you start charging for the service.
The consumer never gets the affiliate cut either way. If there are coupon codes, the consumer wins. If there aren't, the customer only loses a bit of privacy about what they're buying, which most people don't care about anyway.
If there's a better coupon code, but the retailer pays Honey to not show it to you, the consumer loses.