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Honey's Dieselgate: Detecting and tricking testers

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Re: Honey's Dieselgate: Detecting and tricking testers

#71

Post by chanchowancho »

zaphirplane wrote: post #39
Aurornis wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my experience, it’s more likely that the engineers who got far enough in the company to be working on this code believed that their willingness to work on nefarious tasks that others might refuse or whistle-blow made them a trusted asset within the company. In industries like this there’s also a mindset of “Who cares, it’s all going to corporations anyway, why not send some of that money to the corporation that…

Do you know of anyone declining to work on a project For ethical in their view ( non military non killing) ? I’ve led a sheltered life and never met one, people have told me they wouldn’t apply for a role with a company for ethical reasons maybe they even believed they would get the job

Yes! I once met a highly paid contract tech lead who had walked out of a lucrative contract with a supermarket after he became aware the new credit card product he was working on was to be exclusively targeted at customers in poor areas.

The moral fortitude on that man!

I applaud his actions, but genuinely do not know if I would have the stones to leave my job if I was in a similar position!

Re: Honey's Dieselgate: Detecting and tricking testers

#72

Post by rundev »

charcircuit wrote: post #68

>And the effort Honey expended, to conceal its behavior from industry insiders, makes it particularly clear that Honey knew it would be in trouble if it was caught. The same could be said about yt-dlp. They know what they are doing youtube doesn't like. But yt-dlp itself is legal.

The difference being that yt-dlp isn't a business partner (and/or competitor) of YT.

Re: Honey's Dieselgate: Detecting and tricking testers

#73

Post by ramraj07 »

bryan_w wrote: post #22

I used to work for an ad tech company (which I know already makes me the devil to some around here), and even I think that they crossed a line with this. A lot of industry terms are coded in corporate speak to make them sound better (think "revealed preferences" or "enabling personalization"), but I would genuinely like to know what the engineers thought when doing design reviews for a "selective stand down" feature.…

This is no different, and frankly far less alarming to me, than Uber's project greyball from 2017, which should have tanked a company in a just world. I suppose some companies just promulgate a culture where its acceptable or even lauded to evade law and contracts: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/03/technology/uber-greyball-...

Re: Honey's Dieselgate: Detecting and tricking testers

#74

Post by Kwpolska »

a_paddy wrote: post #15

TLDR; - The Honey browser extension inserted their own affiliate link at checkout, depriving others of affiliate revenue. - Honey collected discount codes entered by users while shopping online, then shook down website owners to have the discount codes removed. - Honey should have "stood down" if an affiliate link was detected, but their algorithm would decide to skip the stand down based on if the user could be the…

Re the second point, it specifically collected valuable codes that shouldn't be widely shared, e.g. employee discounts.

Re the third point, the algorithm would skip stand down for users who weren't likely to be testers (based on account history and lack of cookies for affiliate marketing admin panels).

Re: Honey's Dieselgate: Detecting and tricking testers

#75

Post by fernandotakai »

zaphirplane wrote: post #39
Aurornis wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my experience, it’s more likely that the engineers who got far enough in the company to be working on this code believed that their willingness to work on nefarious tasks that others might refuse or whistle-blow made them a trusted asset within the company. In industries like this there’s also a mindset of “Who cares, it’s all going to corporations anyway, why not send some of that money to the corporation that…

Do you know of anyone declining to work on a project For ethical in their view ( non military non killing) ? I’ve led a sheltered life and never met one, people have told me they wouldn’t apply for a role with a company for ethical reasons maybe they even believed they would get the job

>Do you know of anyone declining to work on a project For ethical in their view ( non military non killing) ?

o/

i was offered a high paying job, with relocation to a 1st world country (at the time, i was living in a 3rd world country with high murder rates), to a industry that i consider quite shady (and it's not military and not around killing -- i have no issues with both of those). i politely refused.

most of my friends, at the time, told me that they would've have accepted without even thinking, but for me, it's just not worth it.

Re: Honey's Dieselgate: Detecting and tricking testers

#76

Post by hofrogs »

fragmede wrote: post #33
the_snooze wrote: post #4

Original MegaLag video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCGT_CKGgFE You'd think that if you were an engineer building and maintaing a system like this, you'd have an "are we the baddies?" moment, but guess not.

Capitalism is great at washing its hands of evil. I don't know how much slavery went into making the smart phone that I'm posting this from, but I'm sure it's not zero. I'm ethically complicit in the whole scheme. The C in ACAB stands for Capitalists. Which unfortunately, is all of us.

All of us? I don't own any capital and don't have employees who I trim profits off of.

Re: Honey's Dieselgate: Detecting and tricking testers

#77

Post by ThatMedicIsASpy »

Ekaros wrote: post #59
xnx wrote: post #51

The entire affiliate "ecosystem" is cancer. I'd love to see Amazon turn it off entirely.

As consumer I would love to see lower prices directly. Or at least have available some official store affiliate discount code which would give me same discount which would be win win for everyone.

Cut the middleman and order directly from china

Re: Honey's Dieselgate: Detecting and tricking testers

#78

Post by furyg3 »

Waterluvian wrote: post #26
bryan_w wrote: post #22

I used to work for an ad tech company (which I know already makes me the devil to some around here), and even I think that they crossed a line with this. A lot of industry terms are coded in corporate speak to make them sound better (think "revealed preferences" or "enabling personalization"), but I would genuinely like to know what the engineers thought when doing design reviews for a "selective stand down" feature.…

> what the engineers thought when doing design reviews for a "selective stand down" feature. Possibly a version of, “I lack the freedom to operate with a moral code at work because I’m probably replaceable, the job market makes me anxious, my family’s well-being and healthcare are tied to having a job, and I don’t believe the government has my back.”

I like the idea that what makes someone a 'professional' instead of just an employee is the wherewithal, agency, and expectation to say no to a particular task or assignment.

An architect or engineer is expected to signal and object to an unsafe design, and is expected by their profession (peers, clients, future employers) to refuse said work even if it costs them their job. This applies even to professions without a formalized license board.

If you don't have the guts and ability to act ethically (and your field will let you get away with it), you're just a code monkey and not a professional software developer.

Re: Honey's Dieselgate: Detecting and tricking testers

#79

Post by immibis »

rundev wrote: post #72
charcircuit wrote: post #68

>And the effort Honey expended, to conceal its behavior from industry insiders, makes it particularly clear that Honey knew it would be in trouble if it was caught. The same could be said about yt-dlp. They know what they are doing youtube doesn't like. But yt-dlp itself is legal.

The difference being that yt-dlp isn't a business partner (and/or competitor) of YT.

Of course it's a competitor of yt. If you download a video, they don't get ad revenue.

Re: Honey's Dieselgate: Detecting and tricking testers

#80

Post by immibis »

throwaway81523 wrote: post #19

Apparently this thing got approved for the chrome store, which confirms that "store" approvals are near worthless for malware filtering.

It's not malware. Marketing companies stealing commission from each other isn't malware. Giving the user less than the best possible deal isn't malware. It doesn't even upload your cookies to see if you're a tester - it does that on the client.
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