Kinda don't want to watch a three parter video just yet until they're done. What I gathered from a quick search: Video content creators (influencers) make money by sending their viewers to buy...
Kinda don't want to watch a three parter video just yet until they're done. What I gathered from a quick search:
Video content creators (influencers) make money by sending their viewers to buy stuff using affiliate links.
Honey is a browser extension, a subsidiary of PayPal. The "offer" is that it auto applies coupon codes.
Honey intercepts affiliate link clicks and replace them with its own code
Content creators' click through impressions sharply plummet, and their livelihoods are destroyed
For now, that's pretty much it. But it gets a bit worse: They "steal" the sale commission regardless of finding a coupon. Sometimes even if you didn't ask for one. They tell customers they always...
For now, that's pretty much it. But it gets a bit worse:
They "steal" the sale commission regardless of finding a coupon. Sometimes even if you didn't ask for one.
They tell customers they always find the best deal, while telling their partners they can offer lower discounts because Honey users won't search for better ones elsewhere.
Maybe I'm just too deep in the SV bubble, but I already assumed this was exactly how it worked. Partner with Honey so you can control what they show to customers. Don't want to partner? Okay -...
They tell customers they always find the best deal, while telling their partners they can offer lower discounts because Honey users won't search for better ones elsewhere.
Maybe I'm just too deep in the SV bubble, but I already assumed this was exactly how it worked. Partner with Honey so you can control what they show to customers. Don't want to partner? Okay - they'll give away that special 50% off coupon to everyone. Now you need to be a partner. Oh, and now that you're partnering with Honey it's only fair they get the standard partner commission. It's like an internet mob boss.
The affiliate code overriding was the only surprise to me. But not a big one. Still - I would like to see them get some repercussions.
it was a pretty big surprise to me. not that I've used Honey is over a decade (I imagine well before Paypal bought it), it does feel like a deeper layer of invasive for any program to intercept...
The affiliate code overriding was the only surprise to me.
it was a pretty big surprise to me. not that I've used Honey is over a decade (I imagine well before Paypal bought it), it does feel like a deeper layer of invasive for any program to intercept and change your links (unless that is explicitly the point of the product. I have a few redirects for twitter and reddit). My naive impression was that it will simply scan links and pop up saying it found deals from that.
Web is inherently way less secure than mobile, but it definitely feels like a specific permission should be needed to do that, and for what range of sites.
I'm also in the SV bubble, and assumed this as well. The only thing is that it didn't feel scammy and scummy like this before Honey was owned by PayPal.
I'm also in the SV bubble, and assumed this as well. The only thing is that it didn't feel scammy and scummy like this before Honey was owned by PayPal.
@teaearlgraycold My wife has a small online store, I don't deal with it too much but yes, if a bunch of randoms get a 50% off code that we didn't intend to be out there we could/may cancel the...
My wife has a small online store, I don't deal with it too much but yes, if a bunch of randoms get a 50% off code that we didn't intend to be out there we could/may cancel the orders.
At the moment (on the platform we use) there are a bunch of controls to limit access to a specific discount code. The platform has an option to generate a random code for us (prevent guessing), limit use to specific customers, limit when the code will work, limit total number of uses, and limit uses per customer.
We do sometimes give out a special deal with a coupon code to a specific customer but we'll limit that to 1 use total, limit it to a date range, and will generate a random code.
Also, looking at her dashboard right now, she has some code setup tied into some marketing email thing... it sent a coupon code out to her newsletter subscribers but every person got a unique code and each code can only be used once.
seething with rage ooooh those dirty dirty scumbags! Surely there's a class action waiting to happen here, and the company is going to fold immediately right?
seething with rage ooooh those dirty dirty scumbags!
Surely there's a class action waiting to happen here, and the company is going to fold immediately right?
Which browsers? Maybe browser vendors will block this extension from their stores? I’m not sure how much I should care about advertiser-versus-advertiser scamming or disruptions to advertising...
Which browsers? Maybe browser vendors will block this extension from their stores?
I’m not sure how much I should care about advertiser-versus-advertiser scamming or disruptions to advertising ecosystems.
Maybe not Mr Something channels that felt scammy to begin with. But maybe some of the better ones don't deserve to have their revenue scammed. I subscribe to a few channels that I wouldn't want...
Maybe not Mr Something channels that felt scammy to begin with. But maybe some of the better ones don't deserve to have their revenue scammed.
I subscribe to a few channels that I wouldn't want hurt by malicious big corp. Eg:
(1) the Hong Kong diaspora news / activist's channels
(2) indie film maker / animators / songwriters
(3) Game / media reviewers
We don't seem to have publicly funded ways of paying to support niche/global-local news or the arts, so advertising seems like a last resort way of paying for good content. I agree it does get annoying to keep hearing about their sponsors, but the better channels make it obvious when you can start skipping and when you can come back
Note that he says this is part one of a three-part series, and the other two videos aren't up yet. Still really interesting and appalling to watch, though sadly unsurprising in this day and age.
Note that he says this is part one of a three-part series, and the other two videos aren't up yet.
Still really interesting and appalling to watch, though sadly unsurprising in this day and age.
I'm not sure what anyone expected? It was clearly a scam from the start. You always have to ask how a company is affording to pay these people to advertise to you, and honey was EVERYWHERE....
I'm not sure what anyone expected? It was clearly a scam from the start. You always have to ask how a company is affording to pay these people to advertise to you, and honey was EVERYWHERE. There's no way it could be profitable if it was just doing what they claimed (oh i'll look up coupons for you for free).
It was sus from the start as a consumer for sure, but I think most people assumed it was just collecting your data to sell to advertisers (that's why I never installed it!) I don't think the vast...
It was sus from the start as a consumer for sure, but I think most people assumed it was just collecting your data to sell to advertisers (that's why I never installed it!) I don't think the vast majority of people assumed it was doing something that negatively affected the revenue of the very channels it sponsors the way its affiliate sniping does. Clearly even the sponsored creators by and large weren't aware of it, since LTT cut ties after finding out.
Yeah, that was my assumption, as well as assuming that they probably wouldn't be straight-up lying about finding you "the best possible deals". Like, I assumed it'd give you the best deal that...
Yeah, that was my assumption, as well as assuming that they probably wouldn't be straight-up lying about finding you "the best possible deals". Like, I assumed it'd give you the best deal that could be easily found, not deliberately exclude better deals that could be googled up and then use that end-user assumption as a selling point to businesses...
Not that I ever signed up, I don't shop online enough to make the tracking worth it to me.
Yeah I always avoided it because the entire premise behind it just screamed "steals your data and sells it to advertisers" which I wanted no part of. The fact that they are replacing affiliate...
Yeah I always avoided it because the entire premise behind it just screamed "steals your data and sells it to advertisers" which I wanted no part of. The fact that they are replacing affiliate links with their own, to me at least, isn't surprising, but it was unexpected in that it wasn't the shady business model I was expecting.
I guess that's fair, although I do think it's naive(not that I think that's a bad thing, just forget not everyone knows about this stuff). The companies that can make MAJOR money off selling your...
I guess that's fair, although I do think it's naive(not that I think that's a bad thing, just forget not everyone knows about this stuff).
The companies that can make MAJOR money off selling your data have vast resources/vehicles to use that data. Thus google/google ads and the like.
You can make SOME money selling customer data, but it's often not your main revenue stream. Especially when you're giving away money by handing out coupons. When I started seeing honey ads EVERYWHERE I assumed they had to be doing something more shifty because there's no way their "obvious" business model could support that kind of advertising spend.
I only ever saw them advertised as a Paypal subsidiary, so "oh, Paypal wants to use a browser plugin to trace the journey of every purchase you make across sites in the context of your entire...
I only ever saw them advertised as a Paypal subsidiary, so "oh, Paypal wants to use a browser plugin to trace the journey of every purchase you make across sites in the context of your entire browsing history" seemed fairly logical to me. If they could get a statistically significant sample from Honey that'd then let them improve conversions by some tiny fraction of a percent across the Paypal userbase as a whole, that passed the sniff test on being worthwhile to them for the 30 seconds of thought I gave it.
Which obviously still includes the whole "it'll send your entire browsing history to Paypal" assumption, so if anyone had asked I'd tell them not to go near it, but it does mean I was surprised to find it went deeper than that.
If everyone were so critical than large portions of both tech and financial industries would collapse. “Free” sells. The reason why people are angry at HPs Instant Ink program was not because it...
If everyone were so critical than large portions of both tech and financial industries would collapse. “Free” sells. The reason why people are angry at HPs Instant Ink program was not because it was a bad deal (it was, but that’s another story altogether), but because it gave them “free” ink that wasnt actually free. People love to give their rights and privacy away because so long as they aren’t aware of what it is they are giving away.
New related LegalEagle video: I'm Suing Honey (Half as ;) Interesting to see Sam Denby's Wendover Productions listed as the plaintiff too. It makes sense though, since he has heavily promoted...
(Half as ;) Interesting to see Sam Denby's Wendover Productions listed as the plaintiff too. It makes sense though, since he has heavily promoted Honey on all his channels for years now.
My spidey senses tingled, as im sure many of yours' did, when hearing about honey and i refused to participate, especially once it was acquired by paypal. I do think that being advertised by a...
My spidey senses tingled, as im sure many of yours' did, when hearing about honey and i refused to participate, especially once it was acquired by paypal. I do think that being advertised by a youtuber, especially one with millions of viewers, is a sure way to tell me i want nothing to do with that company in this day and age.
Are we at the end of the YouTuber scam? Are enough people aware that this is the "as seen on tv" garbage of our day? I doubt it but im curious what the next scam will be and if im tech savvy enough to be as wary of it as i have been up until now
I briefly used it back when it first came out and before much of the advertising happened. It didn't work once for me at that time, so I just uninstalled it and never touched it again. This video...
I briefly used it back when it first came out and before much of the advertising happened.
It didn't work once for me at that time, so I just uninstalled it and never touched it again. This video came as a slight surprise to me because I didn't expect people to be so surprised.
Yeah, I don't understand why anyone used it after the second or third time that it didn't find any coupons. I tried it when I had a coupon, it didn't find any more and removed the coupon that I...
Yeah, I don't understand why anyone used it after the second or third time that it didn't find any coupons. I tried it when I had a coupon, it didn't find any more and removed the coupon that I had, so I uninstalled it.
I was really confused that otherwise reputable Youtubers were trying to get me to install the same kinda boatware trojan that the little side banners on old web pages used to advertise. "FREE...
I was really confused that otherwise reputable Youtubers were trying to get me to install the same kinda boatware trojan that the little side banners on old web pages used to advertise.
"FREE MONEY NOW GET YOUR FREE MONEY INSTALL THIS PLUGIN"
Like... Duh?
Really wild that they were scamming the people advertising for them too though!
Capital One harasses me to install their similar thing all the time, even offering a statement credit. They have a large array of affiliates they offer cash back rewards if you buy online with...
Capital One harasses me to install their similar thing all the time, even offering a statement credit. They have a large array of affiliates they offer cash back rewards if you buy online with their affiliate link, and a browser extension that offers to automatically apply them...which is almost certainly doing the same sort of thing. Probably also ingesting your browsing history.
Meanwhile, if youcookie stuff, you go to jail for wire fraud. (Shawn Hogan case in 2014.)
I used it for a short time and seemingly got some okay deals, and even as someone more tech and web inclined, didn't really think twice about their business model- assuming driving traffic to...
I used it for a short time and seemingly got some okay deals, and even as someone more tech and web inclined, didn't really think twice about their business model- assuming driving traffic to sites, even if with discounts, was somehow getting them money in return, or some amount of selling user data or something. It's not something all of us really deeply think about, even those one would think would have more awareness. For me, it was just a short circuit for my brain of "hey this inserts coupon codes that I'm tried of typing in manually, I save some money, okay deal" and I think it was that for many that used it.
But overall it was pretty lackluster, and now it's more clear why, and from a code perspective the extension was always pretty awful and got even worse over time. It got to the point that it was completely breaking some retailers' websites and causing them to not load properly because of the code it was injecting into the page (or making them impossibly slow), which made me rethink using it altogether and I gave it up.
I'm always surprised how gullible YouTube creators are. I know they're rarely business experts, but surely they'd notice if a sponsor hijacked all of their referrals and sound the alarm? How has...
I'm always surprised how gullible YouTube creators are. I know they're rarely business experts, but surely they'd notice if a sponsor hijacked all of their referrals and sound the alarm?
Well, one isn't necessarily related to the other. Even if you never had Honey as a sponsor, they were still hijacking your referral codes. They were hijacking any and all referral codes, youtuber...
Well, one isn't necessarily related to the other. Even if you never had Honey as a sponsor, they were still hijacking your referral codes. They were hijacking any and all referral codes, youtuber or not. It was just ironic that some youtubers did advertise honey.
But there wasn't a direct relationship, and other youtubers would be affected similarly, so there's not really an obvious trend.
Kinda don't want to watch a three parter video just yet until they're done. What I gathered from a quick search:
Video content creators (influencers) make money by sending their viewers to buy stuff using affiliate links.
Honey is a browser extension, a subsidiary of PayPal. The "offer" is that it auto applies coupon codes.
Honey intercepts affiliate link clicks and replace them with its own code
Content creators' click through impressions sharply plummet, and their livelihoods are destroyed
Edit:Fortune text article on the video
For now, that's pretty much it. But it gets a bit worse:
Maybe I'm just too deep in the SV bubble, but I already assumed this was exactly how it worked. Partner with Honey so you can control what they show to customers. Don't want to partner? Okay - they'll give away that special 50% off coupon to everyone. Now you need to be a partner. Oh, and now that you're partnering with Honey it's only fair they get the standard partner commission. It's like an internet mob boss.
The affiliate code overriding was the only surprise to me. But not a big one. Still - I would like to see them get some repercussions.
it was a pretty big surprise to me. not that I've used Honey is over a decade (I imagine well before Paypal bought it), it does feel like a deeper layer of invasive for any program to intercept and change your links (unless that is explicitly the point of the product. I have a few redirects for twitter and reddit). My naive impression was that it will simply scan links and pop up saying it found deals from that.
Web is inherently way less secure than mobile, but it definitely feels like a specific permission should be needed to do that, and for what range of sites.
I'm also in the SV bubble, and assumed this as well. The only thing is that it didn't feel scammy and scummy like this before Honey was owned by PayPal.
I don't understand what leverage honey has here. Can't the website just disable that coupon code if threatened by honey?
That negatively affects their business. They want the ability to offer these codes to certain customers.
Yes, but how much does it matter? Are coupon codes a big deal for online shopping?
Speaking out of my ass, good coupon deals are an effective way to acquire new, targeted customer groups.
@teaearlgraycold
My wife has a small online store, I don't deal with it too much but yes, if a bunch of randoms get a 50% off code that we didn't intend to be out there we could/may cancel the orders.
At the moment (on the platform we use) there are a bunch of controls to limit access to a specific discount code. The platform has an option to generate a random code for us (prevent guessing), limit use to specific customers, limit when the code will work, limit total number of uses, and limit uses per customer.
We do sometimes give out a special deal with a coupon code to a specific customer but we'll limit that to 1 use total, limit it to a date range, and will generate a random code.
Also, looking at her dashboard right now, she has some code setup tied into some marketing email thing... it sent a coupon code out to her newsletter subscribers but every person got a unique code and each code can only be used once.
TL;DR: Honey can suck it.
seething with rage ooooh those dirty dirty scumbags!
Surely there's a class action waiting to happen here, and the company is going to fold immediately right?
Which browsers? Maybe browser vendors will block this extension from their stores?
I’m not sure how much I should care about advertiser-versus-advertiser scamming or disruptions to advertising ecosystems.
Maybe not Mr Something channels that felt scammy to begin with. But maybe some of the better ones don't deserve to have their revenue scammed.
I subscribe to a few channels that I wouldn't want hurt by malicious big corp. Eg:
(1) the Hong Kong diaspora news / activist's channels
(2) indie film maker / animators / songwriters
(3) Game / media reviewers
We don't seem to have publicly funded ways of paying to support niche/global-local news or the arts, so advertising seems like a last resort way of paying for good content. I agree it does get annoying to keep hearing about their sponsors, but the better channels make it obvious when you can start skipping and when you can come back
We do have a good funding option, it's called paying for things.
Ironically, I'm pretty sure the only place I heard of Honey was a sponsored segment of a Youtube Video.
Note that he says this is part one of a three-part series, and the other two videos aren't up yet.
Still really interesting and appalling to watch, though sadly unsurprising in this day and age.
I'm not sure what anyone expected? It was clearly a scam from the start. You always have to ask how a company is affording to pay these people to advertise to you, and honey was EVERYWHERE. There's no way it could be profitable if it was just doing what they claimed (oh i'll look up coupons for you for free).
It was sus from the start as a consumer for sure, but I think most people assumed it was just collecting your data to sell to advertisers (that's why I never installed it!) I don't think the vast majority of people assumed it was doing something that negatively affected the revenue of the very channels it sponsors the way its affiliate sniping does. Clearly even the sponsored creators by and large weren't aware of it, since LTT cut ties after finding out.
Yeah, that was my assumption, as well as assuming that they probably wouldn't be straight-up lying about finding you "the best possible deals". Like, I assumed it'd give you the best deal that could be easily found, not deliberately exclude better deals that could be googled up and then use that end-user assumption as a selling point to businesses...
Not that I ever signed up, I don't shop online enough to make the tracking worth it to me.
Yeah I always avoided it because the entire premise behind it just screamed "steals your data and sells it to advertisers" which I wanted no part of. The fact that they are replacing affiliate links with their own, to me at least, isn't surprising, but it was unexpected in that it wasn't the shady business model I was expecting.
I guess that's fair, although I do think it's naive(not that I think that's a bad thing, just forget not everyone knows about this stuff).
The companies that can make MAJOR money off selling your data have vast resources/vehicles to use that data. Thus google/google ads and the like.
You can make SOME money selling customer data, but it's often not your main revenue stream. Especially when you're giving away money by handing out coupons. When I started seeing honey ads EVERYWHERE I assumed they had to be doing something more shifty because there's no way their "obvious" business model could support that kind of advertising spend.
I only ever saw them advertised as a Paypal subsidiary, so "oh, Paypal wants to use a browser plugin to trace the journey of every purchase you make across sites in the context of your entire browsing history" seemed fairly logical to me. If they could get a statistically significant sample from Honey that'd then let them improve conversions by some tiny fraction of a percent across the Paypal userbase as a whole, that passed the sniff test on being worthwhile to them for the 30 seconds of thought I gave it.
Which obviously still includes the whole "it'll send your entire browsing history to Paypal" assumption, so if anyone had asked I'd tell them not to go near it, but it does mean I was surprised to find it went deeper than that.
If everyone were so critical than large portions of both tech and financial industries would collapse. “Free” sells. The reason why people are angry at HPs Instant Ink program was not because it was a bad deal (it was, but that’s another story altogether), but because it gave them “free” ink that wasnt actually free. People love to give their rights and privacy away because so long as they aren’t aware of what it is they are giving away.
New related LegalEagle video: I'm Suing Honey
(Half as ;) Interesting to see Sam Denby's Wendover Productions listed as the plaintiff too. It makes sense though, since he has heavily promoted Honey on all his channels for years now.
My spidey senses tingled, as im sure many of yours' did, when hearing about honey and i refused to participate, especially once it was acquired by paypal. I do think that being advertised by a youtuber, especially one with millions of viewers, is a sure way to tell me i want nothing to do with that company in this day and age.
Are we at the end of the YouTuber scam? Are enough people aware that this is the "as seen on tv" garbage of our day? I doubt it but im curious what the next scam will be and if im tech savvy enough to be as wary of it as i have been up until now
I briefly used it back when it first came out and before much of the advertising happened.
It didn't work once for me at that time, so I just uninstalled it and never touched it again. This video came as a slight surprise to me because I didn't expect people to be so surprised.
Yeah, I don't understand why anyone used it after the second or third time that it didn't find any coupons. I tried it when I had a coupon, it didn't find any more and removed the coupon that I had, so I uninstalled it.
I was really confused that otherwise reputable Youtubers were trying to get me to install the same kinda boatware trojan that the little side banners on old web pages used to advertise.
"FREE MONEY NOW GET YOUR FREE MONEY INSTALL THIS PLUGIN"
Like... Duh?
Really wild that they were scamming the people advertising for them too though!
Capital One harasses me to install their similar thing all the time, even offering a statement credit. They have a large array of affiliates they offer cash back rewards if you buy online with their affiliate link, and a browser extension that offers to automatically apply them...which is almost certainly doing the same sort of thing. Probably also ingesting your browsing history.
Meanwhile, if you cookie stuff, you go to jail for wire fraud. (Shawn Hogan case in 2014.)
I used it for a short time and seemingly got some okay deals, and even as someone more tech and web inclined, didn't really think twice about their business model- assuming driving traffic to sites, even if with discounts, was somehow getting them money in return, or some amount of selling user data or something. It's not something all of us really deeply think about, even those one would think would have more awareness. For me, it was just a short circuit for my brain of "hey this inserts coupon codes that I'm tried of typing in manually, I save some money, okay deal" and I think it was that for many that used it.
But overall it was pretty lackluster, and now it's more clear why, and from a code perspective the extension was always pretty awful and got even worse over time. It got to the point that it was completely breaking some retailers' websites and causing them to not load properly because of the code it was injecting into the page (or making them impossibly slow), which made me rethink using it altogether and I gave it up.
I'm always surprised how gullible YouTube creators are. I know they're rarely business experts, but surely they'd notice if a sponsor hijacked all of their referrals and sound the alarm?
How has it gone on for this long?
Well, one isn't necessarily related to the other. Even if you never had Honey as a sponsor, they were still hijacking your referral codes. They were hijacking any and all referral codes, youtuber or not. It was just ironic that some youtubers did advertise honey.
But there wasn't a direct relationship, and other youtubers would be affected similarly, so there's not really an obvious trend.