PayPal Honey steals affiliate links and lies about finding the best coupons
(youtube.com)
from HiddenLayer555@lemmy.ml to technology@lemmy.world on 23 Dec 21:32
https://lemmy.ml/post/23941382
from HiddenLayer555@lemmy.ml to technology@lemmy.world on 23 Dec 21:32
https://lemmy.ml/post/23941382
š Fuck PayPal
And fuck Linus Tech Tips for intentionally keeping quiet about this after they found out.
threaded - newest
If youāre sitting at a poker table and you canāt tell who the sucker is, itās you.
Alternately, if you look at an online service and canāt tell what the product is, Itās you.
By that logic, linux users are the product.
Except Linux has proper legal underpinnings that anyone with a few brain cells can verify.
You can compile your own code too
Hence why people always say do your diligence
I mean, yes?
The key difference is linux wants you to help make it better. Something like Honey steals your data, and steals money from others, and then wants you to make it better.
No? The OS is the product.
I think the issue was with the original commenterās phrasing. Facebook looks like a product. But the commenter meant āHow the product is being fundedā.
Of course, it gets hard when thereās multiple sources of revenue. You used to be able to spot ads and come to the conclusion that that was everything. Now an ad is just the tip of the iceberg.
Yeah, I feel like thatās usually a very accurate saying, but it doesnāt really work with a lot of open source projects.
I hate that youāre getting downvoted by so many people who donāt realize youāre pointing out an exception to the rule, and instead think you have some fundamental misunderstanding about how Linux works.
They are getting downvoted for misconstruing something that is clearly a rule about profit making services and applying it to crowd sourced non-profit open source projects.
Truly open source projects donāt have suckers.
To be honest I donāt think thatās clear at all, it feels like itās more a rule about being skeptical of free stuff online. And many for profit companies have open source projects that can be used safely even though the source is a for-profit.
Itās difficult for others to take advantage of you when you can learn what the software actually does and have it modified to work another way.
Linux (for the most part) is open source but Iād argue the inclusion of any proprietary software/firmware/drivers means something ultimately isnāt.
Linux is neither an online service, nor a business at all.
And even if you can tell what the product is, itās still often you. āPremiumā subscriptions for example might hide (some) ads, but services still collect as much data about you. Even grocery stores where the offer seems obvious are trying to bait you into installing their apps to collect data on top of charging you for every item. And sure itās not relevant in this case, but itās something we should never forget.
I never trusted Honey to begin with but this goes far deeper than I ever expected. I always wondered āyeah, but where do they get their money?ā I always figured it was just a way to take peopleās data and sell it to data brokers (which they probably also do, letās be honest) but this is just blatant fraud. Stealing affiliate money from links and having companies pay them to purposefully give out worse coupon codes is just devious through and through. Itās basically free money and everybody else, whether influencer or consumer, get fucked over in the process.
Yeah I always wondered what the catch was? The CEO was always posting on Reddit trying to defend honey and how cool they were.
Either way, I never trust any shopping deal plugins. The whole idea of them is sketchy.
Only shopping plugin I use is the one that comes with Edge. Surprisingly good to track price history and find other sites selling the product. I considered some Chrome plugin that displays an Amazon productās country of origin to avoid Chinesium but apparently it didnāt work well or something like that from reading the reviews. Had some attached rewards function for shopping with it, ick.
Thereās a good one for Amazon called Keepa that shows you the price history of the item. Helps a ton keeping prices in check during sales like Prime Day to see how much you are actually saving, if anything.
Also nice to see how much you could potentially save if you just wait for the next sale or if there was already a price decrease. Often times it looks like Iām good buying without waiting for any sale as the sales only knocked off a few dollars, at most.
Thank you for the recommendation, looks neat. Tracking prices of different conditions is a nice touch. Iāll have to scrutinize it further when I make my next online purchases and chuck it into Edge as I made that my dedicated shopping browser.
Triple Camel does this too
Nice! Thanks for the recommendation, I love having alternatives in case anything unexpectedly goes down.
Itās funny how Edge got lambasted for it when they introduced that feature, but itās legitimately super helpful and non-invasive.
I had no idea it was, I donāt keep up with browser news. I just wish they didnāt migrate to Chromium. It became my main browser for a brief period before that.
I just used it randomly when I was working and doing some shopping for a computer in my downtime and decided to try out the feature. That and the AI are super good when comboāed to shop smart. Managed to save $800 off a quality laptop.
keepa.com/#!
I use this extension to get a general idea of whether a product usually goes for cheaper and whether or not to wait. Really conveniently on the Amazon page directly.
Also pcpartpicker to track pc parts. Isthereanydeals for game prices.
I always assumed it was a combination of your guess and companies giving Honey special coupon codes so consumers are more eager to spend.
āHey Honey, weāll give you 1% commission if you just host this HONEY5 coupon for 5% off.ā
That was my impression when I used it once. Wasnāt worth having an extension just for a slight discount. Love when a company doesnāt fulfill the service they advertise.
But that would be an ethical business model, we canāt have that, this is PayPal and this is the internet. Thereās no place for ethics in that combination.
Enshittification correctly defined.
Same. I never downloaded it or anything like it but I didnāt realize they were playing both sides. Itās fucked.
Pretty sure this was already posted yesterday when it came out. Or it might have been a different community.
Watching the full video is important though because they are scamming the consumer too, not just āāāinfluencersāāā. Someone made a great comment about how itās just one greedy troll stealing from another and has no effect on the consumer since they still save money but Honey not actually giving you the best coupons on purpose is next level dickholery.
Lying about the coupons really should be the focus so people stop harming themselves using Honey.
See, Iām torn. Iāve never used honey, so I was never scammed. However I do think them scamming consumers is awful.
Buuuuuuuut, I DO enjoy the fact that they scammed influencers.
Yeah I thought that too until seeing the bits about consumers getting shafted. Awful company, hope they get sued into bankruptcy.
They are owned by PayPal, so that seems unlikely
Small content creator makes informative, honest review of a product. Honey gets money on the commission. This makes you happy?
I never use affiliate links AND I donāt bother looking for coupons (letās be honest, who does?) so I donāt give a crap, every now and then Iām saving money without taking it from anyone š¤·
I just look up price trends and thatās pretty much it for me too. Coupons rarely ever worked for me in the early days of e-commerce so I quickly stopped bothering.
idk, I find the coupon thing to be super easy. Just takes one search and maybe two clicks if you have ad blockers on. Mostly the only time is if Iām ordering something like pizza for a get together where no special applies. Thereās a local chain in my state that had a coupon code for half off my order that wasnāt listed on their site (they mightāve given it to me if I called but who knows). Been using that for the past year and it allows me to convince everyone to go there instead of a national chain. Iāve also been lucky with some manufacturers coupons for products Iām ordering straight from them, itās more rare though so itās hit or miss sometimes.
Itās also kind of a protection racket against shops. āPartner with us or weāll cut into your profits by spreading cheap coupon codes, but partner with us and weāll protect youā
I said it in another post: if you see a bunch of influencers all suddenly peddling the same stuff, stay away. All of them can be bought.
Especially anything from Linus, theyāre a very scummy group.
Especially anything from NullDrive, theyāre a very scummy group.
Am I the only one who, upon seeing his videos for the first time, immediately thought he was an annoying little pinhead?
Like, Iāve watched his channel(s) surge in popularity over the years, and this entire time Iāve just been wondering why, and the issues that have come out about his little empire since have only confirmed my initial prejudice.
Their entire video is an ad filled experience of shilling not only their sponsors but themselves. Incredibly obnoxious and cramming in every YouTube stereotype from begging for likes and subs to clickbait titles and then insisting they have to do it so they can have their cake and eat it makes them even more obnoxious than if they just did it without wanting to be forgiven for it.
Itās getting worse, I canāt remember who but I was watching a video just the other day and their ad segment was the fucking ltt ratchet driver. You know, the one they supposedly made because they were tired of the market and the low quality rip-offs all the companies were just trying to make profit off of (itās a shitty plastic screwdriver for 70$, link to pic and itās being sold at fucking walmart now). They sold it as such a heart string story in the beginning, itās just another mini-wannabe corporation.
I donāt particularly feel bad at this point for their continued reputation downfall and the people responsible. Everyone has their own personal story of their favorite company which has turned to complete shit (Blizzard is one of mine). They didnāt come out strong but doubled down corporate style when everything started. Thatās fine, but anyone staying and putting up with the stressful workplace knows what theyāve gotten themselves into.
I used to think the importance of leadership at the top of a company to be overblown since they succeed based on the work of all of the employees, but it is pretty amazing how fast a change to shitty leadership can run a successful company into the ground.
Thatās actually a very nice screwdriver. Nice ratchet screw drivers do cost that much. I have one, but given where LTT is these days as a company, I donāt recommend buying it.
I would be very happy if creators were able to fund their operations off their own merch rather than outside advertising. That seems to be what Gamers Nexus does, or at least heading that way. What LTT does, though, is use it as an additional revenue source on top of their other advertising sources. Doing it right means resisting the urge to consume more and more, and LTT is not capable of that.
I have a few gripes with LTT but the screwdriver is legit good. A bit overpriced because of the branding sure but definitely not a throwaway product
Oh please attack them on actual grounds rather than a made-up nonsense. The screwdriver is actually decent product if you care about that sort of thing. No oneās getting scammed there, Itās an actual product thatās of relatively good quality.
If you donāt care about screwdrivers then youāre probably not interested in the product anyway and if you are a frequent screwdriver user you probably understand why itās a good product.
I got that creepy feeling from him the first time I saw a video of him. Every photo of him I saw set off alarms. Iāve also never understood why anyone even likes the guy.
This was years before all the issues came to light.
They event have the stupid thumbnail stereotype
Soviet Womble expressed the feeling I have against channels like that very nicely: 7:56, in case link with timer doesnāt work
Because of his name, I thought he was a pro-Linux channel. I was swiftly disappointed.
No, heās pro blanket!
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/32947240-ffa6-4fc1-bbe6-8396f9465515.jpeg">
I have nothing clever to say here, so normally Iād let my upvote express my feelings, but that feels inadequate in this case. I just wanted to use my words to let you know that this comment amused me a great deal and to thank you.
I mean the easiest name so you canāt really go for him for that.
Iām not exactly sure what youāre saying here, so I apologize if Iām misinterpreting, but - while I have many potential complaints about Linus - I donāt blame him for his name resembling the word āLinux.ā
He once bricked his OS during a ārun Linux for a weekā challenge. He tried to do
apt install steamor something and ignored a bunch of warnings. Of course he then bashed Linux because he didnāt pay attentionYeah, I didnāt see that video, but I recall reading about it. Apparently the package manager warned him that something would be potentially destructive and he ignored the warning, then blamed Linux for it when it was destructive.
Iām with you. I heard of him on Reddit forever ago and couldnāt get through a single video.
But I really enjoy watching Techlinked :(
What annoys me the most is since his last drama, Linus HAS to be the face in every video now! Wtf it used to be a bunch of them took turns making videos, and it was fun seeing everyone work on different things. He has to be front and get all the attention, it just feels weird now.
Side effect of him stepping away from the CEO role, I guess.
They whore for corpos, that's who pays them
Some do good work but got to assume they are an enemy until proven otherwise.
I have a built-in spidey sense that hates any product that gets peddled simultaneously by a bunch of YouTubers.
Or, just donāt trust ads period
Do your own research
Okay, all of these customer reviews loved this product!
Weird how formulaic they sounded though.
Didnāt say anything about site reviews either :p
But ya finding good sources can be hard
Do your own research is the famous last coherent phrase of the QAnon crowd. Idk what the answer is but that phrase will forever make me uneasy.
How long are we going to let the far right keep stealing our words? Itās a proud respectable cryptocurrency term.
Grifters all the way down then
Itās also something leftists famously tell each other ĀÆ_(ć)_/ĀÆ
Or just donāt buy shit you donāt need.
(You donāt buy Honey.)
At this point, anything these goons āinfluencersā try to sell me on is a scam, and Iāll avoid it at all costs. People do insane things for money. Just watched a coffeezilla video on the CSGO gambling scam and holy shit, people are straight up heartless and have no humanity in them.
I respect coffee but he said nice things about MrBeast who is known to hire pedophiles and sexual pests
This guy? www.youtube.com/watch?v=dslLBsHkVzE
Bro just released a video investigating Mr beast. Lol
PayPal is not customer friendly, they also straight up steal funds by locking your account
PayPal is a class corpo parasite. They tax us
What to expect from the Musky one and the Vampire?
PayPal is not a bank. Your funds are NOT FDIC insured, no matter what their docs say.
In certain countries they fall under quasi-bank regulations eg. āPayPal Australia Pty Ltd (PayPal) is a limited Authorised Deposit-Taking Institution (ADI) with authority to provide purchased payment facilities (PPFs).ā
That gives some measure of protection on how they handle your funds, but holy shit I would not keep any money in a PayPal account for any longer than absolutely necessary. I use it as a convenient intermediary between my actual card and sellers, no more than that.
Yeah, itās wild how close PayPal came to killing Minecraft early on by locking all of Notchās money as soon as MC started to take off.
Yep, happened to me. Theyāre evil. They own Venmo too btw.
So glad that eBay (as greedy as they are) started handling transactions instead of everyone using PayPal.
I am so disconnected from this influencer thing that I first heard about Honey when news were pushing that it was a scam. Iām just living under a rock and sometimes that saves my butt, I guess.
They sponsored a podcast that I listen to, and thatās how I heard about it. I donāt buy stuff online often enough for it to be useful, though, and Iām wary about installing stuff like that anyway.
I guess that podcast has egg on their faces now.
LTTā¦ toilet flushing! I had no expectations of paypal. To my shame I used them in the past,but deleted my account after reading how scummy they are. fuck paypal and anything affiliated with them.
Mid this year they also started sharing transaction data without consent...
Delete that account
A useful question to ask when hearing about a new company is āWhatās your business model?ā
Real as shit. I know idiots who think apple pays people scaling on how many downloads their app has xD (kinda like yt views)
There is no such thing as a free and benevolent product with an advertising budget.
Wikipedia
Their advertisement budget is collected by guilt tripping Wikipedia users using the lie that the website would cease if they didnāt ādonateā.
Yes, their method of advertising/fundraising is atrocious. They still have an advertising budget and their product is benevolent and free.
I agree
Show me a Wikipedia ad that they paid money for?
They have a budget spent on advertising on wikipedia itself, plus the cost of the emails they send out asking for donations.
Free and benevolent maybe not. but genuine and non malicious?
āWhatās your business model?ā āwe make and sell delicious sandwiches. Customer buys the sandwich for a little mote than it costs to make so we get money for ourselves.ā That isnāt a scam.
Correct. Itās not a scam. Because itās not free. The sandwich had a price posted, you paid it, you received the product. Valid business model.
What would you think instead if you saw a NYT front page ad taken out for Free Sandwich Mart, the all-you-can-eat totally free sandwich emporium?
Or in this case, a free browser extension that paid to sponsor five thousand YouTube videos that promises to help you pay less money to every store you activate it on at no cost to you?
Yes. Which is why, when you see a novel service being advertised, it is a useful exercise to ask of them āWhat is your business model?ā
āWhere are they getting money to pay for sponsorships and what are their motivationsā
I used honey for a while and it was working great for me with āexclusiveā coupons and Cashback and then one time I bough a cellphone that was supposed to have $250 cashback. I did all the necessary steps, read the t&c, took screenshots of the offer and made the purchase. I never got the transaction to appear on their website. Sending emails it trying to contact them was futile (I even made an automatic script to send an email everyday to follow up). Fuck PayPal
Small claims
I thought it was just collecting and selling user data but while Iād bet itās still happening - wow, this is way craftier.
nypost.com/ā¦/elon-musk-made-his-first-millions-inā¦
I have been using PayPal increasingly for online payments. Not sure why. I have heard old stories about PayPal but Honey seems really bad. Its basically a given that any fintech company are going to be dodgy scammers but PayPal seemed almost grown up and respectable. Guess not.
Oh you naive child
I use Klarna for basically everything I buy. I should probably reevaluate that. But Iāve had no issues so far. It notifies me when my payments are due. Helps me collect the sum of what I owe each month, each week. Helps me group payments to pay similar/connected things simultaneously, categorize purchases, etc, etc.
I really hope thereās nothing dodgy going on there. But at least Iām not giving them interest on anything I buy. Always make sure Iām paying my stuff on time, and no postponed payments.
Iām guessing their business model is to exploit people who have issues paying on time and to collect interest and late fees, as well as receive convenience fees from stores implementing Klarna as a payment option.
In 2023 they got a 1.1 million SEK fine for breaking the law that regulates working hours. To āallowā (strongly encourage) your employees to work nightshifts you need a collective agreement approved by the union, which they didnāt have.
More recently, they got a 500 million SEK fine for skirting the anti-money laundering regulations in Sweden.
The whole ābuy now, pay laterā deal is a credit loan. They are most likely paying the merchant directly and using your loan as collateral to speculate on the market, until you pay them back for that loan. If thatās true, they are making profit on the interest gained from your loan.
Correct. Like all credit banks they promote the ābuy now, pay laterā option before direct payment, which is becoming a pandemic on our society. Hardly any user interaction needed. They also offer their own payment plans which encourages buying even more expensive items you cannot afford.
Yeah. I definitely donāt think Iām the target audience for their service. Paying everything on time, every time. Buying only what I can afford. Etc.
Iām not very educated in economics, so Iām struggling to understand this. Is there a way to easily explain this? Iām 38 soā¦ please use big words if you like, but simple domain language. š
Maybe use privacy.com instead (they also have an app), they can generate virtual credit cards and you can set limit is (one time payment, or monthly $10 only, etc). Itās great if you need to cancel something or if they try to charge you extra. Saved me $150 when boost tried to charge me 1 year after I bought a phone from them!
Itās also great for predatory services like GYM membership that you canāt cancel.
Linus Tech Tips really is scum. Yet more proof of that.
It was a matter of time until the public found out about this. They couldnāt think in the long term, by not accepting a bit of backlash, exposing the scam they unknowingly participated in they only opened themselves up for more later.
They are not only evil, they are stupid too, which is worse.
Same person that said ad blocking was the same as piracy.
edit: People downvoting me like I disagreed with him. Just saying how he looks at it. I think itās a bit of a false dichotomy but they are definitely similar.
Have you ever heard his full stance on the matter? Because he clearly stated that this is not a judgment against using it. Heck, heās been open about having sailed the high seas himself and still doing so for media he physically owns.
Itās just that gaining access to media while circumventing the payment (ads in this case) is basically piracy. Which is fair.
Signed, A uBlock User
How much you want to bet he uses Ad block himself but itās suddenly different when YOU do it on HIS content?
Itā¦is? Youāre copying digital content without paying for it. I use uBlock but I donāt pretend to have the moral high ground.
Itāsā¦ not? Itās protection against malware and profiling by shady companies.
It can be both things at the same time.
It is. Taking from a service without paying for it, and actively avoiding the service making money via advertising is basically the same as watching a film without paying for it.
Both ways, you consumed a service and the people providing it got nothing, but it cost them something to create and provide it.
OP isnāt exactly giving you the full story there. I know for a fact Iāve seen a video on this. I remember thinking at the time āwell duhā.
Literally just watched that. I agree with his consideration that thatās fraud.
Ltt didnāt hide shit, they posted it on a public forum
Yeah, that not nothing but it isnāt far off. They have a massive platform. It deserved at least a video telling people about it.
They didnāt hide it, but a huge portion of their audience doesnāt read the forums. A 10 minute video of Linus ranting about them would have opened this scandal to a wider audience years ago.
Linus usually likes to rant about it on the WAN show then they usually make a clip for YouTube, but weird he didnāt do that for honey, maybe he didnāt know how far the scam went.
As creator that makes some of their profits from affiliate links, I donāt see how that could be the case for him.
Seems more likely they had a reason to avoid beef with PayPal.
Could have a non disparagement clause in their former agreement
Linus said it would be on this weekās WAN show
There may have been non-disclosure agreements between Linus tech tips and PayPal Honey. They may have threatened to sue him if he went public. Iām assuming weāll find out the details in the next few weeks.
And then they took sponsorships from Karma which does the exact same thing
Some very vocal people on Lemmy just love hating on LTT. I donāt think this topic was worth them making a main channel video on, I think their forum post was good and I believe they even mentioned this functionality of Honey a few times on the WAN show. It wasnāt a secret, and anyone who cared to do in-depth research on a potential sponsor could have found out.
And yet hereās the scandal being exposed TWO YEARS LATER. Yeah, LTT couldnāt possibly have handled this betterā¦ /s
They told everyone and nobody cared, turns out people care if a YouTube video is made framing the same thing differently. Like yeah, Honeyās practice is bad for the creator industry, but is it bad enough to bring it back to the people who took their money? No, I donāt think so.I think this is more of an example of how easy it is to get the masses angry with a YouTube video than anything. Itās good that more people are going to move away from this information harvesting app, but I really feel like the reaction and hatred is overblown and, at least for the hatred towards creators, unwarranted.
The way I see it, people still take money from predatory gambling sites, and if any creator deserves pushback, itās them.
If something advertises on youtube itās a scam. Simple to remember really.
I donāt mind things that are an actual thing to buy. I want to research it firstāyou can get a better electric razor than Manscaped for not much moreābut at least itās clear how they make their money. Honey was obviously getting money from someone other than their users, and thatās an immediate red flag.
Yeah. PayPal bought a coupon browser extension for how much? If the only thing they do is save YOU money, how come they can afford a sponsored segment in a mr beast video?
I and many other people naturally assumed that honey was getting their money from consumer data collection. Which is why I didnāt use the service myself. The surprise is the fact that the scam isnāt just consumer data collection but actually stealing commissions from content creators as well as using consumers as a gateway to stealing money from businesses that they have contracts with.
Thatās why I did not buy an eco flow or jackary. Too many influencers was a turn off. I went with BLUETTI.
This isnāt even remotely true. There are lots of advertisers and sponsors that arenāt scams. But unfortunately our consumer protection laws havenāt quite caught up to the digital marketplace. So there is a lot of room on the internet in general for scammy behavior.
As always, itās buyer beware. As well as a big amount of content creator beware as well.
Is nebula also a scam? I saw it sponsored on lots of youtube channels.
Honestly I thought all of this was common knowledge at this point, back when I used Honey (many years ago) I saw its affiliate code in the address bar and thought āhuh, thatās how they make moneyā
I remember researching it a while ago when I was curious how they made money. If anything else, this just illustrated glee little research and care people have with their online information.
Iām so proud I never consumed these guys shit
Was it all that surprising to you though?
By the time honey hit the scene we had been ten years into āsketchy Browser extension that monitors your browsing habits and injects adsā
I guess getting flogged by your favorite influencer ads a veneer of legitimacy for a lot of people.
You guys think Rakuten does the same? I have got so much money from them.
Rakuten is up front about it. They force their affiliate links, then pay you part of their cut.
Honey forces their affiliate links in exchange for maybe finding you a discount code.
I also think Rakuten compensates me fairly. I take the payout in Amex points. Instead of money they give me 1 cent per point which I can leverage to a value of around 5 cpp through transfers
I book my hotels for with them for generally 5%. It adds up.
I never trust browser extensions outside of a select few. However, I have used Paypal quite a bit. I would think many of us have.
Seriously.
Wait, when did Paypal buy Honey? š³
2020 for $4 billion.
And Honey has always worked like this. So PayPal knew exactly what they were buying which explains the price tag. Paypal knew they were going to make their money back and then some.
Just open their privacy policy and done. They sell your browsing info, and you could stop it there
Just saw a video that the honey people are making another SCAM called PIE. They make an Ad blocker, then put their own ads. wtf.
www.youtube.com/embed/VTxnM3J0I0k?width=828&heighā¦
Ever since it was explained that Mr. Beast only smiles with his mouth, I get skeeved out every time I see him.
Mr Beast literally shadow banned the word teeth from his YT comments. Itās hilarious.
Itās a shame too, I really miss all the great tooth related discussions we used to have there.
Ohā¦ THATās whatās off!
I guess most people donāt have much knowledge about affiliate link URLs and how easily they can be rewritten to shift where the commission goes. I implemented SkimLinks on a hunch of websites so Iāve seen it before. Forum owners used to get upset about anyone posting product links in their comments because they night include an affiliate code. SkimLinks adds JavaScript to every page that rewrites those codes to the forum ownerās personal account. It will even insert an affiliate code into basic Amazon links that donāt have one. Once this came out, forums went a lot easier on Amazon links.
After seeing all this, the second I spot a browser extension that wants to get between me and Amazon, I immediately assume they will rewrite all the links for their own benefit. Otherwise whatās in it for them? This news isnāt much of a surprise.
The biggest issue that this video brings up is that businesses can filter out certain coupon codes if the discount is too high
I donāt really wanna watch a videoā¦ but how do you āstealā affiliate links or coupon codes?
If you are doing affiliate marketing for a company and they give you a coupon code for 10% off called GET10OFF and that code gets used, the affiliate marketer gets the sale no matter where they got that code from?
I assume it looks for affiliate links and replaces the original with itās own affiliate ID.
Iāve slept since I watched and am not great with tech, but iirc the link with the affiliate code when clicked takes you to the site. Then honey has a pop up that, when clicked, replaces the link with their own, swiping the commission. Hope that makes sense - most people likely would not catch it. The Linus tech tips was used as an example of even a tech channel with lots of employees taking quite a while to notice themselves, and even when they did, it wasnāt quite conclusive for some reason?
Another thing the video touched on is that honey would claim to search for coupons but often opt to show what the partnered companies want. So, could be thereās a coupon for 50% but they only show 10%.
Ah gotcha. So what I said about coupon codes would be valid, but affiliate links are different than the coupon codes. Also crazy they hide bigger discounts.
Edit: But I guess they could find a company offering a coupon code, then sign up themselves knowing itās an option now, and then show that code instead.
He says that when you click on an affiliate link, a cookie gets stored on your browser that lasts for 30 days, saying that the source should get the commission for your purchase. Honey has a popup in checkout, even when there are no codes, with a big āGot Itā button to close the popup. Clicking the Got It button replaces the old cookie with a Honey cookie, giving the commission from your purchase to them instead of your source.
and thats only one of the problems he mentions in the video
Can we make a version of this add-on that replaces the links with a choice of charity links?
Might as well do some good in the chaos of the internet.
I deleted my PayPal account a couple of months ago already. Problem solved.
I havenāt trusted LTT for about 5 years now.
Why do I feel like mentioning the LTT was very personal?š
.
Theyāre one of the largest tech media companies and deliberately chose to sweep this under the rug instead of reporting on it. Then they took sponsorships from Karma, which is a competitor to Honey that does the exact same thing.
No, they are not one of largest tech media companies They have less than what 100 employees. Maybe you used the wrong term?
When did they learn about it? Where your proof?
Watch the video.