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by matlo 538 days ago
This was really wild to watch. Honey is so masterfully crafted to be deceiving. I had it installed years ago, and it intuitively felt like something was scammy, so I uninstalled it. Really incredible work by MegaLag. It seems to be a wholesome trend among creators like Coffeezilla, etc. I hope more of this rot will surface.
2 comments

I am more impressed by the thoroughness of this IJ report than Honey’s browser extension which just re-writes affiliate cookies.

Honey is a parasite stealing from other parasites.

They're trying to position themselves as Yelp of coupons. They snatch coupons that people use (for example 90% off special coupons meant for specific people, that just happened to have the extension installed), then they have a partner program for companies that allows the partners to control what coupons honey can apply on their site.

You don't need to join it, but then your customers get automagically the high value coupons applied, but if you pay them $XX per month, you can limit what gets applied.

Proper old school investigative journalism, and he didn't hold back. Terrific scam, but, y'know, PayPal – I'm an old timer and remember the early days of that outfit. They're still blocked at the firewall from events 25 years ago.

Remember kids: Marketing is a psychopathy.