Before, this is how ALL coupon sites/extensions have worked for decades.
I'm frankly baffled it weren't more common knowledge, despite being common sense, before the MegaLag video. Did people really think that sites like retailmenot.com or wethrift.com make you open tabs to the shop you're searching for coupons for before you can see the coupon code just for fun??
Affiliate code stuffing is the coupon provider business model, it's not Honey-exclusive at all. I'd be surprised if you find a coupon site/extension that haven't always done that.
It is pretty funny how the MegaLag video claimed it was hard to find discussion of this online, and cited a HN thread from over five years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21588663
I suppose it's easy for us to forget how an average person really doesn't think about how cookies and referral links work.
Not even just questioning how referral links work, but questioning how a company makes money. I never looked into Honey, but since it wasn't obvious how they were making their money, I assumed it was something sketchy and stayed away from it. My assumption was it was the typical data harvesting and selling (once they had the extension in your browser they could track you). While I think the tracking/selling is immoral, what they did instead seems like fraud (IANAL).
I'm pretty surprised that so many YouTube creators pushed Honey without questioning how they were making money off giving away discounts. Did they not ask, or did Honey have a lie for that as well?
I guess they say it, but being owned by PayPal I'm guessing there was an assumption that the commissions weren't being stolen from other people, and the codes being provided were organic codes and not ones created for Honey by the merchant to manipulate the user into thinking they were getting the best deal, when they weren't.
I read the HN link after the video though, and it was full of vague misunderstandings of exactly what honey was doing, even if people did understand the technical logistics. Some of the dark patterns honey goes through to get a user to click any link or button is pretty shady.
Yeah, as I watched the video all I could think was "what the fuck did you think they were doing?". I'm surprised technical youtube channels were caught by it, although maybe they did the calculation that the money Honey was paying was worth more than the affiliate sales they'd lose. There's also value to getting that money immediately, rather than at some unknown point in the future.
The only part that seemed uncouth to me was setting the referral code when they hadn't actually found any coupons, and collaborating with retailers.
> I'm surprised technical youtube channels were caught by it, although maybe they did the calculation that the money Honey was paying was worth more than the affiliate sales they'd lose.
... and helping to screw everyone else over in the process. That is what makes advertising for Honey so unethical.
From watching the original video sounds like that’s exactly what LinusMedia did. Which doesn’t surprise me, I’ve always been amazed by how many people like that channel.
In my defense I assumed they were a user data-mining scam, not a coupon code scam. Still never used it and told people not to whenever they asked, but, whatcha gonna do.
Honestly I knew that that coupon websites were adding their affiliate link to links from their websites, but it never occurred to me that the toolbars would be stripping and replacing affiliate links from actual links you were clicking yourself.
I wouldn't mind if they were transparent about what they were doing or gave you the option to substitute your own code specifically. I'm sure there are a lot of situations where I've clicked an affiliate link to check something out and then that affiliate got credit for other things I've purchased hours or days later. I'd really like a toolbar that let me modify or block the affiliate code from those links.
When I'm actually looking for coupons I tend to use an incognito window, but there are times when I'm clicking a link from reddit to see something someone has mentioned and then later go to the same site and buy something I was planning on buying and in those cases if the original link had an affiliate code, I'm pretty sure they end up getting credit for the later purchase that they had no involvement with.
All the YT creators are making a stink about this because surprise surprise, honey was stealing from them, not their viewers.
It's one of those open secrets that most youtube-peddled services are predatory in some way, and the creators happily kept pushing them on to their viewers because money talks. Now it turns out Honey is hurting their own bottom lines, so of course they all get on their moral high horses.
I'm curious why Amazon doesn't show you in some obvious way what affiliate code your purchase is linked to, if any. I'm imagining something like the way they used to display your Amazon Smile charity if you used that option.
Perhaps they've guessed that it would shock some people to learn how often they inadvertently use affiliate links and they would be discouraged from shopping or find some way to disable the codes.
Or even better give you option to take the affiliate cut as discount. Which would be win for everyone. Affiliate spammers would get knowledge that people gave them money out of charity. Shop would sell more as things are cheaper. And buyers would get cheaper products.
Wait what? :) Are you proposing that amazon should have a “give me a discount on my purchase” check-box on their checkout page? Why would anyone not click that? And if people would click it why would anyone share affiliate links of amazon?
That would completely undermine the incentive structure of the whole structure.
> Which would be win for everyone.
Except of course the content creators. It would not be a win for them.
> I'm frankly baffled it weren't more common knowledge
I think the last time I actively investigated how to save pennies with these online coupon things was the 90s when I was a teenager and I suppose that's true for more people.