[kristofferR]

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.

[pseudo0]

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.

[al_borland]

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?

https://help.joinhoney.com/article/30-how-does-honey-make-mo...

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.

[finnthehuman]

> I'm pretty surprised that so many YouTube creators pushed Honey without questioning how they were making money off giving away discounts.

The only thing you can know for sure about an actor, is that their profession is pretending to be something they're not.

[skeeter2020]

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.

[eterm]

Yep, it's somethings easy to forget that HN isn't actually mainstream; something being discussed on HN doesn't mean it's well known.

[Alex-Programs]

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.

[Dylan16807]

> as I watched the video all I could think was "what the fuck did you think they were doing?".

Well, not screwing over their partners and customers?

They didn't have to overwrite existing affiliate codes to make lots of money. And the stuff you list in your last sentence is a really big deal.

[Xelynega]

This is how I keep seeing the discussion going:

1: Honey is doing shady stuff with affiliate links

2: Affiliate links aren't shady, just the stuff they're doing with them

1: So honey is doing shady stuff with affiliate links

[Alex-Programs]

Yeah, you're right about them not having to rewrite existing ones. They could've only inserted affiliate codes when there weren't existing ones.

It's less that I think it's OK, more that I'm unsurprised.

[boneitis]

> more that I'm unsurprised

Bingo.

You want to stick your lawyers on them and try to punish them and extract as much money as you can out of them? Fine. Whatever.

>> not screwing over their partners and customers?

I wasn't around to organically take in this situation, but being introduced to Honey by seeing this blow up today, I can only say: "...no? I don't think so?"

Take, for example, the wild west days of rampant SEO exploitation (I'm talking like 2000s or 2010s era) and its race to the bottom, and Google's subsequent refinement of the SEO program over the years. Why am I supposed to root for one side over the other, again?

Their bottom line purpose is the revenue stream; this is not a FOSS project that does so much as to not even solicit donations.

--

I hope the top thread writer from that HN discussion five years ago is having a field day dancing on top of his I-told-you-so mountain :)

[kristofferR]

No, cross site cookie reading were banned for a reason. A site can only read its own cookies now.

[Dylan16807]

It's a browser extension. It can check the current state of the store page.

[mschuster91]

> 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.

[chgs]

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.

[ToucanLoucan]

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.

[Suppafly]

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.

[kristofferR]

On Firefox you could use a separate container for your coupon site visits, but do the buying in another container.

[Suppafly]

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.

[manquer]

The main point is not so much their busines/industry model, but how they used creators to promote it .

isn’t it egregious when you make the people who are you stealing affiliate money from to promote the same thing ?

[beAbU]

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.

[BurpIntruder]

100% this. Until there is a mechanism to disambiguate between first and last click referrals, it will continue to be an issue.

[joe5150]

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.

[Ekaros]

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.

[krisoft]

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.

[Ekaros]

They would still get cut from those who choose to support them this way. Rest of the people would get discount. There seems to be plenty of people who click affiliate links so creators get money. Those same people would still give the cut to them wouldn't they?

Or then just ban the whole scam.

[krisoft]

> Those same people would still give the cut to them wouldn't they?

It is a very different proposition. In the current practice you get the product for the same price as everyone else and the creator gets a small slice of the shop's profit. In the system you are proposing where you could decide to pocket the money it would feel like you are giving the money out of your own pocket to the creator. It literally would make the product more expensive for you to purchase if you decide to not take the discount but give it to the creator. It would feel like charity with weird extra steps and a middle man.

Sure, some people would do it. I guess there are turbo-fans everywhere. But the income from affiliate links would collapse dramatically. Because if there is a button to get a discount easy then people will push the button to get the discount. They will justify it to themselves however they want it.

> Or then just ban the whole scam.

Ban as in with government force? Or ban as in the online shop decides to not engage in affiliate marketing anymore?

The first: ok? Why? I'm not that fussed about it, but I'm also not seeing why this would be a good policy. Or what exactly you want to ban for that matter.

The second: Presumably the webshops made their own calculations that they earn more money with affiliate marketing than without. I don't know how one would do that, but I assume they are not just doing it out of inertia, or goodness of their hearth.

[johnnyanmac]

I figured they simply had affiliate links themselves, or made deals with companies in order to get customers who normally wouldn't buy at full price.

It just seems illegal to replace an affiliate link like. I guess the courts will determine that.

[josephg]

Utter scumbags. The google chrome & Firefox extension stores should ban the lot of ‘em.

[throwaway48476]

Honestly the developers should be banned by name from using the Firefox extension store. So they don't come back with yet another scam.

[tommica]

Oh... This should have been obvious, but I only realized it from this comment.

[wink]

> 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.