5 ms·

A couple of YouTubers I watch promoted this and given what I assumed it did, I'm surprised that's all it does. If it seems to good to be true, it probably is.

ChocolateGod 2y ago
How did people think honey was making money? I think a lot of these YouTubers are pretending to be shocked or caught out.
- ttoinou 2y ago
  A comment on HN in 2019 was explaining how it works, it was accessible through a Google Search
- magicalhippo 2y ago
  Yeah I'm torn. I do get that more income means they can invest more and thus grow, leading to more and better content. But promoting products which have such a high likelihood of being shady like this... Another one was the app or similar where you scanned your receipts and got some discounts or whatever. Obviously they only make money by selling your data, but they mention none of that during the promotion, just how easily you can save some bucks.
- xboxnolifes 2y ago
  I thought Honey sold consumer shopping data.
  - overfeed 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - ziml77 2y ago
    Same. It seems like very valuable data since they have access to the individual items in the carts across many sites.
- parsimo2010 2y ago
  I didn't even think about how they could be making money before this came out (I wasn't a user), but I would have put my money on them harvesting your browser history and selling it to advertisers, which seems shady but is kind of normal for the web today. Affiliate link manipulation and coercing websites into paying protection money to hide lucrative coupons would have been low on my list of guesses.
- beAbU 2y ago
  Honey was replacing their affliate links with it's own. So these tech tubers were only really upset that Honey was stealing from /them/, they don't give a fuck about their viewers. Anyone who flogs ball shavers, ass wipes or fuckin microwave dinners don't give a shit about their viewers, and only care about their bottom lines and will shill whatever they can for the right price.
  - ChocolateGod 2y ago
    > tech tubers were only really upset that Honey was stealing from /them/ But wasn't Honey paying them?
    - QuercusMax 2y ago
      Paying them initially, but then if they used any affiliate links themselves, honey would rewrite those so honey would get the affiliate $$ instead of the tubers. Get paid once, then they'll steal from you indefinitely.
    - dleary 2y ago
      > But wasn't Honey paying them? Yes, but Honey was also stealing from them. Most youtubers make a significant portion of their income via affiliate links. So, consider the following scenario. I made up these numbers, I don't know if these are accurate: Honey pays a youtuber $1k for a single ad spot. Due to that ad, many of the youtuber's audience installs the Honey extension. Afterwards, the youtuber's affiliate link income goes down by $2k/month, because all of those affiliate referrals are being stolen by Honey. Also, Honey never disclosed that they were doing this. So, of course, you can understand why the youtubers would have grievance. Pretty much nobody would ever agree to give up $2k/month of income forever to get $1k right now. (And it's probably not right now, it's probably more like 90 days when they settle their payables).
      - wingworks 2y ago
        Damn Youtubers really make alot from affil links? I think I've only like once or twice used a link in the description. I usually don't bother, because nearly always the links in the description arn't relevant to the video. Just an ad link, and generic, my camera xyz links to some amazon page which usually out of stock/gone. I always thought Youtubers made the bulk of their money with brand deals (like Honey), and some from youtube ads + light sprinkling on top from afill links. Maybe I'm not the typical user.
- Dylan16807 2y ago
  I thought it gathered data and did some affiliate stuff. An honest extension could have still made piles of cash. They did not need to be so aggressive about taking affiliate revenue and they definitely did not need to lie about coupons. This was not a "too good to be true" situation.
- seb1204 2y ago
  No surprise there, engagement is their base of income
- AlwaysRock 2y ago
  I think the shock for the youtubers was replacing their affiliate "link" (token whatever the correct term is). Everything else seemed... minor and expected. That was the one that surprised me.
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  pre-paypal when I used it, I thought they were simply cutting deals with the vendors as a middleman for their own affiliate links, like any other influencer would. If you can automate that process of delivering the affiliate links, then it's a big win for that plugin. I suppose post pay that they dug into darker arts, sadly.
- al_borland 2y ago
  I wasn't sure exactly what they were doing, and didn't care enough to look into it, but the fact that it wasn't obvious made me assume it was something shady that I wouldn't like. When I saw that they were doing, it validated my spidey-senses. A similar thing happened with Robinhood. If it's not obvious how a company is making money, and they don't explain it somewhere... I'm not interested.
- whywhywhywhy 2y ago
  The YouTubers acting shocked they were promoting that and that it was taking their affiliate revenue was bizarre, said more about them and their lack of morals and responsibility than it did Honey. Maybe take some responsibility for what you promote instead of pretending you're just a leaf at the whim of the river currents.
willy_k 2y ago
Something that has been making the sponsorship rounds now is Ground News[0] which I have found very useful with just the free tier. But given how many people I have seen sponsored by them, I wonder if there is some catch, especially because I can’t imagine that many people sign up for the paid service. I can’t think of what that catch would be though, they do not have unique access to personal data, and I haven’t seen anything that would indicate that they have any information agenda. [0] https://ground.news https://ground.news
- briffle 2y ago
  ground.news is not a plugin to the browser though. its a web site (and app) that aggregate news from multiple sites, and let you see multiple sides to an issue. I don't pay for many apps (I usually detest subscriptions) but pay for this one.
- ThalesX 2y ago
  I've built a local (for my country) news aggregator that basically clusters news and summarizes them based on multiple sources and gives me the rundown of the most important things, and things that can be found between conflicting sources. It's mostly a pet project for myself as it doesn't seem to have a lot of stickyness without the clickbait. I gave the 'product' to friends and some of them told me "oh, you should do it like ground.news where I can see left, center, right". This idea turns me off so much. Why would I care if it's deemed left, center or right by some commitee. Just give me the information that's there in most sources and it's probably be going to be close to some objective overview of the situation.
  - pixl97 2y ago
    > Why would I care if it's deemed left, center or right by some commitee. Because at the day information can be political. >the information that's there in most sources While I don't use ground news myself, aggregators and classifiers like them can show you when and where stories are being published in very lopsided manners. When a story is only really being published by one side you can use that as another bit of information. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_balance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_balance
Sophira 2y ago
Given that the original exposé was meant to be a three-part series, I'm almost certain this is not all that Honey does. The remaining parts have never been released. In January, MegaLag tweeted to explain what's been going on: https://x.com/MegaLagOfficial/status/1884576211554201671 https://x.com/MegaLagOfficial/status/1884576211554201671
AzzyHN 2y ago
I figured it just made money by tracking and selling your browsing history, it's owned by PayPal after all. I was shocked to learn about the cookie-stuffing. That's like, arguably a crime.

ChocolateGod 2y ago

How did people think honey was making money? I think a lot of these YouTubers are pretending to be shocked or caught out.

ttoinou 2y ago
A comment on HN in 2019 was explaining how it works, it was accessible through a Google Search
magicalhippo 2y ago
Yeah I'm torn. I do get that more income means they can invest more and thus grow, leading to more and better content. But promoting products which have such a high likelihood of being shady like this... Another one was the app or similar where you scanned your receipts and got some discounts or whatever. Obviously they only make money by selling your data, but they mention none of that during the promotion, just how easily you can save some bucks.
xboxnolifes 2y ago
I thought Honey sold consumer shopping data.
- overfeed 2y ago
  [flagged]
- ziml77 2y ago
  Same. It seems like very valuable data since they have access to the individual items in the carts across many sites.
parsimo2010 2y ago
I didn't even think about how they could be making money before this came out (I wasn't a user), but I would have put my money on them harvesting your browser history and selling it to advertisers, which seems shady but is kind of normal for the web today. Affiliate link manipulation and coercing websites into paying protection money to hide lucrative coupons would have been low on my list of guesses.
beAbU 2y ago
Honey was replacing their affliate links with it's own. So these tech tubers were only really upset that Honey was stealing from /them/, they don't give a fuck about their viewers. Anyone who flogs ball shavers, ass wipes or fuckin microwave dinners don't give a shit about their viewers, and only care about their bottom lines and will shill whatever they can for the right price.
- ChocolateGod 2y ago
  > tech tubers were only really upset that Honey was stealing from /them/ But wasn't Honey paying them?
  - QuercusMax 2y ago
    Paying them initially, but then if they used any affiliate links themselves, honey would rewrite those so honey would get the affiliate $$ instead of the tubers. Get paid once, then they'll steal from you indefinitely.
  - dleary 2y ago
    > But wasn't Honey paying them? Yes, but Honey was also stealing from them. Most youtubers make a significant portion of their income via affiliate links. So, consider the following scenario. I made up these numbers, I don't know if these are accurate: Honey pays a youtuber $1k for a single ad spot. Due to that ad, many of the youtuber's audience installs the Honey extension. Afterwards, the youtuber's affiliate link income goes down by $2k/month, because all of those affiliate referrals are being stolen by Honey. Also, Honey never disclosed that they were doing this. So, of course, you can understand why the youtubers would have grievance. Pretty much nobody would ever agree to give up $2k/month of income forever to get $1k right now. (And it's probably not right now, it's probably more like 90 days when they settle their payables).
    - wingworks 2y ago
      Damn Youtubers really make alot from affil links? I think I've only like once or twice used a link in the description. I usually don't bother, because nearly always the links in the description arn't relevant to the video. Just an ad link, and generic, my camera xyz links to some amazon page which usually out of stock/gone. I always thought Youtubers made the bulk of their money with brand deals (like Honey), and some from youtube ads + light sprinkling on top from afill links. Maybe I'm not the typical user.
Dylan16807 2y ago
I thought it gathered data and did some affiliate stuff. An honest extension could have still made piles of cash. They did not need to be so aggressive about taking affiliate revenue and they definitely did not need to lie about coupons. This was not a "too good to be true" situation.
seb1204 2y ago
No surprise there, engagement is their base of income
AlwaysRock 2y ago
I think the shock for the youtubers was replacing their affiliate "link" (token whatever the correct term is). Everything else seemed... minor and expected. That was the one that surprised me.
johnnyanmac 2y ago
pre-paypal when I used it, I thought they were simply cutting deals with the vendors as a middleman for their own affiliate links, like any other influencer would. If you can automate that process of delivering the affiliate links, then it's a big win for that plugin. I suppose post pay that they dug into darker arts, sadly.
al_borland 2y ago
I wasn't sure exactly what they were doing, and didn't care enough to look into it, but the fact that it wasn't obvious made me assume it was something shady that I wouldn't like. When I saw that they were doing, it validated my spidey-senses. A similar thing happened with Robinhood. If it's not obvious how a company is making money, and they don't explain it somewhere... I'm not interested.
whywhywhywhy 2y ago
The YouTubers acting shocked they were promoting that and that it was taking their affiliate revenue was bizarre, said more about them and their lack of morals and responsibility than it did Honey. Maybe take some responsibility for what you promote instead of pretending you're just a leaf at the whim of the river currents.

willy_k 2y ago

Something that has been making the sponsorship rounds now is Ground News[0] which I have found very useful with just the free tier. But given how many people I have seen sponsored by them, I wonder if there is some catch, especially because I can’t imagine that many people sign up for the paid service. I can’t think of what that catch would be though, they do not have unique access to personal data, and I haven’t seen anything that would indicate that they have any information agenda. [0] https://ground.news https://ground.news

briffle 2y ago
ground.news is not a plugin to the browser though. its a web site (and app) that aggregate news from multiple sites, and let you see multiple sides to an issue. I don't pay for many apps (I usually detest subscriptions) but pay for this one.
ThalesX 2y ago
I've built a local (for my country) news aggregator that basically clusters news and summarizes them based on multiple sources and gives me the rundown of the most important things, and things that can be found between conflicting sources. It's mostly a pet project for myself as it doesn't seem to have a lot of stickyness without the clickbait. I gave the 'product' to friends and some of them told me "oh, you should do it like ground.news where I can see left, center, right". This idea turns me off so much. Why would I care if it's deemed left, center or right by some commitee. Just give me the information that's there in most sources and it's probably be going to be close to some objective overview of the situation.
- pixl97 2y ago
  > Why would I care if it's deemed left, center or right by some commitee. Because at the day information can be political. >the information that's there in most sources While I don't use ground news myself, aggregators and classifiers like them can show you when and where stories are being published in very lopsided manners. When a story is only really being published by one side you can use that as another bit of information. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_balance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_balance

Sophira 2y ago

Given that the original exposé was meant to be a three-part series, I'm almost certain this is not all that Honey does. The remaining parts have never been released. In January, MegaLag tweeted to explain what's been going on: https://x.com/MegaLagOfficial/status/1884576211554201671 https://x.com/MegaLagOfficial/status/1884576211554201671

AzzyHN 2y ago

I figured it just made money by tracking and selling your browsing history, it's owned by PayPal after all. I was shocked to learn about the cookie-stuffing. That's like, arguably a crime.