“The biggest scam in YouTube history”

  • VerPoilu@sopuli.xyz
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    8 days ago

    I’m struggling to understand how everyone thought Honey made money. I have assumed from the first time I saw an ad for them that this is how they operate. It’s not like it’s difficult to prove or disprove either.

    • Empricorn@feddit.nl
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      8 days ago

      I’m so, so sick of these comments every time some shady shit is uncovered. “How could no one else see this, you’re all so stupid, I knew from the very first ad!”

      Yes yes, you’re mommy’s special little genius, despite conspicuously absent comments from that time…

      • psud@aussie.zone
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        8 days ago

        Loads of people are suspicious of coupon schemes. They look dodgy. It’s no wonder that people come along after one of these schemes turns out to actually be a scam to say “see, I knew these things were bad” with the only evidence being that they never subscribed to it

        Their fault is they claim it was this one specifically

      • cadekat@pawb.social
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        8 days ago

        It wasn’t “uncovered” though. This is their business model. I’ve told every person I know using Honey for years that it’s a shady extension and they should stop using it. Unfortunately I don’t have a huge following to offset Honey’s massive ad spend.

        I’m not calling anyone stupid, but stop treating this like it’s new information. Your browser warned you this might happen when you installed the extension:

        • Empricorn@feddit.nl
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          8 days ago

          Lol, “access your data” is a little different from “overwrite cookies, now sending all promised creator revenue to Honey”. Also, it found discounts, but stores had full control over over how much, and even if it didn’t give you a discount, it still claimed all referral revenue… Don’t act like that was all obvious, intuitive, and known by you, it wasn’t.

          • cadekat@pawb.social
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            8 days ago

            I’m not claiming that it was “intuitive”, just that the browser did tell the user exactly what the add-on was allowed to do. Sure, Chrome and Firefox deserve some blame for not making the warning more explicit/dire, but they did make an attempt. Overwriting cookies and rewriting affiliate links are subsets of “access your data”.

            Also, I’m not claiming that I knew exactly what Honey was doing, just that I suspected it was shady and recommended no one use it.

      • GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca
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        8 days ago

        This really does fall under two umbrella cautions. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, and how are they making money? Suspicion was warranted from day one, especially if it was owned by PayPal.

        Now, there are a lot of smart people on the internet who could have tracked all those messages and figured it out, like ultimately happened. I just wish they’d done it sooner.

    • geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml
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      8 days ago

      If I remember correctly influencers went out of their way to promise Honey was not doing anything sketchy like selling your data and said they got a small commission from the seller free of charge. Turns out Honey stole others commissions.

    • EngineerGaming@feddit.nl
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      8 days ago

      I just assumed they operated by collecting and selling user data. So while I knew the business model was unethical, I didn’t expect them to get more creative!