PayPal Honey steals affiliate links and lies about finding the best coupons : technology

[-] jagermo@feddit.org 262 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I said it in another post: if you see a bunch of influencers all suddenly peddling the same stuff, stay away. All of them can be bought.

[-] tdawg@lemmy.world 123 points 7 months ago

Or, just don't trust ads period

Do your own research

[-] DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 40 points 7 months ago

Okay, all of these customer reviews loved this product!

Weird how formulaic they sounded though.

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[-] NullDrive@lemmy.world 69 points 7 months ago

Especially anything from Linus, they’re a very scummy group.

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[-] lemmeout@lemm.ee 30 points 7 months ago

I have a built-in spidey sense that hates any product that gets peddled simultaneously by a bunch of YouTubers.

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[-] TommySoda@lemmy.world 202 points 7 months ago

I never trusted Honey to begin with but this goes far deeper than I ever expected. I always wondered "yeah, but where do they get their money?" I always figured it was just a way to take people's data and sell it to data brokers (which they probably also do, let's be honest) but this is just blatant fraud. Stealing affiliate money from links and having companies pay them to purposefully give out worse coupon codes is just devious through and through. It's basically free money and everybody else, whether influencer or consumer, get fucked over in the process.

[-] altima_neo@lemmy.zip 84 points 7 months ago

Yeah I always wondered what the catch was? The CEO was always posting on Reddit trying to defend honey and how cool they were.

Either way, I never trust any shopping deal plugins. The whole idea of them is sketchy.

[-] electric@lemmy.world 25 points 7 months ago

Only shopping plugin I use is the one that comes with Edge. Surprisingly good to track price history and find other sites selling the product. I considered some Chrome plugin that displays an Amazon product's country of origin to avoid Chinesium but apparently it didn't work well or something like that from reading the reviews. Had some attached rewards function for shopping with it, ick.

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[-] electric@lemmy.world 30 points 7 months ago

I always assumed it was a combination of your guess and companies giving Honey special coupon codes so consumers are more eager to spend.

"Hey Honey, we'll give you 1% commission if you just host this HONEY5 coupon for 5% off."

That was my impression when I used it once. Wasn't worth having an extension just for a slight discount. Love when a company doesn't fulfill the service they advertise.

[-] dustyData@lemmy.world 14 points 7 months ago

But that would be an ethical business model, we can't have that, this is PayPal and this is the internet. There's no place for ethics in that combination.

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[-] jordanlund@lemmy.world 88 points 7 months ago

If you're sitting at a poker table and you can't tell who the sucker is, it's you.

Alternately, if you look at an online service and can't tell what the product is, It's you.

[-] Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 25 points 7 months ago

By that logic, linux users are the product.

[-] catloaf@lemm.ee 24 points 7 months ago

Linux is neither an online service, nor a business at all.

[-] Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz 24 points 7 months ago

Yeah, I feel like that's usually a very accurate saying, but it doesn't really work with a lot of open source projects.

I hate that you're getting downvoted by so many people who don't realize you're pointing out an exception to the rule, and instead think you have some fundamental misunderstanding about how Linux works.

[-] spankmonkey@lemmy.world 21 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

They are getting downvoted for misconstruing something that is clearly a rule about profit making services and applying it to crowd sourced non-profit open source projects.

Truly open source projects don't have suckers.

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[-] CosmoNova@lemmy.world 15 points 7 months ago

And even if you can tell what the product is, it‘s still often you. “Premium” subscriptions for example might hide (some) ads, but services still collect as much data about you. Even grocery stores where the offer seems obvious are trying to bait you into installing their apps to collect data on top of charging you for every item. And sure it’s not relevant in this case, but it’s something we should never forget.

[-] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 80 points 7 months ago

A useful question to ask when hearing about a new company is "What's your business model?"

[-] pixelscript@lemm.ee 24 points 7 months ago

There is no such thing as a free and benevolent product with an advertising budget.

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[-] TimeNaan@lemmy.world 67 points 7 months ago

Linus Tech Tips really is scum. Yet more proof of that.

[-] galanthus@lemmy.world 17 points 7 months ago

It was a matter of time until the public found out about this. They couldn't think in the long term, by not accepting a bit of backlash, exposing the scam they unknowingly participated in they only opened themselves up for more later.

They are not only evil, they are stupid too, which is worse.

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[-] criticon@lemmy.ca 59 points 7 months ago

I used honey for a while and it was working great for me with "exclusive" coupons and Cashback and then one time I bough a cellphone that was supposed to have $250 cashback. I did all the necessary steps, read the t&c, took screenshots of the offer and made the purchase. I never got the transaction to appear on their website. Sending emails it trying to contact them was futile (I even made an automatic script to send an email everyday to follow up). Fuck PayPal

[-] M1nds3nd@lemmy.ca 59 points 7 months ago

Ever since it was explained that Mr. Beast only smiles with his mouth, I get skeeved out every time I see him.

[-] fossilesque@mander.xyz 26 points 7 months ago

Mr Beast literally shadow banned the word teeth from his YT comments. It's hilarious.

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[-] nooneescapesthelaw@mander.xyz 50 points 7 months ago

Ltt didn't hide shit, they posted it on a public forum

[-] frezik@midwest.social 50 points 7 months ago

They didn't hide it, but a huge portion of their audience doesn't read the forums. A 10 minute video of Linus ranting about them would have opened this scandal to a wider audience years ago.

[-] Retro_unlimited@lemmy.world 14 points 7 months ago

Linus usually likes to rant about it on the WAN show then they usually make a clip for YouTube, but weird he didn’t do that for honey, maybe he didn’t know how far the scam went.

[-] zqps@sh.itjust.works 20 points 7 months ago

As creator that makes some of their profits from affiliate links, I don't see how that could be the case for him.

Seems more likely they had a reason to avoid beef with PayPal.

[-] cocobean@sh.itjust.works 15 points 7 months ago

Could have a non disparagement clause in their former agreement

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[-] Cethin@lemmy.zip 26 points 7 months ago

Yeah, that not nothing but it isn't far off. They have a massive platform. It deserved at least a video telling people about it.

[-] poke@sh.itjust.works 25 points 7 months ago

Some very vocal people on Lemmy just love hating on LTT. I don't think this topic was worth them making a main channel video on, I think their forum post was good and I believe they even mentioned this functionality of Honey a few times on the WAN show. It wasn't a secret, and anyone who cared to do in-depth research on a potential sponsor could have found out.

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[-] geography082@lemm.ee 49 points 7 months ago

I'm so proud I never consumed these guys shit

[-] tempest@lemmy.ca 34 points 7 months ago

Was it all that surprising to you though?

By the time honey hit the scene we had been ten years into "sketchy Browser extension that monitors your browsing habits and injects ads"

I guess getting flogged by your favorite influencer ads a veneer of legitimacy for a lot of people.

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[-] riodoro1@lemmy.world 49 points 7 months ago

If something advertises on youtube it’s a scam. Simple to remember really.

[-] frezik@midwest.social 29 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I don't mind things that are an actual thing to buy. I want to research it first--you can get a better electric razor than Manscaped for not much more--but at least it's clear how they make their money. Honey was obviously getting money from someone other than their users, and that's an immediate red flag.

[-] buddascrayon@lemmy.world 15 points 7 months ago

I and many other people naturally assumed that honey was getting their money from consumer data collection. Which is why I didn't use the service myself. The surprise is the fact that the scam isn't just consumer data collection but actually stealing commissions from content creators as well as using consumers as a gateway to stealing money from businesses that they have contracts with.

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[-] EngineerGaming@feddit.nl 47 points 7 months ago

I thought it was just collecting and selling user data but while I'd bet it's still happening - wow, this is way craftier.

[-] spicehoarder@lemm.ee 46 points 7 months ago

I haven't trusted LTT for about 5 years now.

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[-] electric@lemmy.world 35 points 7 months ago

Pretty sure this was already posted yesterday when it came out. Or it might have been a different community.

Watching the full video is important though because they are scamming the consumer too, not just """influencers""". Someone made a great comment about how it's just one greedy troll stealing from another and has no effect on the consumer since they still save money but Honey not actually giving you the best coupons on purpose is next level dickholery.

Lying about the coupons really should be the focus so people stop harming themselves using Honey.

[-] Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 17 points 7 months ago

See, I'm torn. I've never used honey, so I was never scammed. However I do think them scamming consumers is awful.

Buuuuuuuut, I DO enjoy the fact that they scammed influencers.

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[-] azalty@jlai.lu 35 points 7 months ago

Just open their privacy policy and done. They sell your browsing info, and you could stop it there

[-] Retro_unlimited@lemmy.world 33 points 7 months ago

Just saw a video that the honey people are making another SCAM called PIE. They make an Ad blocker, then put their own ads. wtf.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/VTxnM3J0I0k?width=828&height=466

[+] penquin@lemm.ee 29 points 7 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

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[+] Cyberjin@lemmy.world 27 points 7 months ago

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[-] HiddenLayer555@lemmy.ml 46 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

They're one of the largest tech media companies and deliberately chose to sweep this under the rug instead of reporting on it. Then they took sponsorships from Karma, which is a competitor to Honey that does the exact same thing.

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[-] pmc 20 points 7 months ago

Honestly I thought all of this was common knowledge at this point, back when I used Honey (many years ago) I saw its affiliate code in the address bar and thought "huh, that's how they make money"

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[-] bruhduh@lemmy.world 19 points 7 months ago

https://nypost.com/2018/07/24/elon-musk-made-his-first-millions-in-the-paypal-mafia/

[-] Teppichbrand@feddit.org 19 points 7 months ago

Everybody: Fuck Peter Thiel, fuck Elon Musk, fuck Honey, Fuck PayPal

Everybody: unflinchingly using PayPal

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[-] shirro@aussie.zone 19 points 7 months ago

I have been using PayPal increasingly for online payments. Not sure why. I have heard old stories about PayPal but Honey seems really bad. Its basically a given that any fintech company are going to be dodgy scammers but PayPal seemed almost grown up and respectable. Guess not.

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