PayPal Honey extension has again "featured" flag in Chrome web store

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/paypal-honey-automatic-co/bmnlcjabgnpnenekpadlanbbkooimhnj/reviews

by dvh • 1 year ago

324 177 1 year ago

chromewebstore.google.com

djfivyvusn• 1 year ago

Probably getting a kickback.

hart_russell• 1 year ago

Getting rid of manifest v2 and propping up a scam extension. Chrome is looking more and more disgusting

relistan2• 1 year ago

You have to think about how Google abandoned Firefox, which at the time was quite good, in order to build their own browser. It was always about control and owning the data. They fund their business with advertising spread all over the internet. Manifest v2 allowed their browser to run extensions that block the ads that pay for Chrome to exist.

rafram2• 1 year ago

Firefox was OK. I think people forget how much better it’s become since Chrome came out. V8 was so much faster than SpiderMonkey at first.

(I would argue that Chrome was targeted primarily at IE, though.)

eitland• 1 year ago

I keep wondering why people on HN use Chrome at all three days.

There was a couple of years when people posted demos that only worked in IE^H Chrome but right now everything I need works in Firefox and I don't even see demos that need Chrome anymore.

imcritic• 1 year ago

Because Mozilla is as evil as google is and their browser is generally worse than chrome on average.

We are now just entering a timeline where chrome nose dives on that comparison chart of "who is better?" with compared to Firefox.

Hamuko2• 1 year ago

I keep Chrome as a work browser but use Firefox otherwise. I'm not even affected by the V2 manifest removal because I don't keep an adblocker on Chrome.

lucumo3• 1 year ago

For me: because Chrome is the only browser with worry-free sync.

Firefox's sync for example doesn't sync extension settings, search engines and it fails on Android multiple times per day, with the only solution to logout and login again.

yard2010• 1 year ago

Use Vivaldi. Feel the internet like it's 2010 again. Vivaldi for the win.

Ygg2• 1 year ago

Also Chromium based.

caseyy10• 1 year ago

What are the odds that it’s not a conspiracy but simply someone at Google thinking it’s a brand they heard of and adding the tag? Or is that not how it works?

null_deref• 1 year ago

I think it’s almost always paid

hicallmeal7• 1 year ago

See sibling comment, it's genuinely just a form you fill in, and if you pass the (arguably low) Store standards, you'll get it. Extensions with ~200 users have them.

hicallmeal7• 1 year ago

Not quite, one has to nominate their extension/apply for it(fill a form, via the dev support centre)[0], for the CWS team to then review it, where after 3-4 weeks they usually grant it - you mainly have to have a "good" listing and "follow best practices" [1]. You can only apply once every 6 months.

In my opinion, either mass reporting, or (unlikely) a manual decision caused them to lose it. And after a while Honey likely applied again, where the reviewer was possibly unaware of past events. Or they were but it's not relevant to the review process. (Having millions of users may have played a part, the bigger exts might be treated differently, though I doubt it). Google doesn't really pay much mind to these things, from what I've seen.

[0] I'm pretty sure there's a dev doc somewhere with this

[1] https://developer.chrome.com/docs/webstore/discovery#feature...

caseyy10• 1 year ago

Interesting, thanks for the information. With it in mind, I think (as you said) someone approved it without giving it much thought. Honey is a very well-known brand, but it's mostly technologists (and only some) who know about the recent scandal.

abenga• 1 year ago

Is it only released for specific regions? Not available for me.

rany_• 1 year ago

Same, but I'm pretty sure it was available for me before. They might have geoblocked it to limit the spam 1 star reviews?

OuterVale• 1 year ago

Relevant previous discussion:

Exposing the Honey Influencer Scam [video] - 253 points by jadyoyster (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42483500)

uBlock Origin GPL code being stolen by team behind honey browser extension - 1057 points by extesy (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42576443)

eertami3• 1 year ago

From the video linked:

"You're convinced you should buy the one recommended in his video so you scroll down and find the affiliate link to that product"

Hold up, that's something people actually would do, click a link in a YouTube description instead of opening a new tab to search for it? Wild.

vinnymac• 1 year ago

I expect most people are going to open the door right in front of them, rather than walk the long way to gain entry, even if they are aware the door is monitored by a security camera.

kevincox• 1 year ago

Yeah, if someone I trust makes a recommendation I would much rather follow the link and get the right one than risk getting some scam.

I hate when people say "I recommend Bubble App" and I need to search for it, I'm always worried that I get some other app with the same or similar name.

mrkramer6• 1 year ago

Hold up, that's something people actually would do, click a link in a YouTube description instead of opening a new tab to search for it? Wild.

You trolling or what? Clicking is easier than searching some long ass name or sentence or whatever.

gruez• 1 year ago

Hold up, that's something people actually would do, click a link in a YouTube description instead of opening a new tab to search for it? Wild.

Yes, most people don't know/care about tracking links or whatever. Moreover even if they do care, most aren't cynical misanthropes who would go out of their way to deny their favorite creator of their affiliate cut.

mafuyu• 1 year ago

I used to always remove affiliate codes from links, but after hearing about just how much revenue creators make from Amazon affiliate, I started clicking them if it’s a creator that I support (especially smaller creators).

With Amazon, apparently the creator gets a percentage commission on your entire cart. Without the affiliate link, the price to me is exactly the same - Amazon just keeps the money. I assume AmazonSmile was basically using the charity you selected as the “affiliate”, but they shut that program down.

So yeah, it hurts my individual privacy stance, but it’s a drop in the bucket compared to all the data Amazon has about me already. Commission affiliate links at least redirect some of the revenue to the creator themselves.

DeathArrow• 1 year ago

Google is following its philosophy of doing no evil. /s

Timshel• 1 year ago

How is it still at 4.6 stars ??? On Firefox it dropped to 2.9 ...

dvh• 1 year ago

They are probably using median

nomilk• 1 year ago

Lots of bad apps on Apple App Store also have surprisingly high average ratings.

My best guess: the app asks the user whether they're enjoying it, if yes, asks for a review, if no, nothing.

sebazzz• 1 year ago

Om the other hand, negative experiences would lead to a review earlier. You know, the loud negative majority.

braiamp• 1 year ago

Firefox users are more informed and militant in how to make an effective evaluation on the site. Chrome users are governed by lowest common denominator.

klausa• 1 year ago

This has been disallowed on the App Store for a couple of years now; but of course is completely unenforced.

hicallmeal7• 1 year ago

In addition to a sibling comment about median, it could be that or that other common method (I forget, bayesion average? I think), but also consider - 176K reviews, 76 days since the _expose_, if it were 100 reviews a day on average, that's still 7.6K reviews. If it were 10K in the first few days, then 7.6K after, it's still ~10% of total reviews, where they likely had a ~4.6-8 score before hand. A drop in the bucket.

And it's possible (though imo unlikely) that some reviews were removed, perhaps initially at least, due to suspected botting.

manquer• 1 year ago

Median has little difference to mean when it is a bounded variable .

Rating can only vary 1-5, so mean and median will always be pretty close . For variables like say wealth that skews the average with outliers is where median is more useful than mean

b0ner_t0ner• 1 year ago

Google doesn't do a very good job of moderating or removing fake ratings, I mean, look at Microsoft's apps on Google Play, look at all those 4.5+ ratings:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/dev?id=672084787255366272...

DecentShoes• 1 year ago

It's still on the store?! That's bad enough.

jahsome3• 1 year ago

I absolutely love how fired up the average YouTube commenter was about Honey... for about 72 hours. People completely unaffected in any way were demanding class action lawsuits, etc with seemingly no clue why they were even upset. Then the subject completely left their minds.

This observation is of course entirely anecdotal, but manufactured outrage is so fascinating, even if it currently eroding the very foundations of society.

thinkingemote• 1 year ago

Where a lot of online content to be consumed is about dopamine, a lot of other stuff is about spiking cortisol.

There's people on every forum (and regularly here) that suggest, sometimes explicitly, that we must have elevated anxiety and stress levels in response to specific presented content as a moral imperative.

I think cortisol makes the "content" feel more "important" or relevant at the present moment in time. 72 hours later assuming no other exploits our body systems adjust and the content isn't important. It's weird when we notice it, but most of the time our cortisol is being directed to another topic so we don't notice.

There's a ton written about our dopamine addiction and how it's exploited but not much about cortisol and our negative emotions are being exploited.

caseyy10• 1 year ago

Many people say that overthinking, anxiety, and stress are moral imperatives as a response to something they don't like: content, political ideas, celebrities, technology companies, and many other things.

It is a completely ineffective method of making a change. I wish they'd stop spreading their anxieties online. I know it makes them feel like they're doing something, but one phone call to a relevant decision-maker is 100x more effective and 100x less destructive to those around them.

RataNova4• 1 year ago

The weird part is how natural it feels in the moment, like our brains are convinced it must be important

card_zero• 1 year ago

Yes, it's concerning how prevalent scare stories are. They needlessly raise everybody's stress levels. This disease of modern times is a serious issue that can only get worse, and we should all be very worried about it.

caseyy10• 1 year ago

I suppose as long as YouTubers and popular media can band together and talk about a thing, that will create a trend and give them all clicks and watch time.

There are definitely many things to be said about the irresponsible use of this power.

MattGaiser• 1 year ago

The problem with sustained outrage against Honey is that the victims are not the users and the users give up actual cash savings to not use Honey.

kibibu• 1 year ago

Not totally true. Honey deliberately only included a subset of coupons (at the seller's discretion), and in many cases better discounts were available elsewhere.

Hamuko2• 1 year ago

No, Honey scammed both the users and the creators. If a store partnered up with Honey, the store could decide which discount codes the users got with Honey and it didn't have to be the best one. This directly contradicts Honey's advertising ("If we find working codes, we'll automatically apply the best savings we find to your cart.") that is still somehow on joinhoney.com.

flessner• 1 year ago

It's just the social media process - find drama, blow it up to a ridiculous scale, profit.

In this particular case the creators were also harmed the most - the users didn't strictly get the "best" deals with Honey, but something is still better than nothing.

error_logic• 1 year ago

Harm to the creators is eventual harm to the users if it results in some of the creators they enjoyed watching no longer being sustainable.

garbagewoman2• 1 year ago

i think you're misapplying the term - how do you feel that this outrage was manufactured?

RataNova4• 1 year ago

Yeah, the internet outrage cycle is wild. One minute, it's the biggest scandal ever, and the next, everyone's moved on like it never happened. It's like collective amnesia, but with more yelling

mrtksn4• 1 year ago

I feel like the internet is turning into TV. There are not that many things going on, instead, there's a firehose that directs all the rage or all the love to something for some period of time. Almost like the legacy media picking topics and directing the narrative.

I'm particularly annoyed by Twitter lately because I can no longer share anything with my GF because she have already seen it. Our timelines are largely similar, it doesn't matter much who do you follow. Also, the algorithmic discovery being the default is very effective to create this channels(Technology Connections recently made a video about it).

On Twitter it appears like there are few talking points, or "channels", are being pushed based on location and few other things maybe and apparently to get exposure you have to say something that fits the narrative.

Maybe its not intentional, maybe its the result of the algo dividing people in cohorts or something but I'm very annoyed by the potentially destructive effect of the firehose. Everyone being very outraged of something for short period of time or being very excited for short period of time can't be healthy because it lacks depth and continuation.

xg15• 1 year ago

and apparently to get exposure you have to say the something that fits the narrative.

I think we should really be aware that, if tech companies weren't already able to build something like this anyway, with LLMs they are definitely able now.

There is lots of talk about the generative powers of LLMs, but they also have unprecedented analysis powers: You can now easily build something that automatically checks whether a tweet expresses a certain opinion or narrative and automatically upranks or downranks it based on the results.

So if you're the owner of a platform, you can now fully control the appearance of what "people are saying" on the platform, without even having to use bots or fake messages.

(Of course you could use those as well, in addition, if the opinion you want to push is so bad there aren't enough real users to uprank in the first place)

ChrisMarshallNY2• 1 year ago

there's a firehose that directs all the rage or all the love to something for some period of time.

I call it “outrage porn.” I have a friend that is really politically engaged, and occasionally sends me YouTube links to almost cartoonish vids. I watched the first couple, but ignore them, now. He seems to take them completely seriously, and I’ve learned not to trigger him, when it comes to politics.

This seems to be de rigueur, these days.

Workaccount2• 1 year ago

If anything this is more like the old internet, where there was only a few central wells of information, and with a few hours of daily browsing you could know "everything" that was going on.

Today it's dramatically more splintered than that. Still central wells, but the amount of content is many orders of magnitude larger and everyone has their own tailored feed.

parasti• 1 year ago

It's not manufactured. The people affected were social media influencers who used affiliate links. So the incident affected a very small and specific segment of society that incidentally could broadcast this to a lot of people.

silvanocerza2• 1 year ago

Not really, it was pretty clear from the investigation that some youtuber that I can't remember the name of that it wasn't just that.

One of the big claim from Honey is that it finds for you the coupons with that make you spend the least amount of money, but that's false if they have an agreement with the seller to only show you certain coupons.

So no, it doesn't affect just influencers, it affects also customers and vendors.

rcxdude• 1 year ago

The replacing affiliate links was older news (though still news to a lot of people). The new info in the video which blew up involved them also being scummy to the end users as well.

namaria• 1 year ago

it currently eroding the very foundations of society

Greed has always led people astray. But the whirlwind has no power on those who are content. It's a tragedy but a fateful one.

perching_aix8• 1 year ago

manufactured outrage is so fascinating

There's no reason to believe that this wasn't just people being impulsive as normal. The Honey debacle left my mind all the same, because life goes on.

If you have any evidence of this having been a manufactured outrage, please do post it. Otherwise, this is just a conspiracy theory, and I'm getting awfully tired of those.

rob_c• 1 year ago

They took ar jaabz...

dartos• 1 year ago

Well… iirc LegalEagle started a lawsuit against them.

What more would you want?

Average viewers are largely unaffected, so it’s not a topic that makes for great content.

tremarley2• 1 year ago

Agreed. The outrage was larger than I expected it to be.

The Honey business model was the same as every other coupon website that has launched over the last two decades.

Providing coupons in return for affiliate cookies

Before the media outrage how did people assume they made money?

conartist64• 1 year ago

I wasn't affected, but the outrage seemed real. People understand theft. If you're going to cozy up to a group of people and then pick all their pockets, you better be ready to be an enemy to that group of people.

jahsome3• 1 year ago

Fine, but why don't they care anymore?

I watch an embarrassing amount of YouTube and it was virtually all I heard about for 72 hours and then any mention at all vanished.

imiric• 1 year ago

The amount of information flooding our minds on a daily basis is staggering. We barely have enough time to process how we feel about a topic, when there are dozens of others craving for our attention. The software we use is built precisely to deliver as much information as possible in the shortest amount of time. So can you really blame people for moving on to other things?

ants_everywhere• 1 year ago

It's because it's easy to whip up an angry crowd.

Anger is a temporary motivator so bad actors use it as a way to increase the likelihood of swarm behavior like brigading.

There are also some people who enjoy being part of brigades because it makes them feel like they have a social group that does important things. That's why the same people often go from cause to cause without ever making a noticeable change beyond complaining.

It kind of sucks because they feel like they're special and march to their own tune but often they're being played by whichever piper is in town.

sschueller• 1 year ago

Features the criminals and disables features required for uBlock to work...

https://www.herzindagi.com/society-culture/google-chrome-upd...

hicallmeal7• 1 year ago

I said this in a reply comment, but it's likely Honey lost it due to mass reporting or _maybe_ (but unlikely) a manual decision, and now that time has passed, they've applied again (the badge "nomination" is just a form you fill in) after a short while and either the manual reviewer was unaware, or it just doesn't matter to the process, as the requirement are quite low.

It's possible larger extensions (1+ mil) have some sway/means to contact internally, but imo Google really doesn't pay much heed to "controversial"/topical things (perhaps apart from ublock). Or developers in general.

It becomes evident when you read some extensive related articles by Wladimir Palant (https://palant.info) [0] who does some pretty deep dives on the Chrome Store. I think he even developed Adblock Plus (the open-source version).

[0] I'm unaffiliated, just a reader.

hicallmeal7• 1 year ago

Just to add - you'll find Firefox pays much closer attention (evident by their quick move to remove the badge, and keep it that way) to these sorts of things, and are much more responsive.

luxuryballs2• 1 year ago

when you say the manual reviewer was unaware, I think I’m out of the loop on some key detail, unaware of what?

hicallmeal7• 1 year ago

The person reviewing Honey's badge nomination/request could have been unaware of the controversy Honey has been in. Thus upon finding Honey meets the "standards" they grant the request, and Honey is once again "featured".

RataNova4• 1 year ago

Kind of wild how little oversight there seems to be, considering how much power these extensions can have

lukan2• 1 year ago

Holding google a bit liable here, might do wonders.

nashashmi• 1 year ago

Didn't honey change its name after the total backlash?

WhereIsTheTruth• 1 year ago

The epitome of the modern Western culture:

exploiting people in a shady way => featured, rewarded and protected

Controversial take? no shit, sherlock

timeflex2• 1 year ago

Here me out on this. A lot of people are in a bubble. Honey got popular because almost ever big influencer out there would market it, and they might still for all I know. People in their infinite wisdom trust these influencers, like those that trust David Pakman saying PIA is the most secure VPN, or the thousands of other influencers shilling for NordVPN. A vast majority of people don't know that there are other VPN providers out there, nor do they really care. What matters if how influencers make them feel about their decision.

Now, if Google suddenly gets a spike in negative reviews, and a lot of them are from Chrome-connected accounts where they can see they've never downloaded that extension, or a lot of them appear to be from users who never used it, then they may have reason to remove or not weight those reviews the same. Just like where an establishment has built up a good reputation, and then something unpopular happens on camera and goes viral & so a bunch of people that have never been there flood the reviews.

What seems most likely to me is that Honey is still a rather popular extension, that what might bother you or the techcentric groups you follow doesn't really matter to a vast majority of users. It may be unfortunate, especially if people are getting misled or Honey is engaged in corruption. If people cared about corruption companies like Comcast/Xfinity would be non-existent IMO. Unfortunately they don't. If people want Google to ban/unfeature Honey, then wouldn't it be better to have a court judgement declaring Honey broke the law, rather than doing it just because it was unpopular to a much smaller group of users than the ones that thought Honey was the greatest cause their favorite influencer told them it was?

Hikikomori• 1 year ago

People can't vet everything themselves, it's impossible. It must be exhausting to live under American capitalism, anything and everyone is a potential scam out to get your money. But that is what the American dream really is.

timeflex2• 1 year ago

No they can't, and even if they could you'd get people that would evaluate things based on criteria that probably has no value or in some cases could be seen as negative value, but to them it is important. Or in some instances, people believe that if they leave a positive review right away & the company does them bad, that the company will be more inclined to fix the problem.

genewitch2• 1 year ago

The phenomenon you describe is called astroturfing.

perching_aix8• 1 year ago

No, it is score manipulation.

Astroturfing is a kind of manipulation where you mislead people about attribution, so that they associate what you say/do with a group or person of your choice.

For example, say that you really have an axe to grind with the programming language Rust, and are aware that people have a perception or would find it believable that its community is obnoxious, through being pedantic or overzealous.

What you could then do is join in on conversations and start talking as if you were a member of the Rust community, and act pedantic, overzealous, or otherwise obnoxious. Due to the pretense that you're a Rust user yourself, people would attribute this behavior to the Rust community, meaning you succeeded in boosting this negative perception.

Just an example of course.

RataNova4• 1 year ago

A court ruling would be the ideal standard, but let's be real, that rarely happens unless there's a major scandal

mrkramer6• 1 year ago

People in their infinite wisdom trust these influencers, like those that trust David Pakman saying PIA is the most secure VPN, or the thousands of other influencers shilling for NordVPN. A vast majority of people don't know that there are other VPN providers out there, nor do they really care. What matters if how influencers make them feel about their decision.

Brands pay influencers to promote their products in order to raise brand awareness, it is enough that people know some X or Y product exists so if they need something that X or Y products satisfies they will recall that they heard about X or Y product.

mrkramer6• 1 year ago

X or Y product satisfies*

pengowray• 1 year ago

There's a number of active class action lawsuits but they'll take time to play out. For more details than you can possibly want there's this video:

Investigation: GamersNexus Files New Lawsuit Against PayPal & Honey https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKbFBgNuEOU

I'll note it's not only unpopular now with a "smaller group of users" but also with influencers too now as they've realized it kills their own revenue by altering referral codes.

ingohelpinger• 1 year ago

imagine what affiliate networks in general do, they shave and scrub your leads. classic explaination, "ohh it seems the pixel fell off, it didn't fire" bla bla bla, this is stealing, nothing else.

throwaway2037• 1 year ago

4.6 of 5 stars. The most recent comments are comedic gold. I highly recommend that you read them for a good laugh.

yapyap• 1 year ago

Keeping honey and trying to drown uBlock Origin.

Corporations never change

thrance• 1 year ago

I still don't understand why most people got so angry about this, the extension does what it says it does: search for coupons in some kind of database. It seldom works but you don't lose much by trying.

The ones getting "scammed" out of a few referral sales are the ones advertising shitty products with no care whatsoever. Maybe they should have read the fine prints? Maybe the real lesson here is to do your due diligence before pushing garbage products to your fans?

kalleboo• 1 year ago

It also lies to its users - they will "affiliate" with stores and the stores can then choose which coupons are shown, so you don't actually get the best coupon.

Even if it's not a huge deal in the scheme of things it's definitely a case of false advertising

perching_aix8• 1 year ago

does what it says it does

But it doesn't. What it says it does (or at least used to, maybe they've changed it) is "find the best coupons" for you in that database. Instead, they collude with merchants, and do not necessarily give you the best coupons they're aware of, or even falsely claim they do not have any coupons in their database at all.

The ones getting "scammed" out of a few referral sales are the ones advertising shitty products with no care whatsoever

You're unable to know this / this is an opinion.

Maybe they should have read the fine prints?

What fine prints are you referring to?

Maybe the real lesson here is to do your due diligence before pushing garbage products to your fans?

In the original reporting there was another similar extension featured that did not use to do this, but has since started engaging in this same behavior. For all anyone knows, this could have happened to Honey as well.

kin• 1 year ago

Sounds like you are taking MegaLags’ video without a grain of salt.

Honey does not touch Amazon affiliate links (you can test this) and yet many enraged influencers just use Amazon affiliate links.

Did you ever test for yourself to see that Honey was not finding you the best coupon? You can test this too. There’s a reason the second video is taking so long.

Yes, some codes are requested to be removed by merchants. You’ll find that these typically are of the friends and family variety with steep discounts. In my experience, if the coupon is public, Honey will try to use it.

Gabrys1• 1 year ago

I think I watched a video that showed the case when the user was indeed better off NOT using the extension. If you followed an affiliate link that came with a discount for a product that Honey didn't have one for they would still remove the affiliation, thus making you lose money.

i_love_retros• 1 year ago

Did I miss a big story? What's PayPal honey and why is this significant?

perching_aix8• 1 year ago

You did. PayPal Honey, formerly just Honey, is a browser extension that claims to "help with finding coupons" at webshop checkouts so that you get the "best deal".

It was then found that it also steals all commissions at those checkout points, and instead of finding you a "best deal", it colludes with the merchants, allowing them to control how many people get what kind of "deals", completely defeating the point.

lolinder2• 1 year ago

instead of finding you a "best deal", it colludes with the merchants, allowing them to control how many people get what kind of "deals", completely defeating the point.

This is how "deals" have always worked, to the extent to the current technology makes it possible. Companies don't issue "deals" to be pro consumer, they do it because it benefits them, and they do it in ways that benefit them. For example, they would mail coupons two a few zip codes but not actually mark down the prices unless you actually possess a coupon. That's just a low-tech version of what you're describing.

I'm honestly surprised that people are surprised by this aspect of Honey. The hijacking of affiliate links is one thing, but coupons have always been a way for businesses to influence consumer behavior. Who did people think Honey's real customer was, given that the extension is free?

jakub_g• 1 year ago

Relevant links here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43298424

noAnswer• 1 year ago

There is no difference between honey and malware other than the later gets attacked by anti viruses. They literally do the same thing. Stealing referrals. We live in the most corrupt timeline.

ImPostingOnHN2• 1 year ago

I haven't heard of Honey recruiting computers into a DDOS-for-hire botnet, or providing remote desktop access to an attacker, or stealing financial details and draining bank accounts, or bricking computers on purpose, or encrypting files and holding them for random. Are you sure there's no difference and they literally do the same thing?

At the same time, I've not heard of a virus stealing referrals, but I wouldn't be surprised there. Just seems really uncommon among malware, compared to all the other stuff malware does and Honey doesn't.

Honestly, I thought everybody understood referrals are how "free" coupon sites and coupon extensions got their money to continue existing. Did folks think that Honey was spending that money, building that product and infrastructure, out of the goodness of their hearts, rather than as part of a business?

It seems like the only reason this extension out of many is getting attention, is because some rich internet video stars took money to promote it and regret doing so because it ended up making them less money than they hoped. No caring about their fans (for example, educating them, "don't install coupon extensions, they're usually spyware"), I guess because that's less profitable than exploiting them for $$$

yalogin2• 1 year ago

Honey and similar extensions are just monitoring every activity in the browser. I would have been surprised even if these were moderately successful but never expected them to be sold for billions. I would never have thought people would happily let themselves be monitored like this for deals when everything is on Amazon already

mrkramer6• 1 year ago

I would never have thought people would happily let themselves be monitored like this

Enter Facebook and Google.

rocketvole• 1 year ago

the point is that the service that honey provides doesn't seem to warrant selling your entire browsing activity. At least facebook and google provide a means of communication that is difficult, sometimes impossible, to provide elsewhere on the internet

yalogin2• 1 year ago

At least they had to build elaborate services to lure people in. This honey is just a 1999/2000 idea and tech that somehow made money in this day and age. Weird.

perching_aix8• 1 year ago

Honey and similar extensions are just monitoring every activity in the browser.

Is this actually true or just your personal speculation?

mrkramer6• 1 year ago

So YouTubers and their fans destroyed PayPal's $4 billion acquisition of Honey....this is like GameStop stoks reloaded. I'm fine with that because PayPal is yet another fishy and scammy tech company that presents itself as savior of Web users' privacy and security. People go crypto. Stablecoins will eventually win.

OutOfHere• 1 year ago

It will all make sense when we acknowledge that Chrome is malware.

PayPal Honey extension has again "featured" flag in Chrome web store

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