1. Honey makes money through deals with retailers to not offer the best coupon code to the extension's users
2. Honey swaps out the referral code from the blog/video/etc. that actually referred you to the product with their own, even when they didn't find any coupon deal
Merely "Honey makes commissions from our merchant partners" is not at all a "very upfront" description of that behavior. Moreover, many of the people affected by this are reviewers/etc. who have never themselves used Honey so had no particular reason to look into how it works.
The two together results in honey essentially being paid instead of real affiliates to suppress coupon codes from you(since they advertise to stores that they direct users away from finding coupons, and towards a more stable discount percentage).
> Why would they want to pay Honey any money when Honey doesn’t originate any traffi?
Paying Honey means you can limit the discounts available through Honey, sort of like a shitty protection scheme.
Because Honey bills itself to the consumer as the be-all-end-all coupon and discount app and advertises itself as "we know ALL the coupon codes and discounts", a consumer with the Honey extension will likely not look outside of that for a discount and assume whatever they got from the extortion racket as the end customer was "the best deal".
"Earning money from affiliate links" and "stealing affiliate links" are not the same thing. There is a big range of behaviors here, and they're right at the worst end of it.
I'm surprised by how far they went, not that affiliate links were involved at all.
At no point in that writeup does Honey say they use cookie stuffing to fraudulently steal affiliate attribution when no discount code is found. This is a serious crime: people have gone to prison for cookie stuffing affiliate codes (see: https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdal/pr/cookie-stuffing-interne...)
> The only thing that I never understood was why brands would allow Honey to be an affiliate. Why would they want to pay Honey any money when Honey doesn’t originate any traffi?
Because Honey has leverage.
Just to provide one example, Honey can very easily hurt Amazon's bottom line by adding random affiliate codes (of independent creators) to every transaction. This wouldn't make them any money, but would bring them to the negotiating table.
Instead, Amazon can work out a deal with them where they get half the standard affiliate fee, and Amazon pockets the rest. Amazon is happy because they pay 1.5% to Honey instead of paying 3% to a different creator, Honey is happy because they get 1.5% instead of nothing, and Honey users are happy because if Honey is well-funded, they'll use some of that money on letting them find good deals online.
This is just one of the ways it could have played out; it's also possible that e.g. Honey had good access to some kind of Amazon discount codes that they kept applying too often, which Amazon didn't like, so they worked out a deal that wasn't too bad for Amazon and great for Honey.
> The only thing that I never understood was why brands would allow Honey to be an affiliate. Why would they want to pay Honey any money when Honey doesn’t originate any traffi?
One YouTube channel, theo dot gg has a conspiracy theory about it which is honey:
1. amassed a huge (rabid) user base
2. Offered "protection" to companies
The evidence presented is Amazon dot com affiliates walk on eggshells to avoid breaking Toss that Honey completely tramples on so at the very least honey is not subject to the same tos as everybody. However, Amazon dot com is very aware of honey evidenced by advisory warnings on Amazon dot com website from a few years ago.
So I think basically the strategy here was:
1. Pay a lot of money to buy a user base
2. Offer protection to stores if they do certain things
3. Deliberately don't give the best offers to users if the stores pay this protection money, wreck the store somehow(?) if they don't
4. Profit
My guess to your question would be that perhaps there is the belief, or maybe data proves it factual, that when someone is considering a purchase and might be on the fence and then they see that Honey can get them a coupon or rewards points that they are then slightly more likely to go through with the purchase thinking they are getting a good deal. If data shows an increase in sales then some might consider affiliating worth it. Just my guess.
>> We earn these commissions when a member uses Honey to find available savings or to activate PayPal Rewards
Do you really think that clicking an "OK" button to dismiss a dialog after Honey doesn't find any coupons that secretly reloads the page your on and replaces the affliate cookie with its own is just "earning money from affiliate links?" That's just one of the super shady things they do.
Same with Paypal rewards. They entice users to click the rewards button to again steal the affiliate cookie, and pay them a few cents while they take tens of dollars in affiliate commision.
They literally advertise this as a feature on their home page in that they give you X% of what they earn from affiliate links. It says a lot about the influencers advertising it if they did not realise that Honey is taking their affiliate revenue while reading an ad that says they do. More realistically, most of them likely did know that this is what Honey does and determined that honey paid more than any lost revenue, but know that saying that would lead to some of this outrage being directed at them. As a bonus, by asking users to uninstall Honey they can have their money from running Honey ads previously and money from their affiliate links too. The only way I can maybe see influencers being unaware of this if if they read an ad that only talked about the coupon feature and they never bothered to even visit the Honey homepage or try it themselves, which would be a pretty bad look for them.
I also think most users that use Honey have to know that this is what it does given that, again, it's an advertised feature. I suspect most people outraged at this are people that never used the tool in the first place.
I certainly think it's a bad product as it defeats the purpose of affiliate links and reduces revenue for anyone using affiliate links for their intended purpose, but I don't think they were misleading anyone about what the product does.
If a company says they make money “selling cars” you don’t assume they get those cars through theft. Same deal here, saying they get affiliate money doesn’t imply they overwrite existing affiliate links which is about a clear a case of tortious interference as you could find. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortious_interference
So, no Honey didn’t disclose what people are complaining about.
I think you’re missing the point. Honey is stealing affiliate credits from influencers who don’t have any relationship with them.
If a YouTuber posts an link with their own affiliate code and during checkout the user uses the Honey extension to look for coupons Honey steals the affiliate credit even if they don’t have a coupon the YouTuber gets nothing.
It took LTT years to detect this behavior despite it coming up in forums and HN. They then decided to stop accepting sponsorships from them.
Sponsored ads also often boasted Honey will get you the best deal anywhere. Yet some have found them knowingly preferring their own coupons even though others users had manually entered and successfully used better coupons from elsewhere (while the extension was installed).
Ukv|1 year ago
1. Honey makes money through deals with retailers to not offer the best coupon code to the extension's users
2. Honey swaps out the referral code from the blog/video/etc. that actually referred you to the product with their own, even when they didn't find any coupon deal
Merely "Honey makes commissions from our merchant partners" is not at all a "very upfront" description of that behavior. Moreover, many of the people affected by this are reviewers/etc. who have never themselves used Honey so had no particular reason to look into how it works.
Xelynega|1 year ago
kotaKat|1 year ago
Paying Honey means you can limit the discounts available through Honey, sort of like a shitty protection scheme.
Because Honey bills itself to the consumer as the be-all-end-all coupon and discount app and advertises itself as "we know ALL the coupon codes and discounts", a consumer with the Honey extension will likely not look outside of that for a discount and assume whatever they got from the extortion racket as the end customer was "the best deal".
tiborsaas|1 year ago
But the merchant controls the discounts, if they want to stop spreading higher discount codes they can do it any time.
If I had an affiliate program, I would not allow Honey on my platform.
Dylan16807|1 year ago
I'm surprised by how far they went, not that affiliate links were involved at all.
kelseydh|1 year ago
Google removes chrome extensions cookie stuffing affiliate codes: https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-removes-two-chrome-ad-b...
miki123211|1 year ago
Because Honey has leverage.
Just to provide one example, Honey can very easily hurt Amazon's bottom line by adding random affiliate codes (of independent creators) to every transaction. This wouldn't make them any money, but would bring them to the negotiating table.
Instead, Amazon can work out a deal with them where they get half the standard affiliate fee, and Amazon pockets the rest. Amazon is happy because they pay 1.5% to Honey instead of paying 3% to a different creator, Honey is happy because they get 1.5% instead of nothing, and Honey users are happy because if Honey is well-funded, they'll use some of that money on letting them find good deals online.
This is just one of the ways it could have played out; it's also possible that e.g. Honey had good access to some kind of Amazon discount codes that they kept applying too often, which Amazon didn't like, so they worked out a deal that wasn't too bad for Amazon and great for Honey.
mcny|1 year ago
One YouTube channel, theo dot gg has a conspiracy theory about it which is honey:
1. amassed a huge (rabid) user base 2. Offered "protection" to companies
The evidence presented is Amazon dot com affiliates walk on eggshells to avoid breaking Toss that Honey completely tramples on so at the very least honey is not subject to the same tos as everybody. However, Amazon dot com is very aware of honey evidenced by advisory warnings on Amazon dot com website from a few years ago.
So I think basically the strategy here was:
1. Pay a lot of money to buy a user base 2. Offer protection to stores if they do certain things 3. Deliberately don't give the best offers to users if the stores pay this protection money, wreck the store somehow(?) if they don't 4. Profit
happymellon|1 year ago
I missed this, do you have any more information on it?
cavisne|1 year ago
14|1 year ago
skeeter2020|1 year ago
Do you really think that clicking an "OK" button to dismiss a dialog after Honey doesn't find any coupons that secretly reloads the page your on and replaces the affliate cookie with its own is just "earning money from affiliate links?" That's just one of the super shady things they do.
Same with Paypal rewards. They entice users to click the rewards button to again steal the affiliate cookie, and pay them a few cents while they take tens of dollars in affiliate commision.
LiamPowell|1 year ago
I also think most users that use Honey have to know that this is what it does given that, again, it's an advertised feature. I suspect most people outraged at this are people that never used the tool in the first place.
I certainly think it's a bad product as it defeats the purpose of affiliate links and reduces revenue for anyone using affiliate links for their intended purpose, but I don't think they were misleading anyone about what the product does.
Retric|1 year ago
So, no Honey didn’t disclose what people are complaining about.
mikeryan|1 year ago
If a YouTuber posts an link with their own affiliate code and during checkout the user uses the Honey extension to look for coupons Honey steals the affiliate credit even if they don’t have a coupon the YouTuber gets nothing.
paulryanrogers|1 year ago
Sponsored ads also often boasted Honey will get you the best deal anywhere. Yet some have found them knowingly preferring their own coupons even though others users had manually entered and successfully used better coupons from elsewhere (while the extension was installed).