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?
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.
>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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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:
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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
[+] [-] OuterVale|1 year ago|reply
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)
[+] [-] eertami|1 year ago|reply
> "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.
[+] [-] sschueller|1 year ago|reply
https://www.herzindagi.com/society-culture/google-chrome-upd...
[+] [-] timeflex|1 year ago|reply
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?
[+] [-] pengowray|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] RataNova|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] genewitch|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] mrkramer|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Hikikomori|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] noAnswer|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] DecentShoes|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] yalogin|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] perching_aix|1 year ago|reply
Is this actually true or just your personal speculation?
[+] [-] mrkramer|1 year ago|reply
Enter Facebook and Google.
[+] [-] i_love_retros|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Timshel|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] nomilk|1 year ago|reply
My best guess: the app asks the user whether they're enjoying it, if yes, asks for a review, if no, nothing.
[+] [-] hicallmeal|1 year ago|reply
And it's possible (though imo unlikely) that some reviews were removed, perhaps initially at least, due to suspected botting.
[+] [-] b0ner_t0ner|1 year ago|reply
https://play.google.com/store/apps/dev?id=672084787255366272...
[+] [-] dvh|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] hart_russell|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mrkramer|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] OutOfHere|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] ingohelpinger|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] abenga|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] nashashmi|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] djfivyvusn|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] yapyap|1 year ago|reply
Corporations never change
[+] [-] caseyy|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] WhereIsTheTruth|1 year ago|reply
exploiting people in a shady way => featured, rewarded and protected
Controversial take? no shit, sherlock
[+] [-] jahsome|1 year ago|reply
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|reply
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.
[+] [-] parasti|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] mrtksn|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] dartos|1 year ago|reply
What more would you want?
Average viewers are largely unaffected, so it’s not a topic that makes for great content.
[+] [-] flessner|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] conartist6|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] imiric|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] garbagewoman|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] caseyy|1 year ago|reply
There are definitely many things to be said about the irresponsible use of this power.
[+] [-] ants_everywhere|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] tremarley|1 year ago|reply
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?
[+] [-] namaria|1 year ago|reply
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_aix|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] RataNova|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] rob_c|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] MattGaiser|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]