It is personal to creators because honey paid a lot of them generously over the years to work with .

It is not the industry is shady that made honey standout, it is the fact that they were paying the people to pick from their own pockets is what got YT creators railed up.

It is being singled out, because without that heavy creator promotion they wouldn’t have grown anywhere close to the size they were last month. They have already last 3+ millions on Chrome web store in December .

No other coupon company has been valued or sold at 4 billion honey was, it is by far the largest and most successful. It is not uncommon for largest player to get the most scrutiny even though others do the same

Couldn't agree more, fellow authentic consumer! As a completely real person with no vested interests, I must say this resonates with my genuine, unprompted experience. Thank you for sharing your totally unscripted thoughts!

This but unironically. Why would an authentic consumer care whether the right shill gets paid, and be upset that instead some other party does and they get a discount or cash back?

Do all of the upset people work in ads or ad-adjacent industries or something? Are the "influencers" (i.e. propagandists) trying to manufacture outrage and make it seem like normal people care? Please think of the spammers!

I consider myself pretty normal, and I care, just because... I dunno, I appreciate honesty? Especially in our modern world where it increasingly feels like every individual person and every company is out to fuck every other person/company for every last nickel and dime they can manage? And like, this is pretty scummy. If I get sent towards a given product because someone I follow recommends it, yeah I want that person getting their pay for that. I don't give a shit how little it is. They were approached or they approached this company, offered to rep the product, did the work and showed it, and clearly they did a good job, because I watched it and used their link.

Like I don't particularly like sponsored segments, but I know why they exist: because ad revenue on YouTube is fickle and pretty shit, and I enjoy the creators I follow and want them to keep making stuff, and making stuff costs some combo of time and money. So yes, I want the creator to get that.

I think most normal people would vibe on this train of logic. I don't view and never have viewed business, including my own, as a cutthroat competition between me and everyone else. I view it as mutuality of purpose. I offer my work, and people who need stuff done that I can do, give me money. I think if the broader markets had an attitude like that instead of chasing every last penny at every single intersection, then we'd live in a better world.

A paid "recommendation" is dishonest to begin with, and is taking advantage of misplaced trust/parasocial relationships. An honest relationship would involve asking viewers/readers/listeners to support them directly.

I offer my work for money. I don't work for free and tell clients "hey you should support me by using AWS (who will give me kickbacks) for your infrastructure." The conflict of interest is fundamental to such an arrangement, even if disclosed. Instead my employer pays me for my expertise and I do my best to give them my honest, unbiased experience/opinions/analysis. I'm explicit about the boundaries of my knowledge/experience.

Case in point: these "influencers" obviously did not do any due diligence on what this program was doing. They "recommended" something they didn't understand because they were paid to do so. If this were "merely" stealing user information (the monetization method someone else in the thread said they assumed), would there be controversy? What exactly did the people who recommended this thing think it was going to do to the people who installed it? That's the actual story here (though it should be unsurprising).

The problem is that beyond stealing the affiliate rev, which might matter if you actually like the person (like project farm for me), Honey is in bed with merchants and will give negligible discounts or nothing depending what the store wishes. The whole "scrapping the internet for coupons" is practically speaking a lie. Also even if you don't give a shit, reduced affiliate revenue means that creators are more likely to sponsor in-video, which is annoying if you don't know about sponsor block.

For me is mostly the same the disgust when I discovered that hyperparasitoid wasps exist.

Obviously the correct solution is to spread the word about ublock and sponsorblock (and perhaps adnauseum) too. Help contribute to a better society by making advertising a less viable way to make money. If something is worth paying for, pay for it. Push the incentives toward honest practices. Don't white knight when shills play themselves.

Well, 95% of people on HN know about uBlock Origin and Sponsorblock, so why are you telling me to preach to the choir instead of saying my original point? I was making fun of how GP sounds exactly like a PR person, not saying that affiliate marketing is good for society. Even if you're a hardliner against advertising, you can recognize that not literally everyone is a shill (e.g., most metric-based reviewers). And even if it's harmful at a societal level that some random YouTuber discussing a movie also shills dropshipped razors, you wouldn't say that mugging them is actually good.

It's like crypto - it's environmentally harmful and facilitates ransomware with minimal benefits, but I wouldn't be okay with someone showing up in the comments saying it's totally fine to steal someone's shitcoins with malware (though laughing about it is fine). It seems that you wanted to make a point about the post itself and used my comment as a launching point, which is fine, but don't accuse me of white knighting.

Edit: Forgot to check my writing.

My account is 11 years old. How dare I try to share a perspective as somebody who worked in the affiliate industry.

Your behavior in this thread is spammy and your perspective boils down to "everyone in the industry ratfucks creators, so the video is ragebait". Why do you feel compelled to defend clearly unethical behavior?

This is a forum run by a Silicon Valley VC firm, frequented by tech entrepreneurs. Ethical behavior is not high on their list of priorities.

I'm not sure they could even define ethical.

Except honey does not clarify that it replaces the referral link anywhere. The vast majority of shopping sessions do not have attribution, so adding attribution to them would just drive prices higher for regular users, damaging both users and the sellers.

It could lead to lower prices if they are indeed replacing referrals. Supposing the retailers notice that this is a huge affiliate, basically understand what's happening, and negotiate a smaller commission for these programs (they obviously have a lot of negotiating power since they aren't really getting referrals and could just ban these programs, destroying them), they might have a lower overall cost.

I imagine people running affiliate programs have heard of rakuten, for example, so I suppose they have some reason they haven't banned it (i.e. it actually benefits them/lowers overall costs).

This cost would lead that less creators would participate in the referral program. Because the only criteria to participate is how much money they get from it. Though, maybe a good thing, I am tired with all the tech reviews glorifying new stuff, like it is an ad all the way. The good sign if reviewer has a ref link is that the review is probably optimized to be the last place you visit before making a purchase.

so, it exactly does not mention that it replaces the referral from the original URL you came to buy stuff with. Thanks for the confirmation.

Stop spamming the same bullshit apologism over and over and over

Nobody cares that other companies and extensions do the same thing, they're bad too.

I'm not saying this isn't a problem, it's just not a Honey-specific problem. If he actually wanted to influence change, he should cover the affiliate networks responsible for dictating this behavior (CJ, Impact, Rakuten, Awin, etc). The extensions are forced to comply by their rules.

> I'm not saying this isn't a problem, it's just not a Honey-specific problem.

You didn’t just say that. You said a whole lot of other things. You lead with the fact that it’s well known within the industry. The implication of your comment is that the companies did nothing wrong, and people are idiots for not knowing this stuff before. If that’s not your stance, you should make your stance more clear.

If you instead simply said “people should also be angry at all these other extensions and companies, they’re complicit and just as bad” then nobody would be calling you out for astroturfing.

People should also be angry at all these other extensions and companies, they’re complicit and just as bad. But the source of change needs to come from the affiliate networks, who dictate the rules.

The source of change should come from influencers - who shouldn’t promote this stuff. From honey, who shouldn’t steal money, lie about their business practices and steal people’s code. And it should come from Google and Firefox who allow extensions like this in their stores. And from consumers who install this crap.

> So are there some problems with the affiliate industry? Probably. But calling Honey a "scam" seems completely unfair and lacks critical thinking.

It is a scam. It’s an industry wide scam. Calling it out is important because it’s the calling out of shady practices which puts pressure on industries and people to change.

Unfortunately, nothing will actually change from the inside. This industry is rotten to the core, and companies will continue to exploit users and other companies as long as they can profit from it. It's not like PayPal Honey was some obscure company with no visibility. PayPal knew damn well what they were buying and how the company operates.

The only way this could change is if the tech industry is hit with strict regulations. But considering that governments are technically incompetent, and that they're either in symbiosis or plain bought out by Big Tech, this has no chance of happening. Especially in the US, where any mention of regulation is met with criticism even from consumers, and where Musk will be taking the reigns for the next 4 years.

Once this "scandal" blows over and consumers forget about it, PayPal Honey will either continue to exist, or will rebrand as a different company in the same industry, operating the same way it does now.

As for influencers: it's hilarious that you think any positive change could come from them. They only care about getting paid, and could promote anything that lands in their inbox. Hell, they're often the ones who scam their own audience. We're decades away from regulating that whole mess.

I imagine you'd get farther with your arguments if you started with those parts instead of what sounded like a full-throated defense of one bad actor by claiming they're forced to be bad by circumstances.

Don't hate the player, hate the game is fine if you say it up front. If you leave it for a comment buried down below you just look like a shill to all the people that read only one or two levels deep.

Hey that's totally fair, appreciate the feedback.