This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Aside from the element of deception towards their sponsored creators, I wonder if this will set precedent for what is a relatively common practice.
https://sirlinksalot.co/affiliate-hijacking/
Honey isn't the only one doing this. Brave Browser does it too:
I'm curious as to whether the industry will start moving from last-touch attribution to first-touch (or multi-touch) attribution instead.
The only reason last-touch (last affiliate link gets all the credit) is commonplace now is because it's easy to implement. No need for long-term tracking. What the industry really wants is either first-touch (first affiliate link or ad you click gets the credit) or multi-touch (the payment is split between every affiliate), depending on who you ask.
Does or did? It's not clear from the link at first glance.
They don't do it any more. Source: just checked.
Interesting how brave stills gets dragged through the mud for this, meanwhile firefox gets to walk free about the looking glass fiasco.
You probably can't definitively say they don't just by isolated checking. There could be a lot at play here. Maybe they turned it off while the heat is on, maybe whatever affiliate you were looking at didn't actually have a matching affiliate link on their side. Maybe there's an a/b test where they only jack a certain percentage.
When Linus Tech Tips first took them out as a sponsor they didn't appear to be jacking then either. But it would be very simple to build a system that turned link jacking off for certain users or during certain times or at certain thresholds.
Brave got caught doing it, and then stopped because the backlash was going to be worse than the advantage. Brave still had plenty of other ways to make money via search, selling advertising and BAT. I honestly don't fault brave for trying that because they are funding significant development to block ads.
Honey's base business model probably falls apart without some linkjacking. You go to a website to buy something and it says no no go buy it from these people instead. They've got to have it a lower price still have enough margin to sell it to you at that price, and pay honey for the redirection. It's kind of a sales worst case dilemma.
Honey's base business model probably falls apart without some linkjacking. You go to a website to buy something and it says no no go buy it from these people instead.
That's not what Honey does.
Additionally, the video asserts that Honey does not always find users the best discounts, either. Despite the browser extension's past advertising, the video showed multiple examples of Honey not presenting the best coupon codes to the consumer. Further supporting this claim is wording from Honey's FAQ page for partner businesses and its terms of use agreement. According to the FAQ page, any business that has an official partnership with Honey (in order to partner, a business must pay Honey a 3% commission) can add or remove codes from the platform. Additionally, the following paragraphs can be found within Honey's terms of use agreement:
While we try and find you the best available discounts and coupons, and to identify low prices, we may not always find you the best deal. PayPal is not responsible for any missed savings or rewards opportunities
Yes exactly, honey finds you coupon codes. It doesn't redirect you to go buy from someone else.
Because the Firefox looking glass fiasco wasn't close to the same level and they immediately responded to criticism on the issue.
Meanwhile there is a pattern of behaviour like this from Brave.
What, sorry? I think you have a typo.
This one is now opt in with very ambiguous language and doesn't tell you what is doing. I like suggested search results and might check that if I didn't know better.
https://brave.com/blog/referral-codes-in-suggested-sites/
They have a habit of doing pretty terrible scammy practices, funnily their bugs all seem to make them money:
https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/191yu33/why_is_brave_highly_disliked_in_the_privacy/
I hope LegalEagle takes them to the fucking cleaners and sets a precedent for scumbag companies like these who pull off affiliate hijacking and data harvesting.
God PayPal has always been the scum of the earth and only gotten worse over time. 😡
They banned my account for some reason, and I could never figure out why. I only used it to pay rent for a year or two and buy a couple of things on eBay. I'm guessing my account was hacked or something, but their support was utterly unhelpful so I have no idea.
But whatever, I don't need it for anything, so screw 'em.
I use to have a PayPal account. I used it to receive donations from some open-source projects that I was working on. And I passed most of the money on by re-donating it to other people who were also sharing high quality work that I liked. It was never very much money (like maybe a few hundred dollars in total over years); but I kind of enjoyed that.
But around 10 years ago, that PayPal account was blocked, because of who I'd sent money to. They didn't tell me specifically what the problem was, they just told me that it was 'suspicious' - and they (PayPal) demanded personal info from my to prove my identity before they would unlock the account. They wanted photos of drivers license and stuff like that.
Long story short, I eventually did get them to unblock the account (and I did not send them personal info); but that experience destroyed my confidence and trust in PayPal. So I drained the account, and haven't used them ever since. I very much don't like the idea that a company can just take my account (and money) hostage for totally arbitrary reasons and make demands based on that.
Hope this case won't be used against consumers in the future. If I want to use/make an extension that scrubs all affiliate links and cookies that should be legal, same with an extension that replaces all affiliate links/cookies with ones from someone I want to support. Advertisers and their partners have no rights to anything being stored/done on my devices.
Not defending what Paypal was doing, but the real issue for me is that they had no intention of actually finding the best codes/discounts, not what they did with affiliate links.
I would say the real issue is transparency. If Honey made it clear that their product overwrote the affiliate links referer, didn't actually find the best deals (despite advertising that exact thing), and then paid influencers to advertise their product that also steals from them, then this wouldn't be as much of a big deal if at all. Though they also probably wouldn't be a successful business, hence why many consider it a scam.
That's fair, I agree. I just find it a bit concerning that random people who try to make money off of affiliate links are encouraged to join this class action lawsuit about a client-side browser addon. I totally understand why people who have had sponsorship agreements with them would sue, but that's purely between the two businesses. If this results in a ruling that has nothing to do with the lack of transparency then that might ultimately be a bad thing.
Not sure why someone would down vote this. I fully agree. Please someone explain why consumers shouldn't be able to use an extension like this that is not-for-profit, e.g.
They probably don't share my concern. I hope they are right.
