The entire business model is predicated on injecting themselves as the last click for attribution even when they weren’t remotely responsible for the conversion. Cool business, but can’t keep going on forever without someone catching on.
What Honey did robbed content publishers of ad revenue, advertisers lead valuations, and end consumer confidence (bait-and-switch.)
I wouldn't want to be in the blast radius of that legal mess... Popcorn ready for when the judge defines the scope of who is liable =3
Amazon et al don't allow you to offer this as an affiliate program partner, not without a special and custom agreement at least, but if the extension was partner-agnostic and released by a party unaffiliated with Amazon in any way, there's nothing they could realistically do about it.
It'd be one way to bring Amazon Smile back, and on many more sites than just Amazon.
Edit: Yes. In 2014. How did I miss that? Used to listen to that podcast, though probably stopped before that.
There's a browser extension for that too.
Most media people have gone back to unique affiliate discount-coupon-codes instead of clickable URL parameters to track lead referrals.
Unfortunately, this also leads to sampling bias, and campaigns spelunking spam statistics. I'd guess on YT irritating people drives engagement in some twisted way. lol =3
https://www.justice.gov/usao-ma/pr/final-defendant-ebay-cybe...
Also not more weird than the British charity thing of "I'm shaving off all my hair, and that's why you should donate to charity Y." (I suspect Brits need an excuse before they are mentally allowed to do something silly. But any excuse will do.)
I had this idea before Honey. When we spoke to our attorney, he instantly told us "that won't fly; you'll get popped for cookie stuffing."
The adware world had been doing similar things forever - injecting fake results into Google, taking over default home pages to show Google look-alikes.
When Honey launched on Reddit and got their first user bump, I started building our prototype. While digging deeper, you discover Honey injects JavaScript from their API, which violates extension store TOS, yet somehow this flies.
Fast forward, they hire the CEO of Commission Junction (CJ) as their CFO and everything becomes gravy.
Try to get offers via CJ, you won't get a response. All affiliate networks (CJ, Rakuten/LinkShare, etc.) have "stand down" policies in their contracts. You're supposed to detect when someone takes action like clicking a coupon site link and "stand down." Honey never did this. We had to demonstrate it was happening, but bring it up to CJ and they won't care.
It's regulatory capture of a borderline illegal business.
All cited studies came from RetailMeNot (since taken down). They claim customers abandon carts for coupons. Sure, some do, but those people will probably convert anyway.
Today, coupons are dying. We're in the world of personalized offers. Most coupon codes don't exist anymore - they're offer links. These systems try to "find you a coupon" which isn't real.
You're not supposed to share personalized coupons. These systems capture your coupons and add them to their list, but they almost never work.
I'd never try this business again. It's dishonest and terrible.
Fun fact: Much of this goes back to adware/search XML feeds from parking pages. IAC had a division called Mindspark Interactive Network (recently closed) - their adware division generating insane profit through Pay-Per-Download scam browser extensions tricking your grandfather, hijacking affiliate link clicks, same playbook.
The affiliate networks don't care as long as referrers look like they match approved pages.
This industry needs to die.
Though, like what was exposed, Honey does a poor job for the end user too. There are other cashback sites out there doing what Honey claims/does, but passes on more to the end user. Though they're all taking the referral $$ from the real referer, if there was one.
Perhaps it changed recently, or I just never noticed? I was expecting 100MB with back button abuse and retention dark patterns. Instead, it loads fast, has minimal guff, and the footer scrolled into view ending the page within sight of the end of the actual article.
Perhaps this is a reward response to not having to / be able to doom scroll?
So if you see a friend is trying to do some personal achievement, and you think the charity is a worthwhile one to donate to; why not combine the two and help your friend achieve their goal whilst also raising money for a good cause.
The YouTubers that peddle this shit have no morals.
I've never thought about it before, but I suppose it's a way for you to provide some commitment from yourself as a condition for those you're crowdsourcing donations from.
If you don't deliver on your part, they don't have to pay.
When I was in high-school we did everything from shaving our heads, to having your legs waxed in front of the whole (boys) school.
I raised thousands of £ for charity this way, more than I could ever raise by myself at that age.
It's only an invasion of privacy if the monitoring is done in secret.
but you are also missing the fact that the great part of the industry works in the same way: using open source stuff, in a super parasitic way, to track and control millions of users.
the average googler here is not better here.
p.s.: great nickname btw. and on point.
Uhhh... that seems very incorrect. If someone pokes their head into your shower session, it's an invasion of privacy - whether or not they let you know they're peepin on ya.
AdBlock Plus also had this idea back in 2012/2013.
Here’s a (German) article about this:
https://web.archive.org/web/20220817235820/https://www.mobil...
Near the end he mentions the typoRules.js, rules.json, urlfixer stuff and Yieldkit. Apparently, whenever you’ve mis-typed a URL to e.g. amazon, it auto-corrected it and added their own affiliate id (which was then valid for 30 days). And the feature only needed very few changes to get applied even to correct links.
Regardless, one of the nice things about the practice is does mean people are at least somewhat committed to a cause they are raising funds for before they go soliciting. It also deals with the irrational part of the human psyche and moves the action conceptually from the person begging to the person trading which can have an impact on how people perceive it.
I think Johnny Harris may still run adverts for them? But I watch him mostly because he's such a suspicious character to begin with.