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Honey has now lost 4M Chrome users after shady tactics were revealed

(9to5google.com)
657 points tantalor | 1 comments | 31 Mar 25 18:28 UTC | HN request time: 0.211s | source
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jabroni_salad ◴[31 Mar 25 19:14 UTC] No.43538651[source]▶
In case you missed it, a co-founder of Honey did an AMA on this topic a few days ago.

https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1jlfms8/im_ryan_hudso...

I'm not a honey user but I thought this section was interesting:

> This gets a bit technical but in the video, Jonathon carefully shows you that the ‘NV_MC_LC’ cookie changes from Linus Tech Tips -> Paypal when a user engages with Honey. What he must have seen is that there is also a ‘NV_MC_FC’ cookie that stays affiliated with Linus Tech Tips and is NOT changed to Paypal. In this case LC stands for ‘last click’ and FC for ‘first click’. In the video he seems to claim that there is no first click cookie and only a last click cookie - this claim is false.

> In my DM conversation with Jonathon he claimed that he noticed the FC cookie but didn’t think it was relevant and that he was confused by it. I wonder, as an investigative journalist, did he think to ask anyone at NewEgg or the affiliate networks to explain it to him before he threw damning accusations at an industry he didn’t understand?

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1. layoric ◴[31 Mar 25 21:15 UTC] No.43540065[source]▶
This sounds like a distraction. "seems to claim that there is no first click cookie". He brought that up, it doesn't control the payout and doesn't change the result from what I understand. FC cookie is not relevant, Megalag was focusing on what was important information to impart to viewers. If they clicked on an affiliate link from their favorite creator, using Honey hijacked that action of support without disclosing anything.