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

Ryan here too - will try to respond to some of these with more info.

The two biggest missing pieces from both my discussion and from the video are: 1) stand down rules for affiliate, and 2) cash back to the user.

I was trying to address the claims he raised in the video specifically and since he didn't mention either I didn't in my reddit post except for a little bit in a couple of the answers.

1) For the case where the store only uses last click (which is most of them) Honey and other browser extensions follow a rule set by the affiliate networks called 'stand down'. This means they attempt to detect when another affiliate link is clicked (e.g. from a creator) and then either fully disable the functionality or at least don't use affiliate links. Only browser extensions are subject to these rules (e.g. if you visit a coupon code website they will use their affiliate link and override the creator).

Detecting this can be a bit tricky across numerous affiliate networks and I suspect the NewEgg example was selected because it used a non-standard way to manage affiliate tagging and therefore wasn't detected by Honey's stand down logic.

fwiw I agree with the sentiment that Honey shouldn't have been tagging on a 'hey we didn't find any codes' or 'use paypal' click and I personally wouldn't have approved that, though it probably technically does meet most of the affiliate network stand down rules (well, at least it did - I'm sure they've been updated which is a good thing).

2) Jonathon's video is completely silent on the other core value proposition of Honey: cash back. Honey, like Rakuten, Capital One Shopping, etc, offers cash back funded by affiliate marketing. The model is not new - Ebates (now Rakuten Rewards) was founded in 1998. Honey added this program in 2015.

When a user is shopping with Honey on a store with affiliate commission, Honey almost always gives the user cash back. There are a limited number of exceptions, generally because of the store's policy, and occasionally because there are so many exclusions to the affiliate program that it makes offering cash back confusing to a user.

A valid question to ask is: if a user clicks a creator affiliate link AND has a cash back tool like Honey or Rakuten should they or should they not be eligible for cash back. Personally I think absolutely yes, the user's preference is the most important. But I've heard reasonable people argue the opposite.

What I don't think is that offering it's users cash back makes Honey a scam and I think Jonathon was negligent in presenting this narrative without even considering this primary use case for what is actually the #1 business model in affiliate marketing.

I'll stop there. Happy to answer a few more questions here.

Isn't the problem that none of this was transparent to the user? That honey takes affiliate commissions and MAYBE gives some of that money back to the user? That honey takes credit for the sale and MAYBE stands down in certain circumstances?

I don't think any of this is transparent to the user. That's the scam.

What would you want to see for transparency?

We always tried to be as transparent to our users as possible in the product, in the faq, in our customer support, etc.

You can see evidence of that approach at 6:17 in Jonathon's video in the response that he got from customer service about how Honey works (even when he intentionally removes critical context). He reads a support email that says:

"If Honey is activated and is the last program used while shopping on a site, it is likely Honey will receive credit for the purchase, and Gold will be earned by the member. However, if your favorite influencer's affiliate link was the last program associated with your purchase during your shopping on the site then they will receive the credit for the purchase. Keep in..."

Notably he stopped reading before the "and Gold will be earned by the member" because it didn't fit his narrative.

I know it flashed on the screen faster than anyone could read and was zoomed so you couldn't see the whole thing on one screen but would you consider this level of transparency adequate if he read the whole thing?

> A valid question to ask is: if a user clicks a creator affiliate link AND has a cash back tool like Honey or Rakuten should they or should they not be eligible for cash back. Personally I think absolutely yes, the user's preference is the most important. But I've heard reasonable people argue the opposite.

I'm not very familiar with Honey, it's business model, or the ins and outs of the affiliate program back stage. My impression here is strictly as an observer with no foot in the race.

Should they be eligible for cash back? Sure, if you want to give them cash. I don't see why that entitles Honey a link in the affiliate program chain, though. The cash back offer seems entirely independent from the user's choice to at least get to the point of purchase, with maybe an occassional situation where they would have pulled out if not for a cash back or coupon deal.

It's a benefit you're affording the user, but it's on you to find a way to monetize that without impacting the actual affiliate. If you have a deal with the merchant so that doesn't affect the actual affiliate, great. If you charge your users a monthly fee or something, wonderful. But if you're deciding that you deserve a share of an existing pot, you're in the wrong, and there's no two ways about that. A flawed business model doesn't entitle you to other people's shares.

Again, I'm not familiar with the way the system works at all, and haven't seen Laing's video, so I might be missing context. But from your quote on Reddit:

> On most stores Honey (and others) offer a portion of the commission back to users as cash back.

My understanding is that Honey inserts itself into the affiliate chain, takes Y% of the commission (and reducing the original affiliate's commission by the same amount? Clarification needed), then returns X% back to the user, and keeps Y% minus X% for itself. So what exactly is Honey doing here? Taking a part of the pot because it's giving some portion of the pot back to the user, while otherwise offering nothing of value to either the affiliate or the merchant? Why shouldn't the original affiliate simply be given the ability to offer the user cash back and remove Honey as the middleman? Why should the original affiliate have any loss in their own commission because of a 3rd party's actions?

If Honey's %Y commission is part of a deal you have with the retailer and doesn't affect the original affiliate's commission at all, I apologize, and understand the situation. But if there's any cost to the original affiliate here whatsoever, I don't think you have any justification for imposing that cost on them.

Probably too complex to explain here but tldr; every cash back program is built on top of the affiliate marketing rails since Ebates started it in 1998. Same for coupon websites since those came along.

It is a system design flaw (that maybe will self correct because of this) that multiple advertising models at different points in the value chain are built on the same system. 'Multi-touch' or 'any-click' are the correct direction to solve this problem but introduce their own challenges for retailers which is why most of them have not adopted these systems yet.

You ask "what exactly is Honey doing here?"

Short answer is helping the retailer with conversion and limiting cart abandonment by making the user happy and more likely to transact.

I feel like you avoided the substance of my question. Does Honey's intervention negatively impact the original affiliate in any way?