The product is spyware by design. It's a honey pot for people trying to save a few bucks, while exposing their entire browsing behavior. They even called it honey...
this post was submitted on 23 Dec 2024
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I said it in another post: if you see a bunch of influencers all suddenly peddling the same stuff, stay away. All of them can be bought.
Or, just don't trust ads period
Do your own research
Okay, all of these customer reviews loved this product!
Weird how formulaic they sounded though.
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Especially anything from Linus, theyβre a very scummy group.
Am I the only one who, upon seeing his videos for the first time, immediately thought he was an annoying little pinhead?
Like, I've watched his channel(s) surge in popularity over the years, and this entire time I've just been wondering why, and the issues that have come out about his little empire since have only confirmed my initial prejudice.
Their entire video is an ad filled experience of shilling not only their sponsors but themselves. Incredibly obnoxious and cramming in every YouTube stereotype from begging for likes and subs to clickbait titles and then insisting they have to do it so they can have their cake and eat it makes them even more obnoxious than if they just did it without wanting to be forgiven for it.
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I have a built-in spidey sense that hates any product that gets peddled simultaneously by a bunch of YouTubers.
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I never trusted Honey to begin with but this goes far deeper than I ever expected. I always wondered "yeah, but where do they get their money?" I always figured it was just a way to take people's data and sell it to data brokers (which they probably also do, let's be honest) but this is just blatant fraud. Stealing affiliate money from links and having companies pay them to purposefully give out worse coupon codes is just devious through and through. It's basically free money and everybody else, whether influencer or consumer, get fucked over in the process.
Yeah I always wondered what the catch was? The CEO was always posting on Reddit trying to defend honey and how cool they were.
Either way, I never trust any shopping deal plugins. The whole idea of them is sketchy.
Only shopping plugin I use is the one that comes with Edge. Surprisingly good to track price history and find other sites selling the product. I considered some Chrome plugin that displays an Amazon product's country of origin to avoid Chinesium but apparently it didn't work well or something like that from reading the reviews. Had some attached rewards function for shopping with it, ick.
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I always assumed it was a combination of your guess and companies giving Honey special coupon codes so consumers are more eager to spend.
"Hey Honey, we'll give you 1% commission if you just host this HONEY5 coupon for 5% off."
That was my impression when I used it once. Wasn't worth having an extension just for a slight discount. Love when a company doesn't fulfill the service they advertise.
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If you're sitting at a poker table and you can't tell who the sucker is, it's you.
Alternately, if you look at an online service and can't tell what the product is, It's you.
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A useful question to ask when hearing about a new company is "What's your business model?"
There is no such thing as a free and benevolent product with an advertising budget.
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Ever since it was explained that Mr. Beast only smiles with his mouth, I get skeeved out every time I see him.
Mr Beast literally shadow banned the word teeth from his YT comments. It's hilarious.
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I used honey for a while and it was working great for me with "exclusive" coupons and Cashback and then one time I bough a cellphone that was supposed to have $250 cashback. I did all the necessary steps, read the t&c, took screenshots of the offer and made the purchase. I never got the transaction to appear on their website. Sending emails it trying to contact them was futile (I even made an automatic script to send an email everyday to follow up). Fuck PayPal
Small claims
I'm so proud I never consumed these guys shit
Was it all that surprising to you though?
By the time honey hit the scene we had been ten years into "sketchy Browser extension that monitors your browsing habits and injects ads"
I guess getting flogged by your favorite influencer ads a veneer of legitimacy for a lot of people.
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PayPal is not customer friendly, they also straight up steal funds by locking your account
Yeah, it's wild how close PayPal came to killing Minecraft early on by locking all of Notch's money as soon as MC started to take off.
PayPal is not a bank. Your funds are NOT FDIC insured, no matter what their docs say.
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I thought it was just collecting and selling user data but while I'd bet it's still happening - wow, this is way craftier.
If something advertises on youtube itβs a scam. Simple to remember really.
I don't mind things that are an actual thing to buy. I want to research it first--you can get a better electric razor than Manscaped for not much more--but at least it's clear how they make their money. Honey was obviously getting money from someone other than their users, and that's an immediate red flag.
I and many other people naturally assumed that honey was getting their money from consumer data collection. Which is why I didn't use the service myself. The surprise is the fact that the scam isn't just consumer data collection but actually stealing commissions from content creators as well as using consumers as a gateway to stealing money from businesses that they have contracts with.
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Just open their privacy policy and done. They sell your browsing info, and you could stop it there
Just saw a video that the honey people are making another SCAM called PIE. They make an Ad blocker, then put their own ads. wtf.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/VTxnM3J0I0k?width=828&height=466
Pretty sure this was already posted yesterday when it came out. Or it might have been a different community.
Watching the full video is important though because they are scamming the consumer too, not just """influencers""". Someone made a great comment about how it's just one greedy troll stealing from another and has no effect on the consumer since they still save money but Honey not actually giving you the best coupons on purpose is next level dickholery.
Lying about the coupons really should be the focus so people stop harming themselves using Honey.
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Ltt didn't hide shit, they posted it on a public forum
They didn't hide it, but a huge portion of their audience doesn't read the forums. A 10 minute video of Linus ranting about them would have opened this scandal to a wider audience years ago.
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Yeah, that not nothing but it isn't far off. They have a massive platform. It deserved at least a video telling people about it.
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At this point, anything these goons "influencers" try to sell me on is a scam, and I'll avoid it at all costs. People do insane things for money. Just watched a coffeezilla video on the CSGO gambling scam and holy shit, people are straight up heartless and have no humanity in them.
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Why do I feel like mentioning the LTT was very personal?π
They're one of the largest tech media companies and deliberately chose to sweep this under the rug instead of reporting on it. Then they took sponsorships from Karma, which is a competitor to Honey that does the exact same thing.
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Everybody: Fuck Peter Thiel, fuck Elon Musk, fuck Honey, Fuck PayPal
Everybody: unflinchingly using PayPal
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I have been using PayPal increasingly for online payments. Not sure why. I have heard old stories about PayPal but Honey seems really bad. Its basically a given that any fintech company are going to be dodgy scammers but PayPal seemed almost grown up and respectable. Guess not.
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Honestly I thought all of this was common knowledge at this point, back when I used Honey (many years ago) I saw its affiliate code in the address bar and thought "huh, that's how they make money"
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