PayPal's Honey Accused of Misleading Users, Hiding Discounts (youtube.com)
- Reference: 0175740247
- News link: https://slashdot.org/story/24/12/23/1511251/paypals-honey-accused-of-misleading-users-hiding-discounts
- Source link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc4yL3YTwWk
The extension -- which rose in popularity after promising it consumers it would find them the best online deals -- replaces existing affiliate cookies with its own during checkout, diverting commission payments from content creators who promoted the products to PayPal, MegaLag [1]reported in a 23-minute video [YouTube link] .
The investigation revealed that Honey, which PayPal [2]acquired in 2019 for $4 billion , allows merchants in its cashback program to control which coupons appear to users, hiding better publicly available discounts.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc4yL3YTwWk
[2] https://news.slashdot.org/story/19/11/20/2234223/paypal-to-acquire-shopping-and-rewards-program-honey-for-4-billion
Saw this recently (Score:5, Insightful)
To say it is scummy behavior is being extremely polite. I don't know if there will be a lawsuit over it, but truth be told there should be some harsh financial consequences. The simplest would be to modify the agreements somewhat and nuke PayPal's ability to generate affiliate commissions at all.
Of course that won't stop the companies that partner with Honey to try and limit discounts. That's a smack in the face to users, and still scummy when you consider they won't even link to other coupons provided, but the best solution here is spreading the word to get people to remove the extension.
Be too bad for PayPal to have paid that much just to watch it go down the drain. Oh, and I suggest uninstalling Pie because it's from many of the same people that made Honey.
[1]https://pie.org/about [pie.org]
A message from Pie founder, Ryan Hudson, who previously created Honey.
[1] https://pie.org/about
Free Luigi? Free Pauline! (Score:1)
Hey Mario, free [1]Pauline [wikipedia.org]!
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donkey_Kong#1981%E2%80%931982:_Conception_and_first_game
Humans evolved to war of necessity. (Score:2)
They only people who believe the insurance cartel can be defeated peacefully are desperately naive but being 2023 that's millions of fools.
The death of bad men is no loss to the good, and the idea all life is somehow precious is an unsupportable emotional assertion.
I had a suspicion (Score:5, Interesting)
I was thinking to myself, "Self? If you were a company that made money purely by knowing what people were likely to buy, how would you monetize that? Certainly not by telling them they have the best deal, and hiding the actual best deal from them. No, wait, no, I probably would do that." And voila. Just like Amazon was found to be doing when people see different prices for different accounts and using different geoblockers. It's the next new thing.
Re: (Score:3)
They could make very good money on the data analytics that users give them for free.
But no. This is why Greed is a Cardinal Sin (or eightfold trap or whatever every other successful religion calls it).
IIRC Yelp has "reputation repair services" too. "Nice restaurant you got there..."
What do you expect from PayPal (Score:5, Insightful)
Scummy behaviour from PayPal? I'm shocked, shocked I tell you!
Re: (Score:3)
Yep, came here to say the same. It's been known for over 25 years now that PayPal is a dirty company. I learned my lesson back in the early eBay days to avoid this company like the plaque. I hope PayPal finally gets sued out of existence for this.
Re: (Score:2)
> avoid this company like the plaque
Mod parent up.
If there is any doubt that PayPal is scummy, give their privacy policy a good read.
Pro tip: you can avoid plaque by brushing regularly.
Re: (Score:1)
Amazon: "We want to keep our monopoly on catalog manipulation, finger PayPal!"
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I totally agree!
Paypal froze thousands of dollars I had in an account and refused to release it until I came up with some documents that simply could not exist (such as utility bills addressed to my home -- all my utility bills go to a PO Box). This was after I'd been using the service for years and there were no large transactions or increase in volume to trigger such an action on their part.
Just use google and you'll find thousands of others who've similarly been shafted by PayPal.
I wouldn't touch Paypa
Re: (Score:2)
And this is why I never keep more than about $100 in Paypal or use them for any large transactions- they simply CANNOT be trusted, period.
enshitification (Score:2)
"enshitification"
Assuming it ever worked for end users. If not, it's just part of the internet enshiftification i.e. something that was good for the populous, is now mostly only good for corporations. Searches for information have been replaced by products and/or commercial services. If there is a good search engine that doesn't prioritize corporate profit over actual results lmk, but I think most gave up trying to search and just built on top of google and/or ..bing ..maybe
Also, let me know what actual cou
Pushed by a Youtuber = Scam (Score:5, Informative)
If something is being heavily pushed by multiple youtubers, then I avoid it.
More often than not, it's some sort of scam or ripoff.
Re:Pushed by a Youtuber = Scam (Score:4, Insightful)
Quite often "Free" is ripoff. Another thing is that YouTubers often rely on sponsorships to create content. My personal faves over the last few years in "scummy" territory have been Established Titles, Yotta (maybe undone by their Fintech partner, maybe just scummy), Kamikoto Knives, and others.
Don't forget Pie, that adblocker that's been advertising NONSTOP on YouTube, is from the Honey founder. Want to bet that's scummy as heck?
[1]https://pie.org/about [pie.org]
A message from Pie founder, Ryan Hudson, who previously created Honey.
[1] https://pie.org/about
Re: (Score:2)
Wait... I can post on Slashdot for free? LOL.
Re: (Score:2)
I wonder if the Enchroma guy is still mad at MegaLag for that episode about colorblind glasses being a scam... I don't imagine that DHL was too pleased with him either.
Re: Pushed by a Youtuber = Scam (Score:2)
More often than not, I'd they're pushing it on youtube, it's because someone's paying them.
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Obviously. Honey is a frequent sponsor of YouTubers and the videos include sponsored segments
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Content creators don't get a say in who sponsors them? I always said if its advertised on TV its either shit or overpriced, usually both. I believe YooToob is pushing this filth as every one I'd seen is injected before the video, and disappears if you page back and page forward again. Corps would sell us all as dog food if the law allowed, be afraid.
Re: Pushed by a Youtuber = Scam (Score:5, Interesting)
> Content creators don't get a say in who sponsors them? I always said if its advertised on TV its either shit or overpriced, usually both. I believe YooToob is pushing this filth as every one I'd seen is injected before the video, and disappears if you page back and page forward again. Corps would sell us all as dog food if the law allowed, be afraid.
The ads run by YouTube are one thing. Those creators don't have much control over what goes there.
Sponsors are another thing altogether and those are generally ones done by the content creator themselves to spend a few minutes talking about a product or service unrelated to the content. These are embedded in the video and can be skipped.
Some popular YouTubers like Linus Tech Tips make fortunes off the sponsors,to the point their content is basically low quality trash meant to get eyeballs looking at their sponsored part. When a sponsor starts acting you often see other content creators dropping them - like when NZXT pushed out their scummy subscription gaming PC. The idea wasn't too bad, but the contract you signed had some really disgusting terms which caused creators like Gamers Nexus and Jayz Two Cents to drop them as a sponsor. Of course, sites like LTT keep accepting the money.
And they can pay a lot - I wouldn't be surprised if LTT got sponsors paying $20K or more per spot, so they can easily pull in a million or more per week.
And it's also why SponsorBlock is extraordinarily useful - some videos are basically all green so it can turn that 10 minute video into a 1 minute video
Re: (Score:2)
One of the very few exceptions is iFixit.
I fucking love their toolsets.
Re: Pushed by a Youtuber = Scam (Score:2)
Agreed.
Surprised by the very high quality of the drivers that arrived.
It's not Willi Hahn, but what else is?
Re: (Score:3)
PayPal is also a scummy company. They messed up a large payment of mine for airline tickets - they money was subtracted from my account, but not received by the airline, so I didn't get the tickets. I was then able to revert the payment on my bank account.
PayPal sent their lawyers after me, demanding repayment. Fortunately I made screenshots of everything (which I always do with large payments) showing all transactions and emails that no payment was received, sent all evidence to PayPal lawyers and in turn
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As a full time Youtuber, I actually tried to think of one that's not at least sketchy. I came up with nothing after 5 minutes. I have had a grand total of 2 sponsors in 11 years because I reject so many of them. Then I remembered I actually am on Keeps and it's fucking amazing but they never sponsored me specifically. But that is literally the only example, minus my 2 sponsors that I won't name for security reasons.
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Certain luxury goods are at least what they claim to be. Displate, and those magnetic hovering pens, for example.
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Are you posting on behalf of paypal? The only question here is whether Honey manipulates the savings it offers or not. If the youtubers are lying, then they'll get sued.
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In this case, it scammed the same youtubers that were pushing it...