Good morning to the people of the HIVE Today I am going to talk about Honey and I mean Honey the Browser extension that apparently helps you to save money on your online orders.
Honey might just be the biggest influencer scam ever to hit the Internet as the scale of this operation is yet to be fully be ousted. The story behind is pretty crazy where the popular browser extension with over 15 million monthly users claims to save you money with coupon codes. It promises to find and apply the best discounts automatically at checkout, making online shopping cheaper and easier for their users which makes this a nice product.
But according to a YouTuber named Megalag, Honey has not been quite honest about their intentions.
So, how does Honey work?
The way how an affiliate link works is when you shop online and click a creator's affiliate link, their tracking code ensures they earn a commission if you make a purchase after clicking the link till a certain time frame. But Honey had this sneaky trick where just before checkout they offer you an hefty discount in the form of a pop-up. It seems helpful, but when you click it, Honey overwrites the creator's tracking code, hijacking and stealing their commission.
In the video provided by YouTuber Megalag, In one example, a $35 NordVPN commission meant for a creator was reduced to just 89 cents, with Honey pocketing the rest. But that's not all. Megalag also claims Honey doesn't even show you the best deals. Instead, it prioritizes coupons from partnered merchants, showing you only the coupons they want Honey to show, meaning you might not have been saving any money at all.
We also know that Paypal, which acquired honey for $4 billion in 2020, defends these practices as standard. But with millions in transactions flowing through the extension annually, plus the fact that affiliate commissions are being hijacked this seems like something that is really hard to ignore.
In my opinion Honey is definitely doing shady things if they are actively hijacking affiliate revenue from other creators. But at the same time I know that in corporate structures making deals on a single thing in both spectrums is normal which means Honey profiting from both users and companies is ok but definitely not the Hijacking part.
What Do You Feel About This???
If you want to know about this Scam with detailed description then you can check out Youtuber Megalag’s video by clicking on This Link as he has done an awesome video about this topic.
