During checkout, when you clicked the "find coupon" button in honey (which it prompted you to do on screen during checkout), it would strip out any affiliate link and add their own. So if you clicked on a product from a review, they would strip out the referral link from the YouTube video or website that sent you and indicate they sent you instead and get the commission.

In addition, they were working with online retailers and basically extorting them. They said that if retailers paid them a fee, they got to pick the discount code that was used during checkout. So if there was a 20% coupon and a 5% coupon, stores could pay them to ignore the 20%.

This, in turn, was basically faking out their users, thinking they were giving them the "best deal" like they claimed to.

[–] [email protected] 47 points 4 days ago (1 children)

They also apparently violated uBlocks open source license by stealing their code without credit.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 days ago

Nah that is unrelated to Honey. You're thinking of Pie Adblock which is created by the same people who invented Honey before selling it to PayPal.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 4 days ago

So if there was a 20% coupon and a 5% coupon, stores could pay them to ignore the 20%.

Now that's a completely new level of extortion

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 days ago

Sounds about right

[–] Jumuta 35 points 4 days ago (2 children)

it's rare to see services being advertised by YouTubers that don't seem fishy tbh

[–] [email protected] 26 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Yeah no kidding, especially VPNs. They only shill for the shady ones. Thankfully SponsorBlock is a thing. I couldn't imagine watching YouTube without it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

Its a godsend!!

[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 days ago

Are you kidding me?

logs into RAID SHADOW LEGENDS while making another shaker bottle of GAMERSUPS and log into my EXPRESSVPN to watch NETFLIX IN OTHER COUNTRIES while I wait for it to load