this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2025
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[โ€“] [email protected] 31 points 4 days ago (10 children)

I agree that Honey is a sleazy extension, but should I be worried that if they lose, it will set a bad precedent? From the video, the Honey extension works by injecting a Honey referral code into all online shopping transactions, possibly overwriting whatever influencer referral code the user was under. If Honey loses, the court decision is likely to say that an extension creator is liable if they tamper with referral codes and tracking links.

This will be a problem for privacy extensions that strip out tracking cookies and referral URLs, since they are also messing with influencer attribution, though not for profit but at the request of the user.

[โ€“] itsprobablyfine 59 points 4 days ago

Not a lawyer but I think the fact that honey profited, like, a lot from this is a key factor. From my understanding it's hard to say what they didn't wasn't straight up theft. What's more, they lied about what they were doing so the consumer was unaware of the 'product' they were getting. So while I get your concern, I wouldn't be too worried about precedent here. It's less 'this should be made illegal!' and more 'they def committed several actual crimes'

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