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Honey's Dieselgate: Detecting and tricking testers
- cwal37 9mo agoArchived link: https://web.archive.org/web/20251230214339/https://vptdigital.com/blog/honey-detecting-testers/ https://web.archive.org/web/20251230214339/https://vptdigita...
- arionmiles 9mo agothere's something seriously wrong with this archived link. It's not staying still for one moment. It's constantly twitching and the text scrolls to weird positions. It's unreadable because of this. Is it the archive at fault or is the original webpage this way?
- kencausey 9mo agoIt constantly reloads for me (Firefox.) Just hit X which replaces the reload button while the page is loading and it will stop.
- quesera 9mo agoDisable JavaScript, reason #99e99. Works for me here, and in 90% of the cases where someone complains of annoying page behaviour (cookie banners, revenue optimizations, subscription solicitations, "click here to ...", paywalls, ads, et alii ad nauseam). Seriously, just disable JavaScript on unknown/untrusted/undeserving sites. It makes the web tolerable.
- arionmiles 9mo agoah well... this is a first for me where I need to disable JS. Thanks!
- golem14 9mo agoIs there actually a whitelist of sites where it's OK/necessary to enable JS ? I'd love to use that (although, I don't know how to load that list into safari or chrome.)
- nilslindemann 9mo agoWhy use a whitelist from someone else, I disable it manually per page by using something like https://github.com/maximelebreton/quick-javascript-switcher https://github.com/maximelebreton/quick-javascript-switcher, but there are more of those in the chrome webstore.
- bedelman 9mo agoWas the VPT site not working for you, so you had to resort to archive.org? Original link https://vptdigital.com/blog/honey-detecting-testers/ https://vptdigital.com/blog/honey-detecting-testers/ . Anyone having trouble -- contact Ben Edelman (easily found by web search) and I will genuinely value the opportunity to get to the bottom of what is wrong.
- arionmiles 9mo agoI think I saw a 5xx error when I tried to see the original link. I assumed it might have been due to a hug of death. It seems to be loading fine now.
- bedelman 9mo agoYour diagnosis is correct. VPT has been most focused on building our testing automation, then improving reports and dashboards. We knew this spike of traffic was coming, but we didn't finish sufficient WordPress optimizations. Apologies.
- arionmiles 9mo agoNo worries. A hug of death is a good problem to have.
- cwal37 9mo agoYup, was just dead for me and stayed dead, so I went and grabbed an archived link. Don’t recall precisely how it was dead, but I assumed via traffic.
- mindslight 9mo agoNo honor among thieves, eh?
- fasouto 9mo agoNot affiliate marketers are thieves
- mindslight 9mo agoThe whole industry is based upon on nonconsensual surveillance and other taking of personal information, so yes they are.
- bostik 9mo agoLess theft, more stalking.
- the_snooze 9mo agoOriginal MegaLag video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCGT_CKGgFE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCGT_CKGgFE You'd think that if you were an engineer building and maintaing a system like this, you'd have an "are we the baddies?" moment, but guess not.
- paranoidrobot 9mo agoThe original site is down for me, so going based on the app I was thinking it was about the actual edible Honey product, not Honey the discount coupon thing.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- ZoneZealot 9mo agoFor context, Ben Edelman the author of the blog post was in the video at https://youtu.be/qCGT_CKGgFE?t=1980 https://youtu.be/qCGT_CKGgFE?t=1980 Their personal site is also linked in the video description https://www.benedelman.org/honey-detecting-testers/ https://www.benedelman.org/honey-detecting-testers/
- bedelman 9mo agoBen here. My real (substantive) write-up is https://vptdigital.com/blog/honey-detecting-testers/ https://vptdigital.com/blog/honey-detecting-testers/ . Happy to discuss / answer questions / etc.
- satvikpendem 9mo agoLooks like the server is down, I get a connection reset error
- vee-kay 9mo agoLink is working for me
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- esafak 9mo agoI thought this was going to be about honey adulteration, which is a major problem.
- quesera 9mo agoSame, and that topic would have been way more interesting (cf. EVOO). Obviously Internet affiliate marketing schemes are built on mutual exploitation of asymmetric data collection. This cannot possibly surprise anyone. With that said, this is a good article with excellent data collection and evidence presentation. It's great to have documentation of obviously corrupt practices, even if they are unsurprising.
- t0mas88 9mo agoOver 15 years ago I worked with a telco that had similar affiliate issues. We decided to stop paying any affiliate commission at all and evaluate sales after some time to decide to continue the experiment or not. There was a little decrease in traffic to the site but no measurable decrease in sales of new plans. There were several check moments and data validation after that, but sales numbers remained as they were. The conclusion was that affiliate marketing claimed a lot of sales in their reporting, but the brand was strong enough (this company was #2 by market share in the country and #1 on most brand metrics) to get those customers without affiliate links.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- a_paddy 9mo agoTLDR; - The Honey browser extension inserted their own affiliate link at checkout, depriving others of affiliate revenue. - Honey collected discount codes entered by users while shopping online, then shook down website owners to have the discount codes removed. - Honey should have "stood down" if an affiliate link was detected, but their algorithm would decide to skip the stand down based on if the user could be the an affiliate representative testing for compliance. Allegedly.
- phpnode 9mo agoWow, I am very surprised that cookie stuffing[0] is still a thing. This could have been written 20 years ago. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cookie_stuffing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cookie_stuffing
- Kwpolska 9mo agoRe the second point, it specifically collected valuable codes that shouldn't be widely shared, e.g. employee discounts. Re the third point, the algorithm would skip stand down for users who weren't likely to be testers (based on account history and lack of cookies for affiliate marketing admin panels).
- delusional 9mo agoLikening any of this to Volkswagen emissions compliance scandal does a huge disservice by treating "Affiliate Marketing" as far too important. "Who gets a kickback on this toothbrush" is a much MUCH less important question than "do you pollute the air we are all breathing".
- choult 9mo agoIt's comparing Honey's behavior to a well-known and comprehended scandal. Simile is a tried and tested way (hah!) to explain otherwise potentially hard to understand or dry content. It's not about the severity of the impact, its the fact that they were breaking the rules and explicitly coding to actively avoid being caught by testers.
- collingreen 9mo agoProbably better to compare to ubers grayball although that may be less well known.
- Dylan16807 9mo agoRefusing service (and showing a fake status screen) is in the same ballpark, but dieselgate is a much closer match. They couldn't avoid being put under test, so they had separate behavior based on whether heuristics said it was in a testing environment.
- bedelman 9mo agochoult: The factors you mention are the factors that led me to propose the "Honey's Dieselgate" title and to compare Honey to VW. Of course I agree that health is more important than affiliate commissions. So the comparison only goes so far.
- choult 9mo agoThanks for your contribution to this Ben - I was quite stunned by Megalag's finding, and I agree with you that it could definitely be characterized as wire fraud. I think the very interesting wrinkle here is that, for the most part, their victims are corporations - meaning, sadly, that it's much more likely they will be prosecuted, either in civil or criminal court.
- gonesilent 9mo agoIt started as a clone of the camelcamelcamel Amazon price history site and got kicked out by Amazon for abusing the system. It pivoted to a coupon site and started sucking down user data with the plugin when PayPal paid $4Bil CASH. Honey cost me affiliate marketing commissions.
- throwaway81523 9mo agoApparently this thing got approved for the chrome store, which confirms that "store" approvals are near worthless for malware filtering.
- doctorpangloss 9mo agoone point of view is why bother with any of this, google knows exactly what honey is doing, they could remove honey from chrome with the stroke of a pen, and that would be that.
- immibis 9mo agoIt's not malware. Marketing companies stealing commission from each other isn't malware. Giving the user less than the best possible deal isn't malware. It doesn't even upload your cookies to see if you're a tester - it does that on the client.
- freehorse 9mo agoIf I click on an affiliate link that I want to use and the extension changes that without me knowing, that’s malware for me. The intent of the user may be to use a specific affiliate link.
- kristofferR 9mo agoThat's not how malware is defined - Windows ain't malware just because they occasionally make Edge open instead of what you thought were your default browser. The malware definition is way more specific than simply software that doesn't always follow user intent.
- freeAgent 9mo agoIt actually does fall under the definition malware. Specifically, Honey hijacks affiliate marketing tags and replaces them with their own. This falls under the definition of the “spyware” category of malware.
- bryan_w 9mo agoI used to work for an ad tech company (which I know already makes me the devil to some around here), and even I think that they crossed a line with this. A lot of industry terms are coded in corporate speak to make them sound better (think "revealed preferences" or "enabling personalization"), but I would genuinely like to know what the engineers thought when doing design reviews for a "selective stand down" feature. There doesn't seem to be a legit way to spin it. Making a product to explicitly skirt agreements while working for a corporation is ... a choice
- Waterluvian 9mo ago> what the engineers thought when doing design reviews for a "selective stand down" feature. Possibly a version of, “I lack the freedom to operate with a moral code at work because I’m probably replaceable, the job market makes me anxious, my family’s well-being and healthcare are tied to having a job, and I don’t believe the government has my back.”
- dbtc 9mo agoAlso likely, some version of "get dat money"
- Aurornis 9mo agoFrom my experience, it’s more likely that the engineers who got far enough in the company to be working on this code believed that their willingness to work on nefarious tasks that others might refuse or whistle-blow made them a trusted asset within the company. In industries like this there’s also a mindset of “Who cares, it’s all going to corporations anyway, why not send some of that money to the corporation that writes my paychecks?”
- zaphirplane 9mo agoDo you know of anyone declining to work on a project For ethical in their view ( non military non killing) ? I’ve led a sheltered life and never met one, people have told me they wouldn’t apply for a role with a company for ethical reasons maybe they even believed they would get the job
- flkiwi 9mo agoDidn't this Honey fraud thing break like a year ago (or longer)? This is the second story I've seen about it in the last couple of days and I guess I'm surprised it's even still around.
- AkshatJ27 9mo agoThe youtuber MegaLag released part 1 of his investigation roughly 1 year ago: https://youtu.be/vc4yL3YTwWk https://youtu.be/vc4yL3YTwWk Recently, he released 2 more parts with more new information that paints Honey in a pretty bad light: https://youtu.be/qCGT_CKGgFE https://youtu.be/qCGT_CKGgFE https://youtu.be/wwB3FmbcC88 https://youtu.be/wwB3FmbcC88
- flkiwi 9mo agoThank you. I was confused about why this was suddenly bubbling up again. And ... paints Honey in a pretty bad light? LOL, they already looked like a fraudster scam to begin with! (But, again, thank you.)
- xnx 9mo agoThe entire affiliate "ecosystem" is cancer. I'd love to see Amazon turn it off entirely.
- Ekaros 9mo agoAs consumer I would love to see lower prices directly. Or at least have available some official store affiliate discount code which would give me same discount which would be win win for everyone.
- ThatMedicIsASpy 9mo agoCut the middleman and order directly from china
- wiether 9mo agoWhich also offers cashback through Honey and similar!
- TheJoeMan 9mo agoYou cannot due to Amazon's stipulations that to list on Amazon.com, it must be the same as your advertised price on other retailers, including your own website. This raises overall costs, as Amazon.com sellers pay additional fees for placement, ads, etc. which get rolled into the price. As a workaround, you can have a MSRP on your website, with "coupons".
- orwin 9mo agoI think affiliate links are the most fair/ethical advertisement can be. If i go on a random carpentry or painting blog, i'd rather have affiliate links to product they use rather than random google ads.
- rfrey 9mo agoNo honour among thieves, I guess.
- SiempreViernes 9mo agoOh, this is about a shopping plugin and not actual honey, boring. I mean, fraud in online advertising? Say it ain't so!
- kubafu 9mo agoSame. I clicked the link expecting a story about actual honey.
- charcircuit 9mo ago>And the effort Honey expended, to conceal its behavior from industry insiders, makes it particularly clear that Honey knew it would be in trouble if it was caught. The same could be said about yt-dlp. They know what they are doing youtube doesn't like. But yt-dlp itself is legal.
- rundev 9mo agoThe difference being that yt-dlp isn't a business partner (and/or competitor) of YT.
- immibis 9mo agoOf course it's a competitor of yt. If you download a video, they don't get ad revenue.
- bluecalm 9mo agoI've had Youtube Premium since it was introduced and I still use yt-dlp because it's the most convenient way for me to make an mp3 from a video so I can listen to it offline. I don't think they care. They probably care about music industry getting worked up about it if it was more mainstream though. This is annoying because I don't even download music, just podcasts and interviews.
- kristofferR 9mo agoThey care quite a bit, yt-dlp has had to undergo some drastic changes recently to make it faster for its devs to work around frequent changes to YouTube encryption. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45898407 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45898407
- charcircuit 9mo agoMany people using yt-dlp have a YouTube account or even an adsence account. Yes, YouTube could ban their partner for breaking the rules. Youtube has issued 1 year temp bans from watching videos for accounts that have downloaded videos. Similarly Honey could be banned for breaking the rules.
- arijun 9mo agoWhy do Amazon and others pay out to Honey's affiliate accounts? They know no real referrals are coming from them.
- janandonly 9mo agoI came here to read about fraud with honey, you know, the bees-spit-and-flowers-sperm sugary stuff. I hear there is lots of fraud where bees honey is mixed with sugars and sold off as “honey”. I’m disappointed this is about a browser plugin that no body in their right mind should be using at all.
- bitlevel 9mo agoArticle is offline for me right now - however, it's available here for those still to read: https://archive.is/7Y9Jq https://archive.is/7Y9Jq
- constantcrying 9mo agoTo be honest, the Megalag video really made it clear what a great product Honey is. It is very explicit about the fact that you, as the consumer, can get extraordinary deals by using the extension. This also makes me think that the whole campaign is astroturfed. The only "victims" of Honey are influencers and storefronts, who of course will do their part in trying to get their customers to stop using the product, but for the consumer there really are only benefits with using the extension. The only arguments against Honey is that they are supposedly breaking some internal rules of the advertising industry (and who cares about those? Certainly not me) and that they are offering deals better than the store wants to offer to you, which makes an extremely compelling case for using that extension. I always considered extensions like Honey to be quite scammy and believed that they offered little benefit, but apparently I was wrong.
- aezart 9mo agoYeah I strongly feel that the best outcome of all of this would be the end of sponsorships and affiliate links, and a general reduction in price discrimination.
- TRiG_Ireland 9mo agoHoney promises to businesses to let them control which coupons are available, and promises to customers to always show them the best coupons. At least one of those two promises is a lie.
- constantcrying 9mo agoThe Megalag demonstrated that they lied to the businesses and enabled extraordinary deals for consumers. I do not think that this is disputed.
- nerdsniper 9mo agoIt is disputed. The Megalag video showed that businesses have the ability to delete the best codes from Honey.
- bstsb 9mo agothe guy that wrote this blog post also recently wrote about AppLovin, a company who he alleges installs apps without user consent. his response to this was... to short their stock? https://www.benedelman.org/applovin-my-disclosures/ https://www.benedelman.org/applovin-my-disclosures/
- cryptonector 9mo agoFor a second I thought this was about fake/altered honey.
- SergeAx 9mo agoFor quite some time, I have been convinced that all forms of advertising are net negative for society. It seems that affiliate marketing (pay for results, not exposure) is not much better.