Honey Lost 4 Million Chrome Users After Shady Tactics Were Revealed (9to5google.com) 22
The Chrome extension Honey has lost over 4 million users after a viral video exposed it for hijacking affiliate codes and misleading users about finding the best coupon deals. 9to5Google reports: As we reported in early January, Honey had lost around 3 million users immediately after the video went viral, but ended up gaining back around 1 million later on. Now, as of March 2025, Honey is down to 16 million users on Chrome, down from its peak of 20 million.
This drop comes after new Chrome policy has taken effect which prevents Honey, and extensions like it, from practices including taking over affiliate codes without disclosure or without benefit to the extension's users. Honey has since updated its extension listing with disclosure, and we found that the behavior shown in the December video no longer occurs.
This drop comes after new Chrome policy has taken effect which prevents Honey, and extensions like it, from practices including taking over affiliate codes without disclosure or without benefit to the extension's users. Honey has since updated its extension listing with disclosure, and we found that the behavior shown in the December video no longer occurs.
The first comment... (Score:3)
Re: (Score:1)
I am shocked.
Re: (Score:2)
Tells you just how irrelevant, they will now become ;-) Too little, too late!
They'll just phoenix, change the name, change the branding, start doing the same thing all over again as people are greedy and stupid. That's how the scam worked in the first place. It'll work again on the exact same people.
May as well worry that people will stop gambling and cheating on their wives.
That's it? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:That's it? (Score:4, Informative)
Not that shocking I'm surprised it's that many people.
If your the type of person that would install Honey your not all that observant and only looking for handouts.
Re: (Score:2)
The fact that it wasn't way more than 4 million is disturbing to me. The fact that a huge company like that thinks it's cool to effectively steal (hope they lose all the lawsuits) from others is really, really scummy.
It's worse than that. It was actively lying to users about the deal they were receiving too. Even if you don't care about stealing from affiliates the plugin was doing the opposite of what it said it would do, offering a paid service to tell users that "no you won't find a better deal" even if one objectively existed.
I closed my PayPal account as a result.
Really? This made you do it? THIS? Not the 20 year history of shady behaviour, fucking over users, fucking over companies, selling your data, stealing donations from disaster relief collections
Re: (Score:2)
If there is any justice, this should result in massive damage to PayPal, with huge pay-outs. So many people's businesses were damaged by this, in ways that are very difficult to undo.
Consider reading the 3 day old AMA... (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:1)
I get that he's defending his reputation since this is a business he built, but man that's a wall of text.
He makes one point - the code being entered isn't for 30% off it's for 15% off. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
189-code=160.3
Oh wow, a free app was actually trying to profit f (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Oh wow, a free app was actually trying to prof (Score:2)
We could do it like Escape from L.A.
Just fence off a city and put all the criminals inside.
Re: (Score:1)
How much did you pay for Slashdot Premium?
Re: (Score:2)
How much did you pay for Slashdot Premium?
Although this place is a collective cesspit rather than for the betterment of all mankind.
4 million down (Score:2)
Only 16 million users to go.
Wow, it's wild that they still have so many users. It's a company that was so widely covered by YouTubers that I had half a dozen anti-Honey video in my feed when it broke. I'm guessing that 3/4 of the users were referred by their YT watching children and don't watch much YT content themselves.