Rent-seeking middlemen. This is the pinnacle of capitalism. Taking revenue while providing nothing is maximum efficiency. You can tell because it raises prices invisibly for everyone.
This is just a baby version of how credit card companies have placed a 1%-5% sales tax on the global economy. You might say “at least the CC companies provide a service”, but that tax get’s added no matter if your using a CC or not.
How does the tax get added if you don’t use a credit card?
The same price must be charged for products purchased with credit card or cash. Otherwise the card provider will withdraw their service from the retailer. So the credit card margin is added to every price.
card provider will withdraw
Dubious, as I regularly see gas stations with separate cash vs card prices. I’ve seen small businesses offer discounts for cash, too. And it’s not like visa is going to stop processing cards because walmart started offering cash prices. It’s just scare tactics. And for big companies, people who pay in cash offer bigger profit margins, so it’s not like they are incentivized to help the situation.
Actually true, but outdated. There was a massive decade long $30b legal fight that eliminated credit card network’s “anti-steering” provisions. Those were contractual terms that retailers signed that prohibited them from offering different prices for cash and card. Some retailers have responded by offering different prices, or otherwise adding a processing fee to card transactions as a result of that settlement.
And the vast majority did nothing.
Obviously it varies from business to business. Some may not want the hassle, some may see consumer sentiment against fees and not feel it’s worth the impact. Some are content to merely leave prices 3% (or more) higher.
Ultimately, very few businesses price things based on their costs…instead they price based on what they think people are willing to pay, or what the market will bear.
It’s also worth considering, at the scales of many of these businesses, accepting and handling cash is very much not a free option. If I’m a supermarket chain, I pay a card company a few percent and maintain my payment terminals and I magically get my income deposited daily directly in my preferred bank account. I’ve got some risk with stolen cards and chargebacks, but the big Chip Card and Mobile Wallet rollouts have dramatically limited my exposure to that liability.
With cash I have a substantial cost to handle, collect, count, and deposit at each location. I have concerns about counting accuracy, interval and external theft, counterfeit currency, purchasing change from my local bank (which typically has a fee assessed for businesses), etc.
In Italy it’s illegal to raise the price if you are using a credit card. The price needs to be the same no matter the payment method
Cause they can’t charge more for CC purchases so they raise the prices for everyone.
Credit card fees get baked into the general price and are averaged between all the accepted cards. Hence cash transactions and lower-fee cards (debit, credit with less benefits) end up paying more of the share of the higher-fee cards.
It’s well explained in the following video: https://youtu.be/OceYCEexDqQ
Because enough people use credit cards that businesses have felt compelled to raise prices across the board to compensate.
When you get a credit card machine you sign an agreement saying something like transactions under X amount we, the credit card network company, will charge you 50c or any transactions over X amount we will charge your 1.5%.
Now as a business owner you raise prices 1.5% to cover this fee. If someone pays in cash, the extra 1.5% goes to you, if the customer pays with a card, the 1.5% goes to the card network .
Lmao, I never trusted a browser extension.
Like, immediately “Too Good To Be True” red flags were raised.
If I want coupon codes, I could just google “Coupon Codes for [shopping platform]”
Soooo… You don’t have ublock installed then?
Open Souce baby
Not the same
Did you read the source or do you know anyone who has? Do you have statistics on vulnerabilities found?
If not, it is the same, you just trust gorhill more than honey without evidence to back it up. So do I. But it’s important to remember this is just a lie most people are telling themselves, not backed up by anything other than faith.
Trusting strangers isnt a good thing, bur trusting that out of the many users out there, someone would’ve found out malware, is much better trusting one entity’s proprietary code.
But practically, you can’t expect everyone to be auditing code. The average person isn’t that knowledged, myself included. But “Use Open Souce Software” is still a very good advice, even to an average person (like myself) who couldn’t possibly verify the code by themselves.
Firefox itself is also based on trust on its developers, but Firefox is still better than Chrome.
We live in a society, there’s no way to conpletely avoid trust.
We have to trust our food souce isn’t poisoned.
The farmers
the people picking up the crops
or if its meat, the butchers
the druck drivers
the people packing and unpacking
the grocery store workers
I mean, we cant possibly have everyone auditing the entire food supply chain.
That’s why we have government to audit it.
Preferrably a transparent government with many workers in the departments, and also overseen by a democratically elected government, who can pass laws to regulate the process, and the citizen to hold the government accountable. That would be very close to open source. A fully open source system would be having CCTV footage of the entire food supply chain publically available. But even then, not everyone is gonna have the time to check all the cameras, but the point is we just trust that someone out there is gonna be watching it.
In contrast, a close source system is essentially one single corporation doing all the audits, with no transparency, and no government/citizen oversight.
You sent a lot of words that seem to be agreeing with my point and I appreciate this.
How do you know Ohio is real? Have you been there yourself? Have you seen it with your own two eyes? Or do you just trust all the people who claim to live there?
You see, believing in the existence of Ohio is exactly the same as believing that my dad works for Nintendo and I got to play their next game early. It was awesome btw.
Yes I’ve been to Ohio. It’s as terrible as people say.
However the correct analogy is this: “I distrust alliant credit union, but I trust a random internet stranger that in theory is doing their work in public”. That’s the right number of employees and the right scale.
Your analogy is basically accepting my point. In this case, I’m trusting a random internet stranger not to lie to me, and you’ve very clearly illustrated why that doesn’t work. Believing Ohio isn’t real would require a large conspiracy. Ublock introducing something naughty would require one man. I trust that one man, but there’s no reason to. If you think that’s absurd do some research about recent software package changes that introduced backdoors.
I trust a random internet stranger that in theory is doing their work in public
There’s no ‘in theory’ about it.
I’ve actually had an extension I was using be revealed as spyware (it was hoverzoom, I immediately switched to an alternative afterward).
I don’t read every line of every piece of software I use because that would be impossible, but I do actually look at some of it and modify it to suit my needs. It was because there are many thousands of people like me that do this that the problem in hoverzoom was caught. It’s been ten years, so I don’t have the best memory of the event, but I think it only took a few days to catch it as well, despite the fact that the offending code was left out of the GitHub repo and was only in the compiled extension.
The state of open source isn’t perfect (not everything has reproducible builds yet) but in general I ‘trust’ that every other programmer in existence isn’t in on a conspiracy to screw me over specifically.
Why would any of this be about you personally? I honestly can’t take you seriously when this is your view of security, and it’s made worse when you extend that to “we caught em once so the system works”.
Open Source what? Ad-blocking? Do you mean pi-hole?
You don’t have McAffee’s installed then! /s
as a consumer why should I care if I still get a discount ?
isn’t this influencer back office bullshit and not my problem ?
deleted by creator
Yep and a great question that allows more people to learn. Please stop downvoting real questions
People are downvoting the tone, not the question. Calling it bullshit when it is seriously stealing money from other human beings and calling it “not my problem” under the assumption that it doesn’t matter if it affects others, displays absolute lack of empathy. Devaluing the question and making it a bad faith comment.
I used honey for a few years. in that time i think it found me a working code like twice.
The coupons honey applies may not always be the best deal around. Honey works with online shops to only serve you the coupons that specific online shop wants you to see, causing you to be ripped off on occasion.
Simply put, there might be a 20% off coupon that can be applied to your cart, but because Honey is getting paid by the online shop, they are only going to show you at best the 5% off coupon. This makes Honey redundant, because neither Honey nor the online shop tell you when they are working together, which is why you can never trust honey to actually give you the best deal.
YSK the original creators of the Honey extension are the ones who designed it that way from the getgo. The important thing is they are also the creators of the new Pie AdBlock extension that is being prolifically advertised on YouTube. And the Pie extension does the same damn things as the Honey extension, despite being an ad blocker.
Google had that one browser extension that paid $1 per device type (phone, tablet, and computer, up to $3) per week. I signed up 5 accounts and had $10 every week for Starbucks, Amazon, and a few more but I only ever used it at those places. Especially Starbucks. I loved getting a free coffee and croissant every Friday and also getting points off those 🤣
However that time is over. Do not waste your time with money-making or saving extensions.
If you want extra money use UserTesting or Brandbee. Everything else is a waste of time.
OnePulse is legit too. It won’t make you rich, but you can earn a bit of cash on it. You’re limited to $20 a month, but it’s unlikely you’ll reach that every month
I fell way off of onepulse since their paid surveys were scarce as hell. They know no one is using that app “to be part of a community”
The one Google extension I liked they killed years ago. It was Chrome to Phone. Basically when I was at my computer and saw an article I wanted to read later Id click it and it would send it to a new chrome tab on my phone. And when on break at work I could look at / read whatever it was.
That feature is now built into chrome.
Ah that’s neat
It’s kind of ridiculous how long it has taken for people to realise that this is happening… where did people think that their referrals had gone after they cratered?
Thats where I’m at, I thought it was fairly obvious it was doing this and theres a hundred extensions like this. Are real people surprised this is how it works?
People realised years ago but didn’t really care much. End users generally don’t care since it doesn’t directly impact them, and “influencers” will often take a sponsorship deal without thoroughly researching the product or service being advertised, and probably just figured that people were buying less stuff due to the economy or whatever.
The tech-savvy people that realised what’s happening tend to either avoid afilliate links, or use a cash back service (TopCashback, Rakuten, etc) that requires you to use their affiliate link.
It’s not just Honey doing this. Practically all the major coupon sites do it too.
I wonder what websites think of this toolbar stealing affiliate links from people doing all the work of promoting their prices. I wonder if Honey goes even further and turns vanilla purchases into affiliate purchases, actively stealing actual money from the site. If I were NewEgg or whoever else Honey has created affiliate links with, I think I’d be banning their affiliate account right now, or throwing in some captchas so their link theft doesn’t work any more.
If Honey finds a 30% code, supplants its own 20% code and tells you it’s a 10% code, both Honey and the store save money.
This only works if the store is in cahoots with Honey and only if they have coupons floating around that people otherwise avail of and only if they want to seriously piss off the people driving actual traffic to their store by letting Honey steal their commission.
The reality is Honey is scamming everyone. Customers by hiding codes, affiliates by stealing their commission and stores by parasitically skimming affiliate payments for no work. It may be Honey has a shakedown “pay us to make coupons go away” but the reality is stores could simply not issue heavy discount coupons if they’re worried about that being an issue. Honey is required by nobody and given their parasitic & thieving nature I think they’re going to be on the end of some lawsuits.
Here’s to hoping you’re right, and that those lawsuits succeed
YSK the sky is blue
Always wondered why YTers were complaining about lack of commissions and this explains most of it
That’s absurd
I knew Honey was sketchy, but I just assumed it made it’s money from just data harvesting everything
Yeah I always felt something was off with honey. I never downloaded it for that reason, it was just kinda too good to be real or something. Like how are they making enough money to pay all these YouTubers to promote them? Something wasn’t adding up
The thing is I think it’s feasible to do this in a non gross way…it’s essentially a search engine that just looks for promo codes, matches them against brands, and then tries them in rapid succession on the checkout screen. I think they would probably need humans to resolve the many 1-off issues (could work in a crowdsource manner like adblock filters) and a central registry to keep track of which ones fail, but it’s not a hugely complex problem.
how are they making enough money to pay all these YouTubers to promote them? Something wasn’t adding up
- Know average amount of revenue a customer gives you over some period of time
- Figure out what percentage of that you’re willing to lose
- Get a loan
- Use that loan to pay to advertise to get customers you wouldn’t have anyways
- After the period of time (mentioned in step one) passes you’ll have a profit if everything went correctly
It’s not really a mystery.
If you have multiple extensions installed honey always secretly steals the revenue from competitors without asking for consent. Most other extensions will ask if you want to activate cashback. Honey just disables their competitors and steals that affiliate revenue. It should be classified as malware
Why am I entirely not surprised that LMG knew what the fuck was going on, and didnt say a fuckin thing about it.
Made more public comments over legitimate criticism about his “just trust me, bro” warranty, than about honey being a out and out scam.
Wait. How is honey a scam? It’s purpose is to give people discounts they didn’t know about otherwise, and as far as I can tell, that’s exactly what it’s doing. Maybe it’s in a gray moral area, but a scam?
Watch the video, dumbass
Honey is getting paid by shops to only serve you the coupons that Shop wants you to see, potentially keeping you from discovering a better deal on your own.
I have no idea how to find different discounts. If I’m getting a discount where I wouldn’t without the service, that isn’t a scam. Sure you can be more diligent and frugal if you know where to go, but I don’t, and I’m sure most people who use honey don’t either
Edit: I would like to add, I mostly buy things on my phone, and as far as I know Honey isn’t on android, so I have never used it. I do, often, look for discounts on things I’m buying and almost never succeed. I really hope Honey comes to Android, so I can start saving money.
If you actually watched the video you’re currently commenting on you’d have an answer to your question.
But since you didn’t watch it I’ll give you a hint. It steals affiliate links taking money out of the pockets of those who are getting you a discount. It then uses those stolen affiliate links to take money out of your pocket as well by short changing you discounts (By telling you it found you a 10% coupon that is actually a 30% coupon and is pocketing the difference)
Okay, that is still giving someone a discount they didn’t otherwise know was possible. That isn’t a scam.
That is quite literally the definition of a scam on both ends lol
They might not be able to say anything. Advertising contract might have a clause saying they can’t speak of the details of their deal, or speak negatively about the sponsor.
Never watched the channel, but I would guess that being tech-themed makes it a worse look that they promoted it for so long before catching the issue, so they were worried it would cast doubt on all other endorsements and tank the value of advertising with them.
I think coming out and pointing out what honey did would probably be the least damaging thing they’ve done in the past few years.
because holy fuck have they had some whoppers.
The “hard R” thing still permanently etched into my brain lol.
Context
Linus misunderstood that the phrase “hard R” referred to the N-word. He thought it was the R-word. He was saying “people used to use hard R all the time, like on Family Guy and stuff. I used to use it too!” His co-host caught the misunderstanding and it was sorted out quickly before he said anything else embarrassing lol.
My favorite was the trust me bro shirt.
You could see Luke having to physically restrain himself for calling his boss a fucking hard R word on live stream.
I knew this shit was too good to be true!!
It’s not just Honey swapping the affiliate codes. Practically all the major coupon sites do it too. That’s why they require you to click on a coupon code to reveal it. When you click, they usually reveal the coupon code in a new tab, and helpfully redirect the current tab to the store, using their affiliate link.
It’s more obvious when websites do it though, since they can’t auto-close the tab like Honey does. They also don’t automatically pop up at checkout like Honey does.
I imagine some of the other coupon extensions do the exact same thing as Honey though.
I reckon if you’re stupid enough to click a thumbnail like that, you’re going to get scammed at some point anyway
That thumbnail is for the video exposing honey.
Precisely the thumbnail that would prevent you from getting scammed.
But… ya, that is the worst possible style of thumbnail regardless.
So, what thumbnail do you suggest? Can you post a thumbnail with your ideal design in mind?
The point of a thumbnail is to attract viewers to your video, among the sea of millions of other videos that get posted every day. How do you propose they do that?
I would generally suggest using thumbnails that don’t provoke clicking through annoyance. Anything involving heavily edited human faces, stupid expressions, text that could be inferred from the title, or the classic huge red arrows, is in my opinion either trying to appeal to children or get people annoyed enough to click to see what the video is about.
Source - have spent way, way too much time on YouTube. PS do yourself a favour and install dearrow.
YouTubers seem to experiment with thumbnails and the fact is that more people click these type of thumbnails compared to more traditional ones.
YouTube even allows A/B testing for thumbnails now so creators can know with far more certainty what style of thumbnail generates more clicks. I’ve even observed the A/B testing occuring as I’ve scrolled past a new video mentally marking it to watch later then later seen the same video with a different thumbnail
Mr Beast gets lots of views, yet it could be argued all of his content is garbage - getting views is not at all an indicator of quality.
This is true, but it doesn’t change the facts that the channels with good content, which is highly subjective, also want to maximise the viewership.
Think of it like this, there is a subset of people that will click the video based on whether the title seems interesting and don’t care about the thumbnail; these people are always going to click. Then there is a subset who need these kind of thumbnails to drive clicks to their channel.
You can go and find countless YouTubers discussing this topic and how it really does affect the metrics of the channel. Do I like these thumbnails? Not really. Do they annoy me in anyway ? Not really. I care about the content and everything else is just superficial noise.
Highlighting the influencers who are pushing this garbage is important as part of the thumbnail, and the best way to do that is to show their faces.
Lol damn… yeah those thumbnails are pretty insufferable
Unironically, I have an estension to fix them. (Replaces thumbnails with a random video frame.)
DeArrow?
That’s it. There is also clickbait remover iirc, I used before but switched for some reason I don’t remember.
