I had this idea before Honey. When we spoke to our attorney, he instantly told us "that won't fly; you'll get popped for cookie stuffing."
The adware world had been doing similar things forever - injecting fake results into Google, taking over default home pages to show Google look-alikes.
When Honey launched on Reddit and got their first user bump, I started building our prototype. While digging deeper, you discover Honey injects JavaScript from their API, which violates extension store TOS, yet somehow this flies.
Fast forward, they hire the CEO of Commission Junction (CJ) as their CFO and everything becomes gravy.
Try to get offers via CJ, you won't get a response. All affiliate networks (CJ, Rakuten/LinkShare, etc.) have "stand down" policies in their contracts. You're supposed to detect when someone takes action like clicking a coupon site link and "stand down." Honey never did this. We had to demonstrate it was happening, but bring it up to CJ and they won't care.
It's regulatory capture of a borderline illegal business.
All cited studies came from RetailMeNot (since taken down). They claim customers abandon carts for coupons. Sure, some do, but those people will probably convert anyway.
Today, coupons are dying. We're in the world of personalized offers. Most coupon codes don't exist anymore - they're offer links. These systems try to "find you a coupon" which isn't real.
You're not supposed to share personalized coupons. These systems capture your coupons and add them to their list, but they almost never work.
I'd never try this business again. It's dishonest and terrible.
Fun fact: Much of this goes back to adware/search XML feeds from parking pages. IAC had a division called Mindspark Interactive Network (recently closed) - their adware division generating insane profit through Pay-Per-Download scam browser extensions tricking your grandfather, hijacking affiliate link clicks, same playbook.
The affiliate networks don't care as long as referrers look like they match approved pages.
Near the end he mentions the typoRules.js, rules.json, urlfixer stuff and Yieldkit. Apparently, whenever you’ve mis-typed a URL to e.g. amazon, it auto-corrected it and added their own affiliate id (which was then valid for 30 days). And the feature only needed very few changes to get applied even to correct links.
My father works here. Said they just finally sold off the last part of Technicolor. Streamland Media owns them now.
edit: Back when the strikes happened, the new owners (private equity?) didn't know they had to pay people per union rules. This led to cashflow issues. They didn't even pay people their severances.
I'm going to be that guy tonight. I never post online. I don't see value in posting online. But I feel as if I have to weight in on this conversation.
I run an online business. I depend on ads. I hate being tracked.
Here's the deal, Google is tracking you no matter what. Even if they aren't using your information for advertising, you still feed them all the best first party data in the world. You give them your search queries, emails, your phone ___location etc..
Your information is valuable. Even if you block online advertising, you are still going to be targeted in the real world the same way.
Facebook, yes they are shitty too, but again, they are fed all this information. Now, their information is 3rd party. They get pixel fires about you that allow them to coorelate data about you, but it isn't first part exactly.
In the advertising world you target the person or you target on page. The issue with on page is there just isn't enough content about a subject to target and frankly, just beacuse you read something, doesn't mean you are interested in buying it.
I don't care if it's a cookie, or FLoC, or what ever, people are going to be monitored, it's too large of a business. As an individual if you are afraid of it, you have the choice to use Brave or what ever. But at large scale, most people don't care. I believe that this tracking rhetoric is dangerous. At least we are having the conversation about tracking and allowing the people who don't want to be tracked to avoid it. If it were the inverse, these things would still happen behind closed doors, because it's extremely profitable.
Governements have been tracking people forever. Some choose to do evil, populations revolt. People can always beat governments.
Yes I am bias becuase my business does depend on paid advertising like many others. I understand the "big brother" effect. But I also know that other agencies (NSA/CIA) are already doing these things and are either forcing the tech companies to collect the data and share it or are willing to do it. The fact that we all focus on private companies being the crux of the problem and aren't focus on the 3 letter agencies.
Either way, we live in new uncertain times and the US economy has always been about consumerism. These ads have generated incredible amounts of wealth for indvidiaul companies and the tech companies. I do agree that Google makes too much money. As an advertiser, I know that their algorithm is essentially a black box and as an advertiser we are getting fucked. We have no real transparency that our bids are true. We are hoping to hit a CPA and just keep to it.
I can tell you that in the last 2 years, online advertising performance has dropped a lot. It's a combination of people having less money and our economy doing worse and there's a lot more competition. I suspect that these companies are inflating their bids artificially. We know that Facebook penalizes people it doesn't like but provides absolute no transparency on the system. These penalties also cost you more money - which is bullshit.
All of these companies have no support to contact and you are at the beck and whim of a 3rd world outsourced tech support agent that can't do anything.
To summerize. I agree tracking is bad. But you offer all of your data up every time you use email or a search engine. It's all collected and there is no better alterantive. At least these companies are providing a service for businesses to thrive. I think they make wayyyyy too much money. If you think disabling FLoC is going to stop anyting, you havn't looked at the big picture.
If people want to stop being tracked, get off the internet, don't use a search engine, don't use email. But that isn't practical. If you think any of these "Privacy Safe" companeis are doing anything other than just charging you and still handing your data over to what ever 3 letter agency requests it under an NSL, you're crazy.
Privacy or any other illusion of it on the internet, is mostly a game of musical chairs. If it's not GAFAM getting your data, it's 3 letter agencies. Or worse, both.
True anonymity has no place on the clearnet. The sooner we come into acceptance with this fact, the better we'll be able to protect ourselves from this rigged game. [0]
Tor is the only place you can go to find anonymity. I agree, if your goal is not to be tracked, by any of the above adversaries, go offline. We tend to laugh at guys who attempt this and call them looney, but it won't be so funny in the not-so-far-away future given how communication tech is advancing at such a fast pace with things such as 5G and IoT. It's easy to see governments achieve total surveillance within the next half-century.
I also agree that not enough spotlight is shone on government's ability to coerce tech companies to hand over user data, whether live monitored or subpoena'd. These tech companies like to play-act all tough e.g Apple, but the reality is they apply for business licenses & other similar considerations from the govt. It wouldn't be far-fetched to deduce such favors esp ones that come with competitive advantage in an industry come with hidden strings attached. Am not surprised to see govts such as UK's brazenly attempt to put backdoors into encryption technologies. [1]
I had this idea before Honey. When we spoke to our attorney, he instantly told us "that won't fly; you'll get popped for cookie stuffing."
The adware world had been doing similar things forever - injecting fake results into Google, taking over default home pages to show Google look-alikes.
When Honey launched on Reddit and got their first user bump, I started building our prototype. While digging deeper, you discover Honey injects JavaScript from their API, which violates extension store TOS, yet somehow this flies.
Fast forward, they hire the CEO of Commission Junction (CJ) as their CFO and everything becomes gravy.
Try to get offers via CJ, you won't get a response. All affiliate networks (CJ, Rakuten/LinkShare, etc.) have "stand down" policies in their contracts. You're supposed to detect when someone takes action like clicking a coupon site link and "stand down." Honey never did this. We had to demonstrate it was happening, but bring it up to CJ and they won't care.
It's regulatory capture of a borderline illegal business.
All cited studies came from RetailMeNot (since taken down). They claim customers abandon carts for coupons. Sure, some do, but those people will probably convert anyway.
Today, coupons are dying. We're in the world of personalized offers. Most coupon codes don't exist anymore - they're offer links. These systems try to "find you a coupon" which isn't real.
You're not supposed to share personalized coupons. These systems capture your coupons and add them to their list, but they almost never work.
I'd never try this business again. It's dishonest and terrible.
Fun fact: Much of this goes back to adware/search XML feeds from parking pages. IAC had a division called Mindspark Interactive Network (recently closed) - their adware division generating insane profit through Pay-Per-Download scam browser extensions tricking your grandfather, hijacking affiliate link clicks, same playbook.
The affiliate networks don't care as long as referrers look like they match approved pages.
This industry needs to die.