• Aido@lemmy.world
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    21 hours ago

    Do people not immediately google “How does X make money” or is that just me?

    • Imhotep@lemmy.world
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      10 hours ago

      It is about Honey hijacking the referrals, which wasn’t known until a youtuber made a video about it (or at least not widely known)

      • Aido@lemmy.world
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        7 hours ago

        Yes, they’ve been doing this since even before PayPal bought them. This is how they’ve always made money.

      • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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        8 hours ago

        This is why I don’t trust Brave Browser. They did this in the past. Well, I don’t know if they replaced referrals but they added them when they weren’t there.

    • johannesvanderwhales@lemmy.world
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      11 hours ago

      The problem is that a lot of these startups don’t make money. The enshittification comes later, first stage is just burning through VC cash to establish market share.

    • viralJ@lemmy.worldOP
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      16 hours ago

      I didn’t Google it. I just figured, if it found me a 10% discount, the vendor would also send Honey some % of what I paid for the product.

    • Piemanding@sh.itjust.works
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      14 hours ago

      I feel like I’ve searched it up for honey, but the search results said the same thing as the YouTubers shilling it. Didn’t download it anyway because of how many people were advertising it. Anyone who uses that much money to advertise can’t be getting their money in a reasonable manner.

    • deafboy@lemmy.world
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      14 hours ago

      No need to do even that. If a simple piece of software becomes a company, it’s 99% a scam.

    • limelight79@lemm.ee
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      14 hours ago

      I have, for some businesses I’ve wondered about. For example, I use the virtual cycling platform Zwift, which charges a monthly or annual fee to use. The biggest competitor, Rouvy, also charges a fee. Makes sense, it takes money to develop these things, buy and maintain servers, etc. The income and expenses are obvious. (Zwift does offer bike frames and wheels from real world brands; I assume the brands paid something to be included.)

      Enter MyWhoosh. Free to use, so the income side is unclear. From some searching, they claim they’ll generate revenue via ads - but I doubt that would generate enough to support the platform.

      The company is based out of Abu Dhabi, so I assume it’s really sportswashing - they’re just dumping a bunch of money into it and not really caring that it isn’t making money (at least for now).

      I’m sticking with Zwift (in part because I have it working under Linux and Wine).

    • Snapz@lemmy.world
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      9 hours ago

      They do, but then a trusted “insider” youtuber or podcaster who they have a years long parasocial relationship with “signs off” on the product and the person says to themselves, “X person has integrity and they are very smart, they wouldn’t put their name on Y unless they did a lot of homework, so I don’t have to.”

      And life is difficult, complicated and overwhelming, so you can’t really blame “normal” folks for putting the same faith they’d put into their tech saavy nephew into these personalities. The influencers should pause though and accept that if they can’t enthusiastically describe the reason a thing is actually legitimate, they should refrain from endorsing it or accept part of the blame for misleading people.

      Fuck PayPal and its related entities and all executives past, present and future. And I guess fuck you too now, Will Ferrell - you cosigned Mel Gibson in whatever the fuck that daddy movie series was and now you’re the face of these people? The “PayPal mafia” (cringe) literally just bought the US election. I know you need to bankroll a lot of family trips to Sweden, but you h ave too much obviously dirty money now, Will. Hard to chuckle at your comedies now, and that’s a bummer.