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PayPal Honey steals affiliate links and lies about finding the best coupons (youtube.com)
submitted 2 years ago* by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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πŸ–• Fuck PayPal

And fuck Linus Tech Tips for intentionally keeping quiet about this after they found out.

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[–] 80 points 2 years ago (3 children)

A useful question to ask when hearing about a new company is "What's your business model?"

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  • [–] 25 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    There is no such thing as a free and benevolent product with an advertising budget.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Free and benevolent maybe not. but genuine and non malicious?

    "What's your business model?" "we make and sell delicious sandwiches. Customer buys the sandwich for a little mote than it costs to make so we get money for ourselves." That isn't a scam.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Correct. It's not a scam. Because it's not free. The sandwich had a price posted, you paid it, you received the product. Valid business model.

    What would you think instead if you saw a NYT front page ad taken out for Free Sandwich Mart, the all-you-can-eat totally free sandwich emporium?

    Or in this case, a free browser extension that paid to sponsor five thousand YouTube videos that promises to help you pay less money to every store you activate it on at no cost to you?

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Wikipedia

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Show me a Wikipedia ad that they paid money for?

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    They have a budget spent on advertising on wikipedia itself, plus the cost of the emails they send out asking for donations.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Does it even count if you're advertising on your own platform? If I'm able to see the "ads" in the first place, I'm already using it.

    I also wouldn't exactly call a donation drive "advertising" either. They're not trying to onboard more users to the service, they're nagging people who already use the service to give them money. Which is itself leaning a bit on the wall of what is and isn't "free".

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  • [–] -2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Their advertisement budget is collected by guilt tripping Wikipedia users using the lie that the website would cease if they didn’t ”donate”.

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