Brian Silverstein: The Jew behind the Honey App
Recently the web app Honey has been in the news after it was exposed in a series of very detailed accusations to be allegedly engaging in what can only be characterized as theft from other websites by supplanting the original cookie with their own. Thus, making it look like Honey had been the one responsible for the sale and earning the commission on the sale from the vending website.
As Dave LeClair explains in detail over at ‘Tom’s Guide’:
‘According to a Megalag video, other YouTube creators like Marques Brownlee and influencers, Honey is engaged in something much shadier. It allegedly steals affiliate revenue from them (and websites like Tom's Guide) by capturing the last click and obtaining the beloved cookie that leads to the commission.
When you click on a product link from an influencer, YouTuber or website, a cookie tells your browser who sent you there. When you buy the product, that retailer sends a commission to the referrer. In the influencer market (and even online publishing), this is one of the primary ways revenue is generated outside of traditional advertising.
Let's say you go to Tom's Guide and see a fantastic product in one of our buying guides. You click the link, add a product to your cart and see the Honey popout saying it can check for coupon codes. You click it, and it finds nothing, saying you have the best deal, so you check out, thinking you're supporting Tom's Guide through our affiliate link.
But, based on the accusations, Honey runs a tab in the background that swaps the affiliate cookie to its own despite not finding any deals or offering any actual value to you, the shopper. Honey gets the commission. Tom's Guide, which spent hours testing the product, writing the review, and creating the buying guide, gets nothing.
Since Honey can't always find a code or anything, the company started a rewards program that gives you money for nothing. This allows Honey to take the affiliate code because you interacted with it during the checkout. According to the accusations, it's just taking the commission and giving the shopper a small percentage of it as reward points.
So, while influencers and YouTubers were advertising Honey, the PayPal-owned browser extension allegedly took money directly from their pockets.
For you, who gets the commission for your sale might not be that important. You're online to read interesting content, watch videos and so on. And that's fine; you're entitled to feel that way.
According to Megalag and other content creators, Honey's core promise isn't true. PayPal and Honey say they'll run through a series of coupon codes to find the best deals. However, the firm is accused of using inferior codes to ensure the retailer gets more money from the sale while promising the user that the best code was used.
Megalag tested this in his video and found instances where better codes were readily available online, but Honey chose to use a code with a lower discount, claiming it was the best deal.
If this is true, then Honey is not doing what it claims. It's doing the exact opposite. It's not finding the best deal for you; it's finding the deal that works best for the retailer.
Megalag even found a podcast where a Honey representative talked about Honey helping retailers by giving them control over how much discount the consumer received.
Again, these are accusations (albeit well-researched), so we'll need to wait until more information comes out before we know whether Honey is guilty. But if it's true, this could become a massive scandal for consumers and content creators.’ (1)
If true, the legal ramifications are likely to be considerable with lawsuits already having been launched and a class action lawsuit in the process of being formed. (2)
Now Honey was bought in 2020 by Paypal for $4 billion and while two of its co-founders and co-creators - Ryan Hudson and George Ruan - are still with the company and happily make themselves out to be the only co-founders and co-creators of Honey. (3) There was – and is – a third co-founder and co-creator who has largely had his name scrubbed from Honey named Brian Silverstein.
Silverstein – who is jewish – (5) was the Chief Technology Officer (hereafter CTO) of Honey from its creation in 2012 to its sale to Paypal in 2020 while George Ruan was CEO and Ryan Hudson was COO.
This is interesting because what the Honey app is allegedly doing is not a normal business decision but rather a technical decision which Silverstein – as the only one of the founders and creators of Honey with a strong technical background – (6) had to have been the one to implement and also know each about cookies to know how to usurp the original cookie.
Thus, we may reasonably suggest that Silverstein’s fingers are those that are all over Honey and its alleged theft of revenues from other websites.
References
(1) https://www.tomsguide.com/computing/software/honey-scandal-explained
(2) https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.441974/gov.uscourts.cand.441974.9.0_1.pdf
(3) https://www.bloombergquint.com/onweb/coupon-duo-now-worth-1-5-billion-after-honey-s-sale-to-paypal
(4) https://web.archive.org/web/20241007091658/https://www.equitynet.com/c/honey-science
(5) https://forebears.io/surnames/silverstein; https://surnames.behindthename.com/name/silverstein
(6) https://www.arx.city/team/brian-silverstein compared to https://web.archive.org/web/20241007091658/https://www.equitynet.com/c/honey-science