From my experience, it’s more likely that the engineers who got far enough in the company to be working on this code believed that their willingness to work on nefarious tasks that others might refuse or whistle-blow made them a trusted asset within the company.

In industries like this there’s also a mindset of “Who cares, it’s all going to corporations anyway, why not send some of that money to the corporation that writes my paychecks?”

In my experience, sometimes your employer blatantly lies to you about what you're making and how it'll be used. I was once recruited to work on a software installer which could build and sign dynamic collections of software which was meant to be used to conveniently install several packages at once. Like, here's a set of handy tools for X task, here are the default apps we install on machines for QA people, here is our suite of apps for whatever. It seemed to have genuine utility because it could pull data in real time to ensure it was all patched and current and so on. That could be great for getting new machines up and running quickly. Several options exist for this use case today, but didn't then as far as I recall. This was on Windows.

Ultimately it was only used to install malware in the form of browser extensions, typically disguised as an installer for some useful piece of software like Adobe Acrobat. It would guide you through installing some 500 year old version of Acrobat and sneakily unload the rest of the garbage for which we would be paid, I don't know, 25 cents to a couple dollars per install. Sneaking Chrome onto people's machines was great money for a while. At one point we were running numbers of around $150k CAD per day just dumping trash into unsuspecting people's computers.

At no point in the development of that technology were we told it was going to ruin countless thousands of people's browsers or internet experiences in general. For quite a while the CEO played a game with me where I'd find bad actors on the network and report them to him. He'd thank me and assure me they were on top of figuring out who was behind it. Eventually I figured out that the accounts were in fact his. They let me go shortly after that with generous severance.

I don't miss anything about ad tech. It was such a disheartening introduction to the software world. It's really the armpit and asshole of tech, all at once.

Also likely, some version of "get dat money"

I think you can only get away with that excuse so long as you're actively looking for a new job while also collecting data to turn whistleblower (anonymously if need be) once you have one. Ultimately it falls on the employee to do the right thing or get out because they risk being held accountable for what they do. A replaceable employee (which is pretty much all of them) will be especially vulnerable since they can be thrown under the bus with minimal inconvenience to the company.

Ah yes let's be sure not to judge anyone for anything they do

Ben here. My real (substantive) write-up is https://vptdigital.com/blog/honey-detecting-testers/ . Happy to discuss / answer questions / etc.

We're not fully complicit all of the time. You don't know how many slaves made your phone, but somebody does. If you had a choice between a phone you knew was made by slaves and a phone that wasn't I assume you'd pick the slave free version every time. While it's fine to feel guilty for your involvement in the scheme don't let that get in the way of placing the blame for it squarely on the people who set things up this way and put you in this position.

When you can't escape an evil system you just have to do your best within it, while either working to get out of it or working to improve it however you can. What more can anyone ask of you? Capitalism is pretty much inescapable, but thankfully I'm not convinced that capitalism is an evil system inherently, it just needs strong constraints and regulations to keep it from being used to do evil things.

Thank you. I was confused about why this was suddenly bubbling up again. And ... paints Honey in a pretty bad light? LOL, they already looked like a fraudster scam to begin with! (But, again, thank you.)

It constantly reloads for me (Firefox.) Just hit X which replaces the reload button while the page is loading and it will stop.

Disable JavaScript, reason #99e99.

Works for me here, and in 90% of the cases where someone complains of annoying page behaviour (cookie banners, revenue optimizations, subscription solicitations, "click here to ...", paywalls, ads, et alii ad nauseam).

Seriously, just disable JavaScript on unknown/untrusted/undeserving sites. It makes the web tolerable.

I think I saw a 5xx error when I tried to see the original link. I assumed it might have been due to a hug of death.

It seems to be loading fine now.

The whole industry is based upon on nonconsensual surveillance and other taking of personal information, so yes they are.

choult: The factors you mention are the factors that led me to propose the "Honey's Dieselgate" title and to compare Honey to VW.

Of course I agree that health is more important than affiliate commissions. So the comparison only goes so far.

Probably better to compare to ubers grayball although that may be less well known.