It's comparing Honey's behavior to a well-known and comprehended scandal. Simile is a tried and tested way (hah!) to explain otherwise potentially hard to understand or dry content.

It's not about the severity of the impact, its the fact that they were breaking the rules and explicitly coding to actively avoid being caught by testers.

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bedelman 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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.

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collingreen 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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

	▲	Dylan16807 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Refusing service (and showing a fake status screen) is in the same ballpark, but dieselgate is a much closer match. They couldn't avoid being put under test, so they had separate behavior based on whether heuristics said it was in a testing environment.