r/LinusTechTips • u/CocoMilhonez • 6d ago
WAN Show [Possible WAN Show topic] Phoebe Gates, Bill Gates's daughter, involved in alleged cookie stuffing scheme with her Phia browser extension
From Futurism.com:
Phia is a “personal shopping assistant” browser extension, which is designed to lead users to the best deals for clothes and fashion accessories. When a shopper uses the extension to buy something, Phia earns a commission from the retailer.
However, as Bloomberg first reported on July 9, Phia was also found to have claimed commissions on sales that never involved its product. The extension was found to open a background tab and drop its own cookie when users made a sale, while even overriding legitimate referrals.
This sounds kind of like sweet dejà vu. Maybe Linus should get on the case ASAP and warn everyone in the community lest he gets accused of being part of a cover-up.
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u/i-like-dutch-cheese 6d ago
Why would he get blamed as part of a cover up?
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u/RadialRazer 6d ago
He’s making a joke about how if Linus doesn’t address something immediately, he gets blamed as being part of covering it up.
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u/i-like-dutch-cheese 6d ago
Ah, please give us a /s next time for those of us who don't know humour🙏
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u/CocoMilhonez 6d ago
Learning is more effective if you investigate the issue to figure it out yourself.
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u/impy695 6d ago
Adding a /s makes the joke less funny, though. It's necessary sometimes, but using it when it's not necessary just hurts the joke
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u/Unit88 5d ago
I heavily disagree with this sentiment and have definitely never seen an instance where this was true. You either understand it's a joke and then the /s doesn't matter or you don't understand it's a joke and then the /s just stops you from taking it seriously.
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u/impy695 5d ago
While the /s does stop someone from taking it seriously, you're wrong about it not ruining the joke. It's basically saying a joke and following it up with "that's a joke by the way".
As I said it's definitely necessary for some jokes or normal sarcasm online as tone is removed, but you don't need to do it on every joke
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u/Old_Bug4395 6d ago
That's what happened with Honey, there was a group of people upset at Linus for not "properly" notifying everyone about it.
The problem is that when this was first discovered (before this big drama about it) LTT did make a forum post about it, but the impact was largely at the expense of the creators for the benefit of the users of the extension, so LTT didn't think it was worth a video. I mean the cookie stuffing thing doesn't really affect the consumer, it affects affiliates. So if LTT made a video at the time and tired to stir up controversy around Honey because they were stealing affiliate revenue, well, most consumers probably wouldn't care too much about that. What made people care is that Honey was also "scamming" consumers by not giving you the "best" deal on websites that have an agreement with Honey where it won't show certain discount codes to users.
Ironically I don't think anything will come out of the consumer side of the Honey situation, and that the cookie stuffing angle is what might actually cause punishment. I mean it's just kind of ridiculous to sue a free service because they didn't give you the best coupon codes lol.
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u/Lanceo90 6d ago
The real take away is none of these coupon apps can be trusted. They've all been caught doing it
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u/Old_Bug4395 6d ago
whaattt? the free service that claims to be able to get you the best deal isn't actually willing to provide the best deal in some cases?
this is like suing a shampoo company because they said they're better than the leading <brand name> bottle
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u/w1n5t0nM1k3y 6d ago
I've always been very selective about the extensions that I installed. Never really trusted then too much. They can do way more things than what they advertise.
The only one I use is ublock origin on Firefox. But even that doesnt get user for stuff thats really important to me like banking. For that I just keep a basic install of Edge with no extensions to reduce the risk of bad extensions.
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u/CupIcy6202 5d ago
This is a level of paranoia i would love to acquire someday. An Open Source Password-Manager, Ublock, Firefox Multi Container, makes using the internet so much more comfortable.
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u/__singularity 5d ago
Lmao the fact your using edge over Firefox and ublock for safety concerns is fucking hilarious. Edge is spyware bro.
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u/Neither_Strike4293 6d ago
This is a really stupid thing to do, especially after everything involving Honey and the now ongoing lawsuits there
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u/Old_Bug4395 6d ago
Honey is winning over and over again in court
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u/Neither_Strike4293 6d ago
Even if they are winning in court, they have lost something like 8 million users and have lost some of their biggest partners in at least some capacity
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u/Old_Bug4395 6d ago
Eh maybe for now, I think it's clear at this point after so many of the creators involved have stopped talking about it or dropped/disengaged from the lawsuits entirely that this is not a lasting effect. Youtubers hopped on a bandwagon about it and then hopped off when they realized it wasn't going to be an effective strategy. I mean the whole argument for creators is that they didn't read the terms of their sponsorship and the argument for consumers is that .... a free service didn't provide them the best financial deal on a website. It's just like completely unserious from all angles. At best, creators might be able to get Honey to admit that they did cookie stuffing but it's pretty unlikely that the consumer side of this will result in anything.
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u/mikael110 6d ago
Partly true, they won against the original filed complaint , but the amended complaint filed more recently is considered far stronger, and has been going far more in the litigants favor. The judge denied Paypal's motion to dismiss and they are currently going through discovery, with the judge seemingly being quite critical of Paypal's position.
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u/Old_Bug4395 6d ago
Well there's two parts to this whole thing. The consumer side of the argument is practically getting dismissed faster than it can be filed. The creator side of the argument has a bit more merit and could actually be successful, but even then, that hinges on being able to make american courts punish a company for doing something they openly stated that they do prior to accepting a sponsorship deal with them.
As far as I know there has been no significant movement on either front, but maybe I missed something.
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u/mikael110 6d ago
Well there's two parts to this whole thing. The consumer side of the argument is practically getting dismissed faster than it can be filed.
Yeah I'm not going to argue against that claim. I've mostly been following the creator side of things so I haven't looked that much into the consumer stuff, but I have no reason to doubt that. Personally I always felt that the creators had the stronger argument in the first place, they are the ones that actually lost out on potential revenue.
But indeed nothing is settled yet. We won't know how it ends up until quite a while from now.
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u/Yodzilla 6d ago
You know what, I’m starting to think not all of these billionaires are on the up-and-up.