They were always a protection racket against retailers, and I haven't seen any proof that they started stuffing their affiliate code in 100% of the time only recently.
The racket is that they f*k with your campaigns by stealing codes typed by users of the extension, so even users who don't think they're sharing them end up sharing them with Honey. Imagine the fun when someone creates a valuable code for someone trusted and doesn't limit its usage sufficiently, and someone uses it on a Honey-infected machine. Now the whole Internet is getting a possibly loss-making discount!
Honey then contacts the business and says "Gee, wouldn't you like us to stop doing that? Just pay us 3% on every sale any of our tens of millions of users buy and we'll let you blacklist any codes you like!"
The racket is that they f*k with your campaigns by stealing codes typed by users of the extension, so even users who don't think they're sharing them end up sharing them with Honey. Imagine the fun when someone creates a valuable code for someone trusted and doesn't limit its usage sufficiently, and someone uses it on a Honey-infected machine. Now the whole Internet is getting a possibly loss-making discount!
Honey then contacts the business and says "Gee, wouldn't you like us to stop doing that? Just pay us 3% on every sale any of our tens of millions of users buy and we'll let you blacklist any codes you like!"