That is a sharpener, and a really shitty one at that. Those legit suck and ruin an edge. They work “fine” for at home cooking, but the way they create the edge, running parallel to the knife itself instead of perpendicular like a regular whetstone, makes the edge incredibly weak. It will start to dull after only a few cuts.

Honing doesn’t take off material from the blade itself, simply removes any burs of metal that have formed to prevent them from dulling the edge ( unless using a fancy ceramic or diamond dust one, then they will have a small sharpening effect) and bring the edge back into alignment.

Sharpening is the only thing that removes material from the blade itself due to using materials that are harder than the blade. Even cheap knives are made of stainless steel, which is what a regular honing rod is made from, so they won’t be doing any damage to the blade unless you’re being incredibly rough, which you should not be rough at all, so yea…