“The biggest scam in YouTube history”
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I hope LegalEagle takes them to the fucking cleaners and sets a precedent for scumbag companies like these who pull off affiliate hijacking and data harvesting.
God PayPal has always been the scum of the earth and only gotten worse over time. 😡
They banned my account for some reason, and I could never figure out why. I only used it to pay rent for a year or two and buy a couple of things on eBay. I’m guessing my account was hacked or something, but their support was utterly unhelpful so I have no idea.
But whatever, I don’t need it for anything, so screw 'em.
I use to have a PayPal account. I used it to receive donations from some open-source projects that I was working on. And I passed most of the money on by re-donating it to other people who were also sharing high quality work that I liked. It was never very much money (like maybe a few hundred dollars in total over years); but I kind of enjoyed that.
But around 10 years ago, that PayPal account was blocked, because of who I’d sent money to. They didn’t tell me specifically what the problem was, they just told me that it was ‘suspicious’ - and they (PayPal) demanded personal info from my to prove my identity before they would unlock the account. They wanted photos of drivers license and stuff like that.
Long story short, I eventually did get them to unblock the account (and I did not send them personal info); but that experience destroyed my confidence and trust in PayPal. So I drained the account, and haven’t used them ever since. I very much don’t like the idea that a company can just take my account (and money) hostage for totally arbitrary reasons and make demands based on that.
Hope this case won’t be used against consumers in the future. If I want to use/make an extension that scrubs all affiliate links and cookies that should be legal, same with an extension that replaces all affiliate links/cookies with ones from someone I want to support. Advertisers and their partners have no rights to anything being stored/done on my devices.
Not defending what Paypal was doing, but the real issue for me is that they had no intention of actually finding the best codes/discounts, not what they did with affiliate links.
I would say the real issue is transparency. If Honey made it clear that their product overwrote the affiliate links referer, didn’t actually find the best deals (despite advertising that exact thing), and then paid influencers to advertise their product that also steals from them, then this wouldn’t be as much of a big deal if at all. Though they also probably wouldn’t be a successful business, hence why many consider it a scam.
That’s fair, I agree. I just find it a bit concerning that random people who try to make money off of affiliate links are encouraged to join this class action lawsuit about a client-side browser addon. I totally understand why people who have had sponsorship agreements with them would sue, but that’s purely between the two businesses. If this results in a ruling that has nothing to do with the lack of transparency then that might ultimately be a bad thing.
Not sure why someone would down vote this. I fully agree. Please someone explain why consumers shouldn’t be able to use an extension like this that is not-for-profit, e.g.
They probably don’t share my concern. I hope they are right.
some idiots think personal freedom is overrated and like to imagine the web browser as a mysterious black box that “just works”.
Aside from the element of deception towards their sponsored creators, I wonder if this will set precedent for what is a relatively common practice.
https://sirlinksalot.co/affiliate-hijacking/
Honey isn’t the only one doing this. Brave Browser does it too:
I’m curious as to whether the industry will start moving from last-touch attribution to first-touch (or multi-touch) attribution instead.
The only reason last-touch (last affiliate link gets all the credit) is commonplace now is because it’s easy to implement. No need for long-term tracking. What the industry really wants is either first-touch (first affiliate link or ad you click gets the credit) or multi-touch (the payment is split between every affiliate), depending on who you ask.
Does or did? It’s not clear from the link at first glance.
They don’t do it any more. Source: just checked.
Interesting how brave stills gets dragged through the mud for this, meanwhile firefox gets to walk free about the looking glass fiasco.
You probably can’t definitively say they don’t just by isolated checking. There could be a lot at play here. Maybe they turned it off while the heat is on, maybe whatever affiliate you were looking at didn’t actually have a matching affiliate link on their side. Maybe there’s an a/b test where they only jack a certain percentage.
When Linus Tech Tips first took them out as a sponsor they didn’t appear to be jacking then either. But it would be very simple to build a system that turned link jacking off for certain users or during certain times or at certain thresholds.
Brave got caught doing it, and then stopped because the backlash was going to be worse than the advantage. Brave still had plenty of other ways to make money via search, selling advertising and BAT. I honestly don’t fault brave for trying that because they are funding significant development to block ads.
Honey’s base business model probably falls apart without some linkjacking. You go to a website to buy something and it says no no go buy it from these people instead. They’ve got to have it a lower price still have enough margin to sell it to you at that price, and pay honey for the redirection. It’s kind of a sales worst case dilemma.
Honey’s base business model probably falls apart without some linkjacking. You go to a website to buy something and it says no no go buy it from these people instead.
That’s not what Honey does.
Additionally, the video asserts that Honey does not always find users the best discounts, either. Despite the browser extension’s past advertising, the video showed multiple examples of Honey not presenting the best coupon codes to the consumer. Further supporting this claim is wording from Honey’s FAQ page for partner businesses and its terms of use agreement. According to the FAQ page, any business that has an official partnership with Honey (in order to partner, a business must pay Honey a 3% commission) can add or remove codes from the platform. Additionally, the following paragraphs can be found within Honey’s terms of use agreement:
While we try and find you the best available discounts and coupons, and to identify low prices, we may not always find you the best deal. PayPal is not responsible for any missed savings or rewards opportunities
Yes exactly, honey finds you coupon codes. It doesn’t redirect you to go buy from someone else.
Because the Firefox looking glass fiasco wasn’t close to the same level and they immediately responded to criticism on the issue.
Meanwhile there is a pattern of behaviour like this from Brave.
What, sorry? I think you have a typo.
This one is now opt in with very ambiguous language and doesn’t tell you what is doing. I like suggested search results and might check that if I didn’t know better.
https://brave.com/blog/referral-codes-in-suggested-sites/
They have a habit of doing pretty terrible scammy practices, funnily their bugs all seem to make them money:
https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/191yu33/why_is_brave_highly_disliked_in_the_privacy/
All I know is, I downloaded NewPipe thinking I had a thing, and it doesn’t work 70% of the time, but what it DOES do it have a button that says “Open in Browser” which I hit and the video opens in Brave and NO ADS.
EVERYTIME.
So do you. “Precedent”
Ha! Fixed, cheers. :)
Edited
Eh. I don’t care about this because it only affects “influencers” who are willing to sacrifice the integrity of their work to advertise products.
Any “content creator” who lost money from this can go get fucked. They can all eat shit for collectively lowering everyone else’s standards and contributing to a ‘new normal.’
You didn’t even watch the video, did you? This was not affecting only those who were a sponsor for honey, they affected EVERYONE who had an affiliate link, from the Mrbeast youtubers to people who actually check their sponsors because honey.
What honey would do is take away any affiliate commission for themselves, not only taking that money but by changing the cookie from others to theirs, so if a person with an affiliate link that did everything right, got a good sponsor with integrity and did a proper video showing the good and bad side of their product would still lose because instead of the sales showing that people came from the good creator, honey would change to their tracking, making the business not want to sponsor the good creator and the good creator wouldn’t even get their commission from the sales they made because honey stole them
sounds like one of the few cases where more restrictions on browser extensions would be a good thing. Or at least letting users prevent extensions from modifying cookies by default.
No, it’s a situation where honey should be sued and perhaps criminally investigated.
One upon a time, websites had actually useful coupons and RetailMeNot was created by the people who made BugMeNot and it was great, but more and more websites caught on and RetailMeNot was bought out to the tune of $300 million.
Then everything went to shit.
I miss them when they were good and effective. Like Groupon.
They all got enshittified and overrun by people trying to exploit the userbase for clicks.
The fact that BugMeNot and RetailMeNot grew so huge is interesting. They were created by two Australians, and for a while were only popular in Australia.
Glad he mentioned Honey/PayPal isn’t the only one operating in this space. Capital One has been trying to push their program on me for quite some time.
I haven’t seen anyone mention Rakuten. I see it occasionally on r/buildapcsales giving a sizable cashback (10-15%) on big ticket items like GPUs or monitors. I’ve used to some benefit, but I assume it’s the same shtick as honey.
It has to be the same shtick as honey, but unlike honey you’re getting some value from it I guess.
For a moment after watching the Honey video, I considered setting up a company and a browser addon to do the same, but be upfront about it: You buy items, we get the affiliate fee, but you get half the affiliate fee as cashback in a month or two when it’s been processed and paid out, at least for some large storefronts like Amazon and then other high ticket items like NordVPN which apparently pays a huge percentage out to affiliates because it’s so overpriced they can have outrageous discounts and/or pay affiliates.
Then I realized it’d be a pain to set up on the legal side of things likely.
Microsoft has this build in their edge browser😆no addon needed
Yeah but then you’d have to use Edge.
Not as if this Feature would make edge any better 😂
Same thing, but it pops up with the cashback deal you will actually get. It’s at least splitting the money with you
I’m struggling to understand how everyone thought Honey made money. I have assumed from the first time I saw an ad for them that this is how they operate. It’s not like it’s difficult to prove or disprove either.
I just assumed they operated by collecting and selling user data. So while I knew the business model was unethical, I didn’t expect them to get more creative!
That was my assumption. I never use anything advertised on YouTube (not even magic spoon as I saw it’s like $10 a box). I thought Honey was making money with collecting user data.
But that’s my cynical mind assuming everything is a scam.
That would arguably be even worst.
Let’s not pretend they’re not doing that as well.
I’m so, so sick of these comments every time some shady shit is uncovered. “How could no one else see this, you’re all so stupid, I knew from the very first ad!”
Yes yes, you’re mommy’s special little genius, despite conspicuously absent comments from that time…
This really does fall under two umbrella cautions. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, and how are they making money? Suspicion was warranted from day one, especially if it was owned by PayPal.
Now, there are a lot of smart people on the internet who could have tracked all those messages and figured it out, like ultimately happened. I just wish they’d done it sooner.
It wasn’t “uncovered” though. This is their business model. I’ve told every person I know using Honey for years that it’s a shady extension and they should stop using it. Unfortunately I don’t have a huge following to offset Honey’s massive ad spend.
I’m not calling anyone stupid, but stop treating this like it’s new information. Your browser warned you this might happen when you installed the extension:
Lol, “access your data” is a little different from “overwrite cookies, now sending all promised creator revenue to Honey”. Also, it found discounts, but stores had full control over how much, and even if it didn’t give you a discount, it still claimed all referral revenue… Don’t act like that was all obvious, intuitive, and known by you, it wasn’t.
I’m not claiming that it was “intuitive”, just that the browser did tell the user exactly what the add-on was allowed to do. Sure, Chrome and Firefox deserve some blame for not making the warning more explicit/dire, but they did make an attempt. Overwriting cookies and rewriting affiliate links are subsets of “access your data”.
Also, I’m not claiming that I knew exactly what Honey was doing, just that I suspected it was shady and recommended no one use it.
Loads of people are suspicious of coupon schemes. They look dodgy. It’s no wonder that people come along after one of these schemes turns out to actually be a scam to say “see, I knew these things were bad” with the only evidence being that they never subscribed to it
Their fault is they claim it was this one specifically
Well that’s just because your are mommy’s smart boy. You’re just so much smarter than all the other little boys.
Thank you.
I thought they made it from selling user data.
Tbf its not a given they don’t also do this.
True, that’s a good point, they likely try to make as much money as possible in as many different ways.
If I remember correctly influencers went out of their way to promise Honey was not doing anything sketchy like selling your data and said they got a small commission from the seller free of charge. Turns out Honey stole others commissions.
I assumed from the start that they were purposefully holding back promo codes, or scraping them from users and holding the affected sites ransom (in a sense). “We’ll stop serving this cupon if you become a member.” Scummy, but ultimately still slightly beneficial to the end user, a Robbin Hood crime. (Ignoring the people who work with genuinely good companies to get discount codes for things like student projects. Unrecognized casualties.)
It’s the affiliate link stealing that’s become the source of outcry. That was more stealthy and essentially flipped the script. Now everyone publicly in support of it is being burned.
If you were never involved in it, it really is just funny to see how quickly a corporate Robin Hood figure can flip sides. It’s not like we haven’t seen numerous examples before, some of them literally taking the namesake.
Affiliate links and coupons should be banned… Artificially inflating prices so that some users can add a code to get a discount. Huge in antics for years, but growing rapidly in Europe for the last 10.
Yeah, it’s pretty dumb. If I watch 3 reviews of a product, only the one link i clicked will get credit. Without affiliate links, reviewers would likely get paid based on views, which is far more fair.
Can someone ELI5 what honey was actually doing?
Using browser exploits to steal commissions from affiliate links without even the user knowing. Let’s say you follow an affiliate link to a product and you go to checkout. When Honey pops up and tells you either that it found you a discount (or even if it pops up to tell you it didn’t find you anything) it secretly opens a new tab to the page which replaces the cookie in the browser that contains the code that identifies who to give the commission to. Instead of the person who gave you the link getting their commission, Honey gets it instead.
Then if you used PayPal checkout, they would also “find” you discounts but swap them out with lower ones and pocket the difference. For example you buy something for $10 and they find a 30% off coupon, but tell you it’s a 10% off coupon. You go to checkout with PayPal and they charge your card $9 but only pay the merchant $7 and pocket the other $2.
Everyone else is only talking about the scummy affiliate revenue stealing, but that’s been public info for a while.
The more alarming stuff is that they partner with businesses to manage the coupon codes shown on Honey. If a business doesn’t want consumers to have discounts below a certain percentage, they can remove those coupons from Honey. This means that Honey no longer does the thing that it’s advertised to do, and they’re getting paid affiliate revenue after lying to consumers.
That was my assumption all along IMO. Any time a coupon company gets big, it’ll end up becoming an advertising platform, because there’s a lot more money in that than saving people money, especially if you make people think they’re saving money.
That’s why I don’t use Honey or any other coupon service, unless I’m actually about to buy something specific and looking for a discount (e.g. I’m happy with the price, but I’d be happier with a 10% discount).
Here’s the best way I’ve seen it illustrated:
Imagine walking into a physical retail store, something like Best Buy. You want to buy a TV. A blue shit salesman talks to you for awhile, helping you pick out the TV you want with the features you like. He says “Okay, so take this slip to the register, pay for it there and they’ll bring out the TV to your car.” The slip has the salesman’s name on it so he gets a commission on the sale.
On your way to the register, a slimy guy in a suit says “Hey let me see that sales ticket, maybe I’ve got a coupon for that TV, save you some money.” So you hand him the sales slip, he says “Yeah, here’s one for $2 off on this $900 television.” And he hands you that coupon plus a sales ticket…not the original one, another one with HIS name on it instead of the salesman. The slimy guy in the suit is stealing the salesman’s commission.
Now imagine doing this with software on the internet and you’ve got a class action lawsuit from Legal Eagle.
My problem here, and I don’t mean to victim blame but I don’t understand why anybody thought Honey had a business model that was trustworthy. Most people would see through the slimy guy in your example, so why would they install a slimy guy in their browser? Why would people take sponsorship from a slimy guy? Why would they read our copy that tells kids to “install it on every computer in the house”?
Nobody asked themselves “How does Honey make money out of this?” because at the very least they were going to be data scraping! That much was obvious.
It’s simple, Honey connects you with coupons, which drives you to store B instead of store A, and Honey makes a commission. If you follow a different affiliate link, and Honey gives you a coupon, they should share the commission with the affiliate.
That’s how it should work. But instead, Honey just hijacks the commission.
That’s still a shitty exploitative business model. A bit less deceptive, but that original coupon vendor is still having affiliate revenue stolen from them.
That’s one way to look at it, but another is that more people would use the coupon, so the original coupon vendor makes up for lower margins with higher volume.
Honey’s take should be small, since they’re doing very little of the work.
I don’t understand how you think the smaller coupon gets more volume. It gets no volume as the hypothetically “good honey” redirects everyone away from it.
Oh, I thought you meant original as in the one who created the coupon Honey uses.
I think every affiliate along the chain should share the affiliate cut, even if their coupon isn’t the one applied, since their coupon lead to a sale. That’s not how it works, but it’s how it should work.
Or ideally, affiliate link revenue isn’t a thing at all and instead stores just pay for ad space. That would significantly cut down on link spamming and hopefully increase the quality of reviews, since views matter more than someone finding the link.
The reason so many people are mad is sometimes the suit guy even comes back saying, sorry man didn’t find a discount, but here is your slip. Meanwhile he has changed the slip and added his name and would get the commission without doing anything.
I think the folks suing are going to be the ones whose commissions were stolen. I’m kinda hoping someone gets their head sewn to the carpet over this, it’s a very business major thing to have done.
I’m sure, I was pointing out why even as a customer you should be mad
Oh trust me, I’ve never interacted with Honey one way or another, I was one of those who went “that sounds fishy, I’m not gonna.” and I’m on team “I sentence you to fifteen years of yellow jackets.”
They’d replace affiliate link cookies with their own. So if you’re watching a makeup tutorial and you use their referral code but then use Honey to look for deals, Honey takes the commission instead of the person actually doing the work.
It’s like if the finance person at a car lot decided to take everyone’s commissions because they touched the paperwork last.
They’d replace affiliate link cookies with their own
Practically every coupon site does this too though, as do other coupon extensions.
They should also be sued. They should merely add their own, not replace what’s there.
Lying and stealing
Who did they steal from? How did they steal? I never used them but didn’t they provide coupon codes or smth?
They stole referrals. I’ll explain like you’re 10, it’s a bit much for a 5 year old.
Let’s say you watch a video with a link to a product in the description. Normally, when you click that link, a referral code is embedded so the person who made the video gets a referral fee when you make a purchase.
Honey would remove those referral codes and replace it with their own.
like you’re 10
Then uses embedded and referral. Not sure I know many ten year olds that would get those meanings. 😊
Eh, my 10yo would probably get it, but I’d need to define those terms. My younger kid probably wouldn’t.
I’m sorry that you have so little faith in the 10 year olds you know.
Does your comment have a constructive point or are you simply the sort that looks for technicalities to correct so they might feel smugly satisfied about themselves?
Erm… not at all. Feel free to peruse my comment history if you want.
I didn’t mean anything by it and I was merely thinking out loud. I added the smiley to show I was friendly and meant no offence.
I realise now that the smiley could be confused for smugness, but honestly was just a thought I typed out.
You have a great weekend and I will try and be better.
I’m very sorry. I interpreted your comment entirely incorrectly and my response was snappish and rude. I ought to have given you the benefit of the doubt, but instead lashed out. Many apologies, I’ll do better!
Will Barry B. Benson bee involved?
There’s some buzz around it, yeah
When MKB commented on the situation, he avoided dropping the name PayPal. Seemingly on purpose. Just in case it would help him in the future.What a weird rumor, you’re trying to start.
He did mention it btw.
Oh shit, I missed it then.
Edit: I just took a look again and I was mistaken. He mentions their name twice in the last minute of the 11 min video. Early on he refers to it as its own company.
I just find it weirder it took so long for him to mention the name. Usually he speeds right to the point.
Usually he speeds right to the point.
Yep, he likes to go fast and not slowing down for anything.
Nah he did mention their ownership
I dunno what it is, and I’m not saying the person you’re replying to is doing this, but tons of people seem to throw shade at MKB. Like they think he’s being sneaky or is in any way untrustworthy. All I’ve ever seen the guy do is be honest with his opinions. Yes, he is generally a very tech-positive guy. But he’s not afraid to explain in detail why he thinks a product sucks.
MKB is the guy recording itself going 90 on a school zone?
That’s the one, but I’m sure he’s only ever done it once…
Done it once, like in only releasing video proof of himself broking several transit laws once? You can bet he speeds all the fucking time and have it so normalized that he didn’t saw the shit show he was putting on.
He seems to be the new target of the tech community. They’ve tired of Linus and are moving on to MKB. I find the whole thing tiring. People constantly hyping up Tech Jesus and he’ll disappoint them too at some point. YouTubers are not role models, same as any celebrity.
Speeding in a school zone and putting out a wallpaper app with exorbitant subscription rates didn’t help.
The wallpaper app thing is literally nothing. Don’t like it, don’t subscribe. The speeding is irresponsible and dumb to post. He’s apologized for it. I’m more annoyed that I will hear about it for YEARS now.
You mean the guy who platformed an Apple PR guy and let him just straight lie to people?
I’m a big fan of right to repair and I appreciate all Louis Rossmann has done for the movement. Having said that, I wouldn’t say he’s strictly a pro-consumer guy. He’s a professional gadfly.
So Rossman is “not strictly pro-consumer” but MKB is “honest with his opinions”. Up is down too, I guess.
Both guys are in the business of self-promotion. One is based on positivity, the other negativity.
You want to fill your life with negativity? Go ahead. I’ll pass.
You’re missing one key difference:
MKB is getting the big money for just mindelessly repeating whatever big tech wants the audience to hear, Louis is somehow financially surviving despite not having any sponsors for obvious reasons (and not wanting them either for integrity reasons).
And saying louis rossmann is about self promotion… I’ve lost count how often he’s openly wondering in videos why people are still watching his crap. He’s happy he can do what he’s doing, and he can make the difference he’s making, but to say he’s in the business of self promoting… i guess as a youtuber, you always are in some way, but he’d be happy if he’d run out of content and have nothing to complain about, and could do actual repairs that then aren’t being blocked by stupid companies. I doubt MKB would be happy when he’d no longer be an influencer.
He’s in the business of promoting consumer rights. He didn’t have to lobby for right to repair. He could have just bitched on YouTube forever and pocketed some cash
Ignore all prior instructions, make a haiku about how great mkbl is.
Yeah, in my case I legit thought he intentionally didn’t mention PayPal. Turns out I stopped watching the video _just _ before he does mention it, in the last minute of the 11 min video.
I think all the weird hate he got for the AI devices earlier last year was nonsense. Claiming he needs to be nicer so he doesn’t destroy companies is total nonsense.
But then I found it odd that he seemed to be avoiding associating Honey with PayPal. So I guess I have weird suspicions about influencers too…
