Reminds me of Opera GX with their sponsors and everyone used their browser.
As much as I enjoy watching LTT content, I have to speak out about how they realized Honey was fucking them and then said NOTHING to their audience or to other YouTubers. I think that is just plain shitty of them and has put a sour taste in mouth with their content now. If they did say something, I apologize. I just haven’t seen it since the only “social media” I use is this singular one, Lemmy.
Spineless tech tips
He said on the WAN show that when they dropped Honey a few years ago, the news was going around all over creator circles and a lot of other creators dropped them then too. And they didn’t make a video because at the time only the affiliate yoinking was known, and the audience would probably call them shills for making a video about how they’re losing money due to their audience saving money.
I don’t think his defense is 100% airtight, but it’s useful context.
I mean, is it saving users money though? It’s not, the charge is that it’s just taking other affiliate code out of the link and replacing it with its own. And just doing it to small creators? I don’t know that much about it, maybe that last part isn’t true. But it’s not saving them money that’s the problem, but replacing affiliate links with their own. And they’re saying that it’s just that they were the “last click,” even if it was from an affiliate site. Meaning they probably put it in their code somewhere to briefly load honey looking for “deals,” meaning they were the last one to redirect the click and then they get the money.
Will be interesting to see how they were doing it.
Honey would look for coupom codes, and sometimes it would find them, it wasn’t always, but also wasn’t never, so yes, they were “saving money” for the user as far as people knew at the time. After MegaLag’s video we know that the whole “find all available and working coupons to guarantee the best deal” was horseshit, and they were in partnership with business controlling the whole thing, but back when LTT and other creators dropped Honey, that part wasn’t known yet, just that they poached affiliate links. Which is very scummy, but likely not illegal.
I mean it seems totally on brand for Linus, especially after auctioning off 1 of 1 prototypes he promised to give back months ago. Only to hide behind the fact the auction was for charity.
Hah, yeah I guess he does own goal to protect others often.
That’s an egregious mistake of a logistics employee wrongly asset tagging a prototype, ending up creating a huge controversy. Linus never named the employee and took all the heat on himself even though the situation had nothing to do with him.
Making a big deal out of Honey taking creator’s money would again move all the heat on him while warning other creator’s. But I think it would go just as bad.
Selling the prototype was only a small part of the issue. They also tried to ruin the brand by testing it on hardware it was explicitly said not to be compatible with, later stating that it was not worth $500 to redo those tests. And then went on to state they had come to an agreement with said company to reimburse them, which turned out to be false. They had just sent their first email in ages to them minutes before posting that statement.
Yes, it was really bad.
I question your assertion that it was purposefully done as a secret conspiracy to ruin a random brand. Don’t attribute to malice what can adequately explained by stupidity.
No, they weren’t trying to ruin the brand, they were trying to make a YouTube video, made a bad job with multiple compounding mistakes, and ended up hurting the brand without that being their intention.
So the scenario is that they know Honey is losing them money, but it’s saving user’s money by finding them great deals (since that part of the controversy wasn’t known at the time).
And you are proposing they make a video complaining about it. A big YouTuber millionaire telling people “hey, I know this extension is making you money, but please consider not using it because we are profiting off of our affiliate links less when you do and our profits are more important than your savings”.
How do you think that would go? We all know how such a video would be received.
Except it wasn’t saving people money. It actually was hiding coupons from users.
But like they wrote, that wasn’t known at the time.
You would simply tell your side of the story, and give caution to users of the extension that shady behavior like that is always accompanied by even more shady stuff.
Not really that hard to do, and you gave the info out to people who will dedicate their time (as MegaLag did) into looking into it either for their own interests or to see how deep the rabbit hole goes.
I think they talked about it on WAN show and said that other creators already knew which is why you haven’t really seen Honey ads anymore even before the recent video came out and they didn’t know about the consumer issues so they didn’t think it warranted a video.
Tell that to all the creators who are coming out and screaming that they never knew and are anxious to join the class action lawsuit that Legal Eagle and Wendover productions is bringing.
Linus is really, really shitty at responding to criticism. I don’t think it’s malice, it just didn’t occur to them.
He should just be upfront and say “you know what? We should have done better here”. That’s it.
I don’t watch the WAN show because it’s not really my type of content. Haven’t they addressed concerns before on their main channel, or am I mistaken? If they found out Honey was scamming them, and just assumed other YouTubers knew or their audience, why not just make a quick video about it with a more in depth talking about it on the WAN show?
They’ve only made a standalone video addressing stuff a few times on their channel, the vast majority of the time they save it for WAN Show or at most a community post.
This gist of it from the WAN show was this:
- They were unaware that it was intentionally not looking for the best deals (thus, scamming the consumer)
- They stopped advertising Honey because of the referral hijacking
- A ton of creators knew about it, and had already dropped Honey (people just talked about it via DMs, not publicly)
- This all happened when YouTubers were getting shit on for even doing ads/sponsors, and they didn’t want to make a video that was basically “stop using this thing that saves you money because it takes my money” (see first point)
Again, I must bring the point that you can still say your side of the story (here is what we found out about Honey) and caution users of the extension to be wary of not only this shady business, but that who knows what else they might be doing.
Do people really think that someone with the platform as big as Linus Tech Tips shouldn’t bring awareness to such topics? Why not? Especially if you were once shilling for them??
I’m trying to remember if they have, I feel like most of the addressing of problems with sponsors has either been done on the forums or on the WAN show. And the reason why they probably don’t do that unless it’s like a really bad consumer affecting thing is because of how big LTT is now making a quick video isn’t really as easy as for smaller creators. It’s the classic problem of smaller companies or creators being much more nimble and agile to react and make quick videos about things compared to a bigger company like LTT that has writers that have to write the video, then they have to schedule a time to film it and since Linus would probably host would have to wait for him to be available, then it goes off to an editor to be edited, a thumbnail artist makes a thumbnail for it, and it’s slotted into the upload schedule which already has a number of other videos in it. It’s just a much longer and more expensive process that makes creating a quick video not as much of an option anymore, especially considering YouTube will punish your future videos if you upload a video that doesn’t do as well. I still think they should have talked about it or atleast looked into it a bit more and realized there was a lot more going on but I understand why they didn’t.
I’m happy to be corrected, but my understanding is this all stems from a MegaLag video published a month ago. There would be no need for LegalEagle to republish all the claims and it understandably takes some time to file suit. In short, the info was already out there for everyone to see.
I’m pretty sure ltt stands for Linus tech tips here
I watched the MegaLag video, and I may be mistaken, but he is the one that said LTT never said anything to anyone and just let it go. Thats what I’m referring to.
Before I even clicked it I knew there would be no real journalism involved. It’s just parroting the video the LegalEagle put out, so if you’d rather give your click to the creator, just watch the Youtube video, and don’t bother with the techcrunch “article”.
This article credits Legal Eagle, embeds the original, is much shorter to read than an 8-minute video and doesn’t require me to wear headphones. Lemmy is a text based social media so it makes sense to favour text sources. Definitely better than linking to some overloaded Invidious instance which seems to be the norm.
Lemmy is a text based social media
No it is not. It is a link aggregator. Can be text, can be images, can be video, can be news, etc. etc.
There’s plenty of core social components to Lemmy. It’s a platform for self-organising communities that curate, rank and discuss content. Without that I’d be using RSS reader only.
There’s plenty of core social components to Lemmy.
Nothing requires the social components of lemmy to be text only though. Many images, gifs, and videos are shared in comment sections as well. Claiming text only or text-based is incorrect when all media types are available in every facet of lemmy.
Edit: I will add, I do appreciate a text source though… I can get through pages of text faster than I can watch a youtube video at 2x speed. But there are times where the imagery help to clear up some topics as well.
It’s a spectrum like most things but to give some extreme examples - Lemmy can work without embedding media files but it can’t work without text. Instagram could work with just video, ability to scroll and a like button.
I don’t understand what any of that has to do with what you or I said.
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I believe in the right to quote which is also the law in most of the world because of Berne Convention.
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If YouTube videos are what “modern journalism” has to offer, modern journalism is trash.
I have absolutely zero interest in watching an eight minute video to gain what I could have read in two minutes.
I don’t need to see anybody 's face or hear any stupid music or, even worse, watch them talk over another video as they present the information. 90% of what these people do would be more effective presented textually, and the rest is ads, vamping, and narcissism.
YouTube is great for spreading misinformation and propaganda, and wasting people’s time. Let’s move on.
You’re so angry lol. Just don’t watch it jeez.
I don’t like watching videos.
Me either, and Im glad for text summaries.
Exhausting. Like the people who used to yell at us for using straws. Your anger is misplaced at individuals.
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I agree that Honey is a sleazy extension, but should I be worried that if they lose, it will set a bad precedent? From the video, the Honey extension works by injecting a Honey referral code into all online shopping transactions, possibly overwriting whatever influencer referral code the user was under. If Honey loses, the court decision is likely to say that an extension creator is liable if they tamper with referral codes and tracking links.
This will be a problem for privacy extensions that strip out tracking cookies and referral URLs, since they are also messing with influencer attribution, though not for profit but at the request of the user.
Not a lawyer and haven’t seen the lawsuit but I’ve watched a lot of legal eagle and other lawyers and I suspect it’s not about them manipulating codes. I also doubt this is the sort of case trying to set a precedent in any legal sense.
Likely it’s just boring fraud because they deceived content creators and users with lies to make money.
A different company doing the same thing but being honest might be unethical and terrible but probably wouldn’t be sued.
That makes no sense. The problem is not that an extension is tampering with tracker links, it is that it is falsely attributing itself as a sales representative.
Not a lawyer but I think the fact that honey profited, like, a lot from this is a key factor. From my understanding it’s hard to say what they didn’t wasn’t straight up theft. What’s more, they lied about what they were doing so the consumer was unaware of the ‘product’ they were getting. So while I get your concern, I wouldn’t be too worried about precedent here. It’s less ‘this should be made illegal!’ and more ‘they def committed several actual crimes’
In such case, my opinion would be that referal stripping should be OK. It is the customer choice, even if automated, and the extension clearly tell what he does. You can see it, using the metaphor used in the video exposing the problem, as just not giving the referal card the store salesman gave you.
In the case of Honey, they do it behind the customer back, and the original video metaphor is quite right. They could at least ask i f the user wish to attribute the sale to Honey instead of whatever influencer/website originally pointed you to the product, but they don’t.
I’m thinking this lawsuit will be more about how they wronged creators, and less about how they wronged customers. I don’t expect there to be any justice or concern for the customers who were wronged. Therefore, I agree with TAG, I would worry that them losing would set a bad precedent, and possibly make it so that tampering with referral codes, tracking links, etc isn’t allowed anymore because it hurts creators and sellers/companies, and thus that could outlaw adblockers entirely by extension which would not be great.
That’s like worst-case scenario, though, I don’t necessarily expect that to happen, but I think it’s possible.
The issue here isn’t that the tracking link has been tampered with, but that it was done without the user’s informed consent.
Honey doesn’t advertise how it makes its money to consumers; it is just a fancy plug-in that could save you money.
That is not the issue at all. This lawsuit has nothing to do with user of honey, only on behalf of creators and affiliate marketers. Langley in part because users of honey signed a class action waver and makes it a sticky issue to also include them in the lawsuit.
One of the lawyers taking part in it explicitly points this out: https://youtu.be/ItiXffyTgQg?t=182
Nah, honey was marketed as a coupon tool without mentioning the referral manipulation it did that is its actual business model. Those privacy extensions just need to call out that they remove referral trackers too and everything is fine with them.
I don’t see a problem if they let the user know what those extensions are doing, unlike Honey.
Not an issue because FOSS
The very first time I saw an ad for Honey I knew there had to be a catch. Nothing is ever free.
It wasn’t immediately obvious how they were going to make money, though. I figured they’d just sell gather and sell user data. I had completely forgotten about affiliate links. But they probably also sell your data for good measure.
The only thing truly free are those little pencils at IKEA.
Those are priced into the products IKEA sells.
I only go there for the free pencils and make my furniture out of the pencils. Checkmate
No purchase required, though. You can just take all the pencils and paper rulers you want!
That just means the actual customers are paying for you.
There are plenty of free things on the Internet. You’re commenting on a free social network.
I pay $100/month for internet access.
Lemmy may be free to access, but certainly not free to host. Am I paying for it personally? No, but someone is.
You also don’t see Lemmy paying hundreds of YouTubers and influencers for ad spots.
I pay $100/month for internet access.
Which you’d also pay if you used Honey.
Lemmy may be free to access, but certainly not free to host. Am I paying for it personally? No, but someone is.
You also wouldn’t have paid to use Honey.
You also don’t see Lemmy paying hundreds of YouTubers and influencers for ad spots.
That one, that’s a valid argument.
You also wouldn’t have paid to use Honey.
That’s my point? Nothing is ever truly free?
But how does that statement contribute to anything?
Lemmy may be free to access, but certainly not free to host. Am I paying for it personally? No, but someone is.
Kind reminder to donate to whoever is hosting your instance. Covering a share of costs increases the chances they will continue running it.
Lemmy may be free to access, but certainly not free to host. Am I paying for it personally? No, but someone is.
“Someone” is paying to host every website. The point is it’s free to you.
I pay $100/month for internet access.
Irrelevant to the point, but damn that feels so high. I pay something like 30 or 40 euros per month for symmetric 500 megabit, in one of the countries with the highest internet prices in Europe.
Lemmy may be free to access, but certainly not free to host. Am I paying for it personally? No, but someone is.
Well yes, someone is, but my point was, there are loads of examples on the Internet where something truly is free to use and hosted by someone who doesn’t ask for anything. There is real altruism to be found here.
You also don’t see Lemmy paying hundreds of YouTubers and influencers for ad spots.
Yes, this is where the difference comes in. When something is free AND the people running it have ridiculous amounts of money to spend on sponsorships and ads… Then you can be sure there’s a catch.
Wow, internet is expensive where you are. I pay £28 (about $35) a month for 1gig up/down in the UK.
It’s more expensive in remote areas and areas without competition.
internet in the states and canada can be so expensive :( i’m lucky that my provider has a program for ppl on disability where we pay $10-$20 CAD/mo. I can’t remember the exact amount, nor what up/down we get right now, but it’s pretty decent!
Capitalists hate competition, and ISPs have it down to a science.
What lemmy bad?
The catch about Lemmy is that degenerates like me are here
It’s not, my point was more that you see a lot of things being hosted on the Internet for free just out of people’s goodness and curiosity.
Honey is not one of them. But it’s not the fact that Honey is free to use that’s the suspicious part. It’s the fact that they had an awful lot of money to spend on sponsor spots for a free product/service.
Lemmy isn’t paying out the nose for influencers to hook their stuff. I haven’t seen any Lemmy instances advertise at all, much less to the extent that Honey has.
Yes, that’s the major difference, but the original comment pointed out you can’t have free things without getting assfucked one way or another. You can, but those free things don’t spend millions on advertising themselves.
I help pay for my instance to run, nothing is free but there is freeloading. Otherwise someone is else pays for the electricity that powers my server requests as I shitpost on lemmy
It’s definitely not 2005 any more.
It’s not, but go look on github. There are so many projects out there that aren’t monetized. People just built them for the fun of it.
Hell, the entire KDE software suite is not monetized to the best of my knowledge. They ask for donations, but they don’t make a buck off you in any way unless you voluntarily donate.
There was a video years and years ago where they explained their business model and it has either since changed or they lied. Back then it was that they offered deals through sponsorships or something. I don’t remember. It was years ago. What’s frustrating is that I remember seeing that video and it definitely made me think it wasn’t a scam. Probably had the same effect on a lot of other people too.
Frankly I’m surprised it took this long for anyone to notice they were swapping referral codes. I always assumed that was what was in it for them. Perhaps the extent to which they’ve done it is greater than we knew, but if you have ever heard of referral codes, it seems obvious that this is how such an extension would monetize.
Tanstaafl
So you don‘t use extensions at all then because you‘re already sniffing the uBlock Origin scandal?
Honey has in its terms of services that you accept not to take part in a class action lawsuit and favor arbitration. It seems like these kind of clause is enforceable usually so I’m curious to see how Legal Eagle will navigate the issue.
Edit: Either the creators sue Honey and they will argue it is not illegal to poach affiliate links because they follow the “last click” rule that is standard (it’s just that they pushed it to the extreme).
Or its the users that are scammed because they were told the best coupon would be used. But if it’s the users, they are under the EULA and should have to comply with the no class action rule.
I’m not a lawyer but this is how I understand the setup for this trial to be.
According to Legal Eagle’s video, Honey could be pocketing affiliate link money from creators that had never even anything to do with them.
It’s installed on viewer’s side, so it makes sense.
I’d also say there are probably limits to what you can enforce arbitration for, especially if you outright lied to your customers, but I am not American and I have no idea how irredeemably fucked up your customer protection laws are.
So Disney had an arbitration clause in a eula that a user agreed to when they signed up for a streaming trial service and never ended up subscribing. When he died of food poisoning at a restaurant at one of Disney’s amusement parks, his widow looked to be unable to sue the park over it, because he had agreed to that eula by signing up a couple years before.
It was generally perceived that the clause would have been enforceable in that fucked up situation, but Disney backed off when the word got out that the lawyers in the trial were pushing that argument, and they waived the clause. But in that instance, it was never actually ruled on, and many people seemed to think that it was going to be enforced. That’s how fucked the system is when it comes to these clauses.
Disney hoped the clause would be enforceable. At least part of the reason Disney settled out of court was because they didn’t want to challenge that assumption.
You can put whatever clauses you want in a contract. The law still trumps those contracts if it ever comes to enforceability.
I know that story. It’s a lot more nuanced than that.
Thing is, Disney barely had anything to do with the restaurant itself (they’re basically the restaurant’s landowner). And the only thing on which they could attack Disney was to point that the restaurant had a description on Disney’s website… which is part of Disney online services, and subject to their terms of services.
So yeah, grasping at a clause from an old Disney+ subscription is bullshit, but the claim honestly did not make a lot of sense to begin with. The restaurant itself should have been sued to hell, even more so because apparently they reinstated they were allergy compliant several times when asked.
You aren’t wrong, but the usage of the clause the way it was being used was definitely beyond the pale. I don’t think Disney was liable for the restaurants malfeasance, but that lack of responsibility should have rested on the facts of the association or lack thereof, not on some bullshit eula clause for an unrelated product.
It wasn’t as unrelated as it might appear. Firstly, they used their D+ account to make their Disney account. Secondly, the whole point of that argument was that in the Disney account EULA, the relevant one, there is an arbitration clause. They only brought up the D+ account in passing because it has the same clause, emphasizing that they had to read and agree to the clause twice, and if they didn’t catch it it’s not Disney’s fault they lied about reading it. They basically said “look, this is an issue regarding the Disney account, and they said right here they read and understood the terms that include arbitration. And here, they read and agreed to the exact same terms a few months earlier on D+. This shouldn’t be any surprise if they were truthful when they claimed to have read it.”
Disclaimer, arbitration clauses are bullshit and need to be reworked/eliminated as they are generally very anticonsumer and I don’t think it’s good that they have that clause. But accepting that this exists, Disney didn’t really do anything particularly scummy.
Yeah, I can agree with that.
Disney backed off because they feared it wouldn’t be ruled applicable and didn’t want to create that precedent.
That’s the thing PayPal Honey is saying they are respecting the “last click” rule and in their eyes there is nothing illegal in that.
Even if the creator as nothing to do with honey they are saying the last click is in honey just before checkout so they get the money. I understand this is a terrible excuse but it seems that’s the defense they will follow. Basically they are hiding behind that stupid last click rule and using it to justify it’s perfectly legal.
Basically Honey says “we just strictly comply to a standard practice in affiliate links”.
So their excuse would be everyone else is doing it? Good luck with that.
Something I wonder is how would it even be possible for vendors to ignore PayPal is doing something fishy.
You got a guy who’s job is to monitor who is getting their affiliate money. He sees PayPal collecting millions of affiliate money.
The other players in this game (of affiliate link) knew very well that honey was doing something fishy. Why didn’t they contest it?
Because they were doing the same kind of “last click” bullshit. If that was so unfair there would be a trial already. They all followed this stupid rule and the megalag video talks about it.
The fact that Linus Tech Tips knew and we are supposed to believe the rest of the affiliate links mafia didn’t see a thing?
A lot of companies were working with honey to have them make sure people didn’t get the best offer. So they knew exactly what was going on.
The class is people that use referral codes as an income source, so not the users that would have been subject to the terms of service.
MegaLag has other videos coming. I would assume Honey is also selling a shit ton of purchasing behavior data
I always assumed that was their business model. Can imagine that car content and shopping habits are valuable af.
About that is it normal that the other videos are not released?
I feel like he is losing the momentum he had with that video series and the more time he waits the more likely the gag orders or retaliation from PayPal.
What if Megalag can’t release the next videos because a horde of lawyers is already on his back?
Surprisingly I think Honey decided not to be able to sell user data (Ludwig sponsorship’s with honey was pushing this).
Basically they were making so much money on affiliate links they probably thought it wasn’t worth risking to be caught for some privacy reason.
I could see the strategy making sense to release something as the current cycle dies down. His previous expose of the color blind glasses happened over several months
Youtubers who had their affiliate links hijacked aren’t subject to the EULA.
Exactly. The forced arbitration is for Honey users. These random people with affiliate links are not Honey users.
Unless they themselves were also Honey users, perhaps.
A couple things, some of the plaintiffs listed appear to be business, and not users anyway. Regardless, I cannot imagine it would be difficult to find someone who made money via affiliate links and also never used honey
In this case the class action would be youtubers and other content creators not users of Honey.
Then it remains to be proven that it is illegal to poach affiliate links like that. Because Honey says they just follow strictly the “last click” rule that is common practice in the field.
It’s bullshit but if that bullshit rule is indeed the standard practice then it will be hard to fight.
That’s kind of like a looter invoking the ‘finders keepers’ defense. Last click isn’t a law.
What if there is no law about who gets affiliate money?
That’s okay, because there is a law about interfering with someone else’s contacted agreement.
Could it not be seen as a deliberate deceit to avoid adequate compensation as per any sponsorship agreement though? Such practice can’t be legal surely?
Even if they tried to weasel it into the terms of a sponsorship agreement one would assume it would be considered null as it goes against the very purpose of the contract?
Feel like Legal Eagle wouldn’t waste their time and resources on a class action if they didn’t have strong enough grounds for a fight? (And would instead make a video explaining why it would be pointless to do so)
Technically, there is not necessarily a partnership in a situation where an affiliate link was stolen. Any user with the extension would see his affiliation given to PayPal.
Also, I can’t help but think it will be very difficult to account for how much money was “redirected” by Honey. The creator would need data from YouTube that I don’t think is logged for much time. So you wouldn’t know who clicked and when and even after that I thing the vendor of the product would need to be involved also.
Who knows what LegalEagle intends to do, they shouldn’t be too clear on their intent and keep their strategy secret. Maybe they hope for some kind of settlement because I think this is more damaging in term of PR than it will ever be in terms of fines. It’s like the recent case of Apple, they choosed to pay to expedite the process but never admitted guilt?
Again I’m no lawyer let’s trust Legal Eagle and see where it goes. But PayPal will be a strong case for sure.
Yeah exactly. You can’t force arbitration on a YouTuber or other affiliate because a user agreed to your Terms of Service. I know our legal system is fucked, but it’s not that fucked.
Saved you a click
Among other accusations, MegaLag said that if a YouTuber or other creator promotes a product through an affiliate link, if the viewer has installed Honey, the extension will surreptitiously substitute its own link when the viewer makes a purchase — even if Honey didn’t provide any discounts. That means Honey, not the creator, receives the affiliate revenue for the transaction.
If they’d just been a little less greedy, and only inserted their affiliate link for purchases where none was originally present, and actually provided the service they advertised rather than ‘partnering’ with merchants to provide worse coupons, they’d probably never have gotten caught and if they had, nobody would have cared. Could have skimmed a significant but lesser amount forever. But no, they had to go full on villain, and here we are.
Having a pressure point against the shops by letting them control what kind of coupons would be shown was probably a big reason they weren’t just kicked out of at least some of those affiliate programmes.
That’s a fair point, but they could have been up front about it, or at least adjusted their advertising some. They basically told consumers “We’ll get you the best deal, and if we don’t find one, it doesn’t exist”, which is a spurious claim anyway, but it surely misled people. They could have just said “We’ll see if we have any coupon codes available” or something less committal. There still would have been a lot of value for regular consumers… if you weren’t using a coupon code, 5% off is better than nothing and if they weren’t being dicks about the referral links, nobody likely would have cared in the slightest.
I mean, yeah, they suck. But honestly, a crowdsourced database of coupons feels like it isn’t a good fit for a for-profit company anyway.
Also worth noting that they don’t actually find you the best coupons available. They partner with retailers to get an approved list of coupon codes that they will allow. So claims of always finding you the best price are just false.
You left out the part about Honey charging sellers to hide coupons.
Saved me a watch too, thanks!
I am up to speed on this little drama, but it’s still unclear to me what they’re suing over.
Yea, Honey effectively took over affiliate links. And yes, they were obviously shady (I never used it, because I did not know how they made money). But I don’t quite understand how other people trying to make money from affiliate links have a real claim against them.
Or is this just a case of the influencers realizing they have the moral high ground and the public’s ear, and wanting a pay out?
It’s fraud. They publicly claimed, point-blank, to do a certain thing for years, and were instead doing the opposite, in the interest of making more money. The affiliate link thing is only one of several points that they’re suing over. The far more egregious one is that they don’t actually “scour the internet to find you the best coupons” They will actively hide better coupons that they know about, if marketplaces pay them to, and still tell you in the browser “this is the best coupon.”
It’s more than that, at least from a EU perspective. Don’t know what is legal in the US, but manipulating URLs in an obviously malicious way and without the user’s explicit knowledge and consent would be highly illegal here.
Are they modifying URLs?
As far as I know they steal cookies but don’t change the URL.
Also, I think the bizarre market practice of “last click takes attribution” seems to be also common in EU.
Unfortunately just because it’s shady doesn’t make it immediately illegal even here in EU.
And the response from PayPal Honey shows they want to fight it in court. Which don’t think they would do if they thought it would have been considered highly illegal.
They found a loophole and abused it to steal creators (and users).
I just checked the original video. It works a little bit differently than plain URL replacement. They open another tab in the background and then send a manipulated URL to get the affiliate cookie set to their own. Guess it’s for the courts to decide if that is a legal practice or not. But to me it seems that the malicious extension sends a manipulated URL to the server pretending to do that on user’s behalf, without his knowledge. That is classic malware behavior.
Realistically most extensions open many links in the background. Even a simple adblocker will “open links” or URLs in the background to perform updates of lists etc.
The difference here is the malware was installed by the user after accepting a user agreement that probably covers network use…
Also they hijack the affiliation when the users interact with the extension and not with the website where the link for the product is.
I doubt honestly this will be a good angle to attack Honey.
IMO the fact that users are told that the best coupon will be used even though it’s demonstrably not true is a much more provable issue.
Especially since the extension opens a tab for an instant makes me think they didn’t really try to be super super sneaky.
Are they modifying URLs?
Based on the MegaLag video, it looked like they’re opening a new tab with their own affiliate link, preserving cookies to ensure checkout can complete, then closing the original affiliate link tab.
Among other accusations, MegaLag said that if a YouTuber or other creator promotes a product through an affiliate link, if the viewer has installed Honey, the extension will surreptitiously substitute its own link when the viewer makes a purchase — even if Honey didn’t provide any discounts. That means Honey, not the creator, receives the affiliate revenue for the transaction.<<
That’s not what his video showed though. They don’t change the URL, they open another tab, which then overrides the cookie/session variable that is used to determine who the referrer is. It’s still scummy, but it doesn’t seem to be swapping links outright.
The YouTubers can only sue for actual damages THEY realized.
As the class is for content creators that partnered with Honey, it can only be for the affiliate links.
Users will need to sue separately, either individually or as a different class. My money is on them having a forced arbitration clause, so direct lawsuit will most likely be out of the question.
It’s not just youtubers. It’s anyone who uses affiliate links. Online ads use affiliate links.Things like Amazon Smile used affiliate linking for charity fundraising.
And since Honey was jacking links class action is the only way for them to really do it. No individual affiliate can point out their individual loss through Honey because Honey erased their links.
That means the class action needs to go after all affiliate revenue Honey has ever made.
After reviewing the actual legal filing, you’re correct. I somehow missed that.
All persons (corporate or individual) in the United States who participated in an Affiliate Program with a United States online merchant and had affiliate attribution redirected to Paypal as a result of the Honey browser extension.
Thanks for the clarification.
The other lawyer in the case, Attorney Tom made a video going over what they are sueing for and some of the misconceptions.
https://youtu.be/ItiXffyTgQg?feature=shared
People have a claim due to lost profits and potentially missed business opportunities.
Let’s Youtuber A had a sponsor affiliate and a spoken ad spot. Creator makes 2k for the sponsor read and 2% every time someone buys something via link. Honey swoops in and steals the affiliate link (regardless if the user got a coupon or not). The creator no longer getting the 2% and skews the success of the ad.
The creator’s ad performance (ad to finished transaction) is down, so sponsor lowers the commission to 1% and 1.5k for the next video. Enough people use honey and the metrics are bad enough the sponsor doesn’t renew contract with the creator.
On the consumer end, which due to arbitration clauses the lawyers aren’t actively pursuing (at this time) (see linked video).
deleted by creator
Sorry, posted that on mobile without checking that it’s not the mobile link.
I don’t think the case you consider as “legal precedent” is as relevant as you think.
But I guess we will see.
“I would have made this amount of money if you hadn’t interfered, maliciously. I lost profit because of you.” Nothing to do with morals.
The video has links in the description to the complaint.
[Here it is on Court Listener](https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69503243/9/wendover-productions-llc-v-paypal-inc/
Edit: To your other point. Why should Honey take money away from actual referrers when they didn’t even provide a discount code?
