Honey browser plugin scam

Looks like the Honey browser plugin is tweaking affiliate links, attribution and robbing content creators of their commissions on sales. This is an interesting situation because lots of these creators even ran ads for this browser extension. Ballsy move.

In my completely unprofessional opinion, I think this might open PayPal (parent company) up to liability over earnings losses. I would not be surprised if we see a lawsuit over this.

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Yeah, most YouTubers are shit bags willing to sell themselves out for a penny.

L1T and STH are rare exceptions that take ad sponsorships from vendors they have been using for years.

As an aside, I am convinced Mr. Beast will have a mega scandal as that dude has always been off and his 2nd in command is a pedophile.

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This was kinda sad to read. If this whole thing wakes up content creators and gets them to dig into who they are selling their audiences to, that would be great. Just as consumer are responsible for informing themselves, that should go double for people we put some degree of trust into.

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It is my opinion that 99% of youtube is complete garbage and not worth watching. This is becoming true of many things these days, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, even our news. This is the result of two things. First, the fact that anyone can upload “content” to the platform. Second, the algorithm coupled with what I bet is AI deciding what to show me instead of what I want to see. I see the exact same videos on my youtube feed that I always see. If I want to know that a creator, Level1Techs for example, has uploaded a new video I have to “click the bell icon” so I will be alerted or I would, quite literallty, never know until I navigate to their youtube homepage. Facebook has become so bad, I saved a direct link to my “friends only” feed and only look at that. Facebook has fought back by putting sponsored content in there now too. I do pretty good at blocking ads, even youtube ads unless the creator has made it a part of the video.

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If people didn’t see shady shit coming from Honey IDK what to tell them really.

Money doesn’t grow on trees (someone should get on that), and neither do coupon codes. How did anyone think this would work?

I feel sorry for creators that got caught in this and didn’t run ads for them, but plenty did and they had it coming.
Just my 2c :person_shrugging:

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Something something about vetting your “partners”. AFAIK there is some due-diligence to be done, which obviously is rarely done.

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this is the case for most industries sadly…

I would like to do like L1T does:
go to place large order
'>lightbulb.gif
'>contact sales for possible teamup / sponsorship

free hardware now, shout out later

If I’m already buyin your shit, it makes sense for a team up

Most YouTubers are pushing shit they never bought before, because they were not in this space before going pro.
Most YouTubers are ad men at best.

Don’t give a shit about the product or consumer, just sell, sell, sell

Wendell at L1T is a giga nerd at heart, same with STH.

So we use Linode, MikroTik, SuperMicro, Gigabyte, etc…

"The average annual income in Latvia is $22,630. "
I’ve spent more than that with MikroTik professionally in 2024.

I believe in MikroTik as a company, so I would accept partnership on the devices I have experience with.

That’s what ServeTheHome does because they are on the up-and-up.

LinusTechTips takes the highest bidder per spot,

Meanwhile: GamersNexus Steve is such an autist that the products he denounces; I ban from prod.

Steve has righteousness and an infoulable morale compass.

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Yeah, I tried out Honey during its first wave and it…did nothing for me and it seemed to be way too pushy which set me off. I’m hyper vigilant about allowed extensions to begin with.

With the number of ads they were putting out, it had to be something. I feel bad for the smaller guys trying to just do their thing, but the big guys absolutely not.

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Yeah, I’m kinda in that boat. It didn’t pass the smell test at all when everyone was advertising it a couple years back, but now that I’ve seen the evidence, I’m sharing it since I’m sure there are some people (not many here, probably) who are using it.

I really feel bad for the people who got caught up in people using honey and getting their commissions rekt.

At the end of the day, I’m mostly astonished that PayPal is the parent company of such a shady org, but I guess that’s just paypal for ya.

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good lord this is brutal. Makes you wonder how many stories like this are going to come out of this…

Yeah. It wouldn’t surprise me. The level of trust people have in big brands on the OTHER side of the table is pretty crazy. (I am talking about small fish here). Especially when you’re an up and coming channel. You get approached by a brand manager who assures you everything is solid and you look at all the other channels doing it. I’m sure there is a tight timeline to agree so you don’t have a ton of time to do due diligence, and brand managers are VERY gaslighty.

It’s pretty easy to sit here and say they should have seen in coming, and I agree with that. There probably isn’t a ton of education for being a content creator when you make that video that goes viral and now subs are flooding in.

I for one am glad I don’t have to be the one to come up with a solution here.

But the voices of skepticism have been here for years.

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The free money app was a scam? Well imagine my shock. Next you’ll be telling me I’m not a real Scottish lord.

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The “Oh I made it”-moment will surely push a lot of skepticism aside.

Nobody is ready for fame. I for sure am not. If there suddenly was hundreds of interview-ish requests and thousands of euros flooding in, I would surely go easy on the ethics for a while.

GN is such a refreshing no-BS channel to counteract all the tech-hypists.

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I’m surprised it took this long to be exposed.

I always thought Honey was just an info scrapper to sell your purchasing habits to advertisers, but had no idea they were scamming their own sponsors too.

Golden rule: if it’s “free”, you are the product.

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Just watched this video before getting on the forums. It’s interesting how so many people got duped for so long. I even have it installed on one of my laptops, but stopped using it a few years ago because it seemed too good to be true, and turns out it was.

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We live in a world ran by and for greedy, stupid, unethical people who’s sole interest is themselves. The world is chock full of complete dumbasses. That alone should give you a moment to pause and proceed with caution before accepting anything, listening to anyone, much less someone trying to sell you something, or accepting anything as true and valid.

It’s sad but true. Caveat Emptor, buyer beware, is as true now as it ever was, it’s just been expanded to always be wary, no matter what.

edit: Also, the youtube guy is wrong, I don’t have any favorite influencers.

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I use the Firefox extension Feedbro that solves that problem. It enables a RSS like targeted Youtube experience.
Additionally, I recommend the uBlock Origin extension to avoid these pesky advertising interruptions…

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Yeah. I wish more people were taking that away from the video and not “nothing is free so of course it was a scam.” That was not really the main point. I guess it is hard to feel much of anything for content creators. Ah well. All we can hope is that awareness spreads, even a little.

Though the CSGO gambling epidemic concurrently being dragged out of the (admittedly not very deep) shadows gives little hope.

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I use as few extensions as possible and it works for me. Additionally, I use AdGuard Home, running on a Raspberry Pi4 that does the adblocking for me and it does a great job unless, as I said, the ad is part of the video and not an interruption to play something entirely different.

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