Always wondered why YTers were complaining about lack of commissions and this explains most of it
this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2024
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If you're wondering how a browser extension got so much money to pay all these YouTubers for sponsorship, well, they're not. They are literally stealing the money they paid the YouTubers right back from them by replacing their affiliate code with their own.
For people looking for replacements, Edge's integratedauto coupon code works well enough. RetailMeNot does the same job and has also been around for a long time.
as a consumer why should I care if I still get a discount ?
isn't this influencer back office bullshit and not my problem ?
I used honey for a few years. in that time i think it found me a working code like twice.
The coupons honey applies may not always be the best deal around. Honey works with online shops to only serve you the coupons that specific online shop wants you to see, causing you to be ripped off on occasion.
Simply put, there might be a 20% off coupon that can be applied to your cart, but because Honey is getting paid by the online shop, they are only going to show you at best the 5% off coupon. This makes Honey redundant, because neither Honey nor the online shop tell you when they are working together, which is why you can never trust honey to actually give you the best deal.
it is your problem because they're stealing your money too.
famous person code gives you 30% off a product. honey tells you it's 10% and keeps your 20% for its pockets.
at least that's how I understood it.
Yep and a great question that allows more people to learn. Please stop downvoting real questions
People are downvoting the tone, not the question. Calling it bullshit when it is seriously stealing money from other human beings and calling it “not my problem” under the assumption that it doesn't matter if it affects others, displays absolute lack of empathy. Devaluing the question and making it a bad faith comment.
It's not just Honey swapping the affiliate codes. Practically all the major coupon sites do it too. That's why they require you to click on a coupon code to reveal it. When you click, they usually reveal the coupon code in a new tab, and helpfully redirect the current tab to the store, using their affiliate link.
It's more obvious when websites do it though, since they can't auto-close the tab like Honey does. They also don't automatically pop up at checkout like Honey does.
I imagine some of the other coupon extensions do the exact same thing as Honey though.
Why am I entirely not surprised that LMG knew what the fuck was going on, and didnt say a fuckin thing about it.
Made more public comments over legitimate criticism about his "just trust me, bro" warranty, than about honey being a out and out scam.
They might not be able to say anything. Advertising contract might have a clause saying they can't speak of the details of their deal, or speak negatively about the sponsor.
Never watched the channel, but I would guess that being tech-themed makes it a worse look that they promoted it for so long before catching the issue, so they were worried it would cast doubt on all other endorsements and tank the value of advertising with them.
I think coming out and pointing out what honey did would probably be the least damaging thing they've done in the past few years.
because holy fuck have they had some whoppers.
The "hard R" thing still permanently etched into my brain lol.
Context
Linus misunderstood that the phrase "hard R" referred to the N-word. He thought it was the R-word. He was saying "people used to use hard R all the time, like on Family Guy and stuff. I used to use it too!" His co-host caught the misunderstanding and it was sorted out quickly before he said anything else embarrassing lol.
If you dont know how a business makes money, chances are its some shady stuff
Providing coupons on stuff for free, with zero ads? Thats pretty weird. Being Bought by PayPal for 4 BILLION dollars?!?!? There has to be some real sketchy shit.
While I agree with you, I think we should be careful about allowing the ignorant to be punished. It's unreasonable for a non-tech-savvy person to be aware of all the ways a company can screw you. If they're skeptical of everything, they can't use anything
I wonder what websites think of this toolbar stealing affiliate links from people doing all the work of promoting their prices. I wonder if Honey goes even further and turns vanilla purchases into affiliate purchases, actively stealing actual money from the site. If I were NewEgg or whoever else Honey has created affiliate links with, I think I'd be banning their affiliate account right now, or throwing in some captchas so their link theft doesn't work any more.
If Honey finds a 30% code, supplants its own 20% code and tells you it's a 10% code, both Honey and the store save money.
I'm glad this information is coming to light because I think that it should be fixed, at least as far as the affiliate link piece goes, but I find myself irritated by the sensationalism of the poster.
They're really pushing to make this seem as evil as possible, and milking it for every drop it's worth. Making this a two-part series and not exposing it immediately feels super shitty to me.
Just post the full information you have, if this is really so bad, stop trying to farm clips.
Also, not enough focus on the timeline. Honey's business model has changed dramatically since it was released long ago, and I feel like the part two video is going to complain about the original Honey business model, which was literally just a coupon code aggregator, just based on the "cliffhanger" at the end
it should be fixed
It's not a mistake, but an incredibly unethical business model. Why minimize the issue?
not exposing it immediately feels super shitty to me
it doesn't change anything to the facts though
It's serialization, as old as printed news. You can dislike that but it's not like he's the only one doing it
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I just bought some local honey. Don't know what this shit is, hopefully I never will.
bee puke
of this I am certain
It's kind of ridiculous how long it has taken for people to realise that this is happening... where did people think that their referrals had gone after they cratered?
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Was it not obvious that the extension was doing that and scraping your browser data?
Scraping data yes Scraping affiliate links? No
I knew Honey was sketchy, but I just assumed it made it's money from just data harvesting everything
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In the entire time I used Honey, I never once got a valid coupon code for literally anything. Pretty sure they scraped a ton of my browsing data though.
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