@@RobinCapper if Bee Movie taught me anything, we're the ones trying to convince ourselves 😂 soon we'll think they can't speak human language or form strange romantic relationships with definitely-normal florists either.
I was skeptical of honey because I figured it was a data mining operation and I wasn't into it, but this took a turn I didn't expect. Thanks for the insights.
That's what I figured, and really they probably do that in addition to injecting their referral codes. Shopping habits are an incredibly valuable thing to track, and Honey has incredible access to that info per-item and across stores.
Whenever there’s something free and shady (as in, I can’t tell where the money is coming from) I assume it’s data mining. Nice of Honey to come up with something new, along with what I assume is also data mining
The biggest issue I see with Honey is that it's even stealing affiliate commissions from people they aren't sponsoring. They get one UA-camr to do the ad, and then pretty much everyone that took that UA-camr's advice to use Honey that then clicks on a different affiliate's link is going to end up giving the commission that affiliate earned to Honey. People who took the sponsorship at least got ad money, and they should have considered who they partner with, but other creators are also paying that price.
Also, think about company employee, healthcare workers, and a specific hidden discount code that should not be available to customers, but honey searches the code and the code history, and applies old but available codes, or apply unavailable codes from the people who are deserved that code , even veteran discounts, or disabled people discount, or cancer patient discount codes, that you get in store with proof, but online, because not all systems have fail safes and have the 2 systems linked... and if the company does not pay honey to show the lower 5%-15% discounts instead of 20%-80% discounts that are not available, and the company loses money, and needs to inflate the prices to meet the loss from honey, and then we drive the sales down because of the inflated price, and make that company bankrupt and lose local businesses... we have such a hekapoo concoction that deserves their own place down there.
For some reason this isn't emphasized enough in most of the discussions (videos/articles) I've seen about it. Lot's of people end up commenting about whether something is buried in the TOS or in the sponsorship agreement. But people are getting ripped off who have absolutely no affiliation with Honey. It seems this makes the scam (and potential lawsuit), much, much bigger.
Yeah. It's like (to use the metaphor in that video) the UA-camr suggested that you, the viewer, sign up to have some commissioned sales guy to follow you around and interject on _all_ of your shopping expeditions.
Coupons always did this though. If you have a coupon, it tells the system at checkout that you were brought here by an ad. Coupons aren’t stealing affiliate money. They inform the company what marketing you came from. When you use a coupon, you tell the company that promotion that got the valid coupon sent you. Honey is “stealing” as much as going to a store to ask questions and then going to a store with better prices is “stealing” that sale.
Markiplier's thoughts on not knowing where Honey was making their money instantly turned me off from them years ago. The whole thing just felt incredibly shady when I though about those concerns in the context of, "If you're not paying for the product, you're probably the product."
Yeah I was always skeptical of Honey bc I wasn’t sure how they were generating revenue. But I think they claimed they were getting money from the businesses, which ig is similar to credit cards. Though credit cards also get a lot of revenue from APR when ppl don’t pay their statement in full. And still sketchy bc they didn’t really explain how they were getting money from businesses
@@Veronicz I believe they said business would pay to be part of the group they worked with because working with Honey increased the likelihood of some people shopping with the business. Because Honey increased business the companies signed up with them, so that’s supposedly where the profits came from
Side not: i cant wait for the ten second markiplier video with a non-referential title or description in which he makes direct eye contact with the camera and just says "i was right. I was right." And nothing else.
he's very biased sometimes so idk, his mrbeast video was atrocious and i lost all faith in him after that (which had already crumbled at some points before that). though that was clearly because he was friends with him and i dont know if he has any connection to honey, if he does it probably wont be a good one lol
I am curious if this is even illegal. It might not legally be considered a scam. But ethically and morally it feels like one, literally pouching other's people's commissions and lying about how big of a discount you can get.
@leaf111 Legal Eagle has no personal affiliation with Mr. Beast. He only covered what Mr. Beast could be liable for legally, which is a possible violation of Gerogia's sweepstakes laws. As for the allegations from that one disgruntled employee and his questionable associations there isn't really anything to talk about legally speaking. That is just drama and up to individuals to believe whether or not their claims hold water in the sphere of public opinion.
I'm not sure any law is being broken unless Honey's claims about finding the best deal, while objectively not giving the best deal through backchannel deal with the storefront, constitutes a false advertising or fraud claim. That being said those taglines often always have some clause in the terms of service that free them of responsibility if they do not find the best deal.
...if it's a for profit cooperation. I don't think you should assume everything is capitalistic by default. People *choose* to be capitalistic and prioritize money over people. It's not normal.
@@jjuniper479 All companies must make money in some way in order to keep existing. Doesn't matter if it's for-profit or not, there are employees, those employees to be paid for their time, and business expenses must be paid. If you don't know where the money to maintain its existence is coming from, you have to be cautious about it.
@jjuniper479 I'd argue that it applies to non-profits, too. Sure, not everything is a capitalist venture, but the culture is still there, and a buck is a buck. Nonprofits are regularly outed for dishonest handling of finances, services, people, or other resources, only to remain functional because they have the public opinion that they're doing more good than bad. Honey poured into looking like a nonprofit business model. Thats why they got away with it for so long.
Even for plenty where you can see, you shouldn't trust that they're not doing anything else too (like Microsoft charging you for the operating system but still selling your data)
A good rule of thumb is that if you see a product being shilled by many influencers, there's a very high chance it's either a scam, or just not very good value.
There are a few exceptions: Kiwi Crates were legit awesome for my kid; I don't use it, but people I know in the flesh say Ground News is worth it. But I really do wonder about Brilliant...
@@CarlosMagikarpianoThe edutainment sphere of things like masterclass and brilliant are there own can of worms when they make claims about increasing your job prospects and skillets when 90% of their coursework is introductory level knowledge that is often freely avaliable elsewhere. It is basically a less egregious version of the non accredited college scams that don't provide a quality education or viable trade skillset.
The only thing I'd consider is nebula since it seems to be more of just a different platform like Patreon but you get access to multiple creators with one fee
Honestly I would have appreciated if Honey was just an honest "you let us record your shopping habits across different stores on the internet and we give you coupons so you consent to the spyware"
Definitely also what I originally thought they were doing - but now I wonder - where exactly is the money in that? Paypal's not even owned by ebay anymore so what's the point of collecting that data? They don't control a platform where they can show you ads. The folks who own the platforms that show you ads have much better data on you. If you sell the data you're in a low margin business (why would you pay top dollar for data anyone else can pay for? No competitive advantage). Compared to that, taking the affiliate money is a few *percent* on the dollar value of the transaction rivaling or dramatically exceeding the transaction fees you collect with e.g. pay with paypal. Not even close.
@@vikramkr382 PIE. The people who made honey are making a new platform that is supposed to do the same thing except with ads. Block ads, show you ads, make money off of you, pay you a tiny tiny percentage of that money.
Except that's not what was making Honey it's money. It was stealing commissions (even when no discount was 'found') and making deals with stores to hide the best coupons and taking a cut for themselves.
>Mentions brand deal and encourages viewing the link >Doesn't actually include link That is so Hank-coded Quick edit: turn off adblock and expand the description, sponsor link will show up
I see it on the top of the description now. Either he saw the comments and fixed it, or its not available in your area if you don't see it now. Just expand the description once to see it.
Ah! It's in the UA-cam product commission section but not in the description. I think I have an extension blocking that function on my desktop, but it shows right up on mobile!
I forgot about those sponsorships until I read this comment 😅 the fact that youtube ads and sponsorships go through cycles is something I just dont ever think about. E.g. raidshadow legends, Lootcrates, etc
I always assumed it was just data gathering. Which made me suspicious, because there has to be some crazy sh*t they're doing with the data if they can have the level of sponsorships that they do.
Never downloaded it because I also thought they had to be doing something crazy with data harvesting to generate enough money for their marketing. I didn’t see the stealing of affiliate commissions though.
The fact that it was *undisclosed* data gathering told me everything I needed to know about the ethics of the company and whether it was safe to install.
@@BlackCanary87Speaking of which, he got Trump into the White House again, no way is Trump going to actually nationalise PayPal, unless it means Trump and his cronies control all of the USA.
Doubly ironic because Hexclad is kind of a scam - they claim to be more durable while also being non stick, a claim that doesn't hold up in testing. You're better off getting a cheap non-stick and replace it regularly.
And go figure, it's for an overpriced marketing-forward product like Hexclad. Honestly it's extremely disappointing that Hank basically clickbaited off of a viral video and decided to use the opportunity to shill. I get that creators gotta eat, but between this and the bad "but it's just hustle culture" takes throughout this video I'm unsubscribing.
@@bryanlewis5233it was to illustrate his point it wasn’t a legitimate sponsor slot, he was just showing how creator commission links work so he could talk about them more thoroughly
I wonder if honey is now liable for false advertising because it’s found that it actually wasn’t always applying the best deal either… the set up where companies pairing with honey to limit coupons that honey applied.
It’s so dumb because it would’ve been so easy to say “Honey gives you good deals” instead of “Honey gives you the BEST deal”. They decided blatant lying was better than being slightly misleading, and now they’ll (hopefully) pay the price for it.
Not just false advertising. Massive, blatant theft. If the execs (and probably more) aren't arrested, well I won't be surprised because we're in the timeline we're in, but Jesus H Christ...
Sure, but get in line. At one point more than 50% of honey (like, the actual stuff made by bees) sold in the US contained... no honey. The US Government won't sue a large wealthy company or charge a rich person with a crime. False advertising is very hard for an ordinary person to get to court and win, the main way it was enforced in the past was the FTC taking direct action.
The funny thing is, UA-camrs had no problem taking the sponsorship money when everyone just thought that honey was stealing your data / selling marketing information or whatever, it only suddenly became this horrible thing when they found out that it did that, AND took their money
Because every single app/site/company already does that, so nobody cares anymore. Can't be mad about getting a bucket of water in your head if you're already in a pool
^ exactly, I don't think people in general really care about data being sold as much anymore, and while it most certainly affects people who use affiliate marketing more than anyone, it actually mostly damages smaller creators trying to make a living. on top of this, it also just doesn't get you deals you want, not even close and can even be intentionally obfuscated by certain sellers, literally only and solely creates a worse experience for everyone including the customers
People just aren't ready to accept that essentially every ad on youtube, even moreso than regular ads, are predatory. Why do you think there's so many "1 month free trials"? They all require you to enter your credit card information in the hopes you forget about it and start having another subscription drain you for a service you either don't use (audible) or don't need (vpns).
You are not understanding the situation. The data mining was expected and agreed to by anyone that has been online for more than a minute. The affiliate stealing is annoying for creators but can make sense and doesn't impact the consumer. The issue is honey partnering with stores to give fake coupon codes that are worse than what is available elsewhere and then lying about that in their paid promotions. It is that last part that is illegal and unethical.
I came to the same conclusion markiplier did when honey first started advertising. Coupon codes on the internet have always felt like a weird hold over from radio/tv anyway.
Coupon codes are a pretty integral part of our economy, so I don't fault them for still existing. A crux of capitalism is finding a way to charge people the most you can get away with charging, and coupons play into that by allowing people to still afford certain things for a lower price ONLY if they are under enough pressure to do so. Someone with $500 to throw away on a paycheck wont blink twice at their $20 fast food meal. Someone who has to feed two kids on their single parent income will only take that time and effort because it benefits them to do so. That means the provider still gets to make that sale with minimal effort, as the bartering is done automatically by the consumer.
Ding ding ding. Discounts are a tried and true marketing tactic that has only become more optimized as we've moved from commerce to e-commerce. Clearance sales used to be a legitimate win-win discount for sellers and consumers. Now logistics has been abstracted away to contractors, brick and mortar is left to the big companies that can afford to snuff out their competition, and on-demand production proliferates. So the need to clear inventory has essentially become a thing of the past and the only discounts we're left with are just priced-in marketing for consumers that like to feel "savvy". It's basically a law of physics: the parasitic marketing industry will always find a way to make individualistic rubes of all consumers.
@@beakling1this used to be the entire business model for Domino’s Australia. A delivery could be more than double the price of a pick up order and they had perpetual 40% off coupons and a range of basic pizzas with a fixed, low price. One person could spend $7, one could spend $12 and another could spend $30 for the same pizza.
@@LaPoubelle42this! I have a feeling many of the creators that smelled something off were too late in the process to be able to say something free of retaliation. The ones that have turned around publicly are either long past their contractual speech agreements or don't know theyre still under contract. Hopefully, it's the prior.
@@LaPoubelle42except LinusTechTips, who knew and did not tell others. thats pretty messed up, especially for a tech-based channel. they had a responsibility to take accountability since they were the 3rd most sponsored by Honey.
In the past when bombshell reports like this have come up (see that one irish title scam) incomplete deals were canceled. I'm not even sure Honey could penalize creators who pull out because they could argue that they were mislead about what the product is and does.
I admit I didn't understand the particular nature of the particular scam, but no matter how many times people told me about Honey, I wasn't gonna touch it. Free money? Might as well be a neon sign with the word "scam".
The more people that advertise a product like Honey, the more suspicious I am. Ad money comes from somewhere and even if it's not an outright scam, you're paying for the advertisements in a higher price or worse product. There are no free lunches.
If it had operated the way they sold it it’d still save all consumers money. They probably saw an opportunity to steal affiliate commissions and turn it into a totally different kind of enterprise. I bet they couldn’t believe their luck when no one added up what was going on for so long.
'Disruptor': another way to concentrate all the worlds wealth into the fewest possible hands, but make it seem iconoclastically cool, and just an exercise in 'freedom'.
A lot of technological innovation is elegant theft of your time, money, and resources. Most tech businesses are only concerned with extracting as much money from you as possible with no regard for the quality of the product or ethics. They create the shittiest thing they think they can get away with and hope you don’t notice or complain.
No lie. My first exposure to Mr Beast was a Honey Ad that was a pre roll on a video i wanted to watch, and I thought and thought 'this sounds like a scam'. And that coloured my view of Mr Beast for all these years.
One of the things about this that ticked me off is that the Linus Tech Tips team (LTT) knew about what honey was doing. And said nothing openly. They ought to of made videos or other notices of what was going on. They let it happen for years to MANY creators. They had a channel where they could of made a noticable video commentary. It would of spread enough to keep more damage from happening
Yeah the whole LTT situation is weird. I know they have no issue badmouthing/criticizing companies they've associated with before because I have literally seen them do it, so quietly detaching from Honey but not saying anything about it was sketchy.
Maturing is realizing the brands that youtubers gett sponsored by are corrupt. First it was betterhelp, then that one that makes the water have flavor, then the one that sends you daily meals and now honey
@@thoughtfulconundrumwhich definitionaly isn't a scam. Overpriced with healthy profit margins? Yes, but you actually receive a product that you paid for at the end of the day.
leaky bottle that makes you swallow air with overpriced disgustingly artificial aromas in a pod while making the most misofphonia triggering sound possible. It's somehow even more unpleasant than those 0 nic vapes and it's a hard thing to beat
it's hankmas and today we're exploring the questionable ethics of coupon "secret deals" culture in ecommerce. thanks, as always, for helping me understand a messy internet thing, hank
Affiliate links do get abused, but they also encourage of some of the most legit "here is something you might actually find useful" sort of good marketing. For any commercial transaction, the question should always be "how is this a win-win"? Because if it isn't a win-win, someone is getting screwed
Honey themselves were also lying in the actual ads they were paying for as prerolls and midrolls on youtube. They weren't just paying creators to lie for them. They specifically said in the youtube ads that honey will search the internet for you and find the best possible coupon code. That is a lie. If they had just claimed "we will save you the effort of searching for coupon codes" then I wouldn't have minded. That is a service that would save some people time, and it's also a service to the companies making the products. Tbh I'm relieved that it's not a data harvesting/tracking scam. It still sounds like one, and I wouldn't be shocked if they were also tracking and collecting user data, but it's nice to know it's at least possible for them to make money without doing that.
"This is why it's good to play this game out loud" is rich considering you've talked about not having an internal monologue. At least some of the people quietly working out the puzzle *are* hearing the words, Hank!
You should know what the followup to that video is. Once Honey has inserted itself into the value chain, they start taking a bigger cut from the merchant. So if Honey channels a large enough part of a merchant's sales, the merchant will raise prices for everybody. It's exactly like cashback and reward cards (except payment card providers actually add something to the payment process obvs), once enough people participate in them, shops raise prices, and the only winner is the leech in the middle.
This is a big danger of for-profit middle-men. I don't think people realize how bad it is to fund all of those "we erase your online presence" companies that advertise on UA-cam, either. In the absolute best case, they do what they say they do and then go out of business. So the best case is probably not what's happening, or at the very least their partnerships will "evolve" and who gets priority will change as their success leads to a need to maintain the _need_ for their business. After all, being effective means building relationships with the data brokers, and those data brokers will *always* have more money than you do.
In addition to the predictable class action lawsuits, what action is Amazon going to take against Honey for violating article 5.1 of their affiliate program operating policies?
@@geneticjen9312 he likely didn't see it. That video was excessively good. I ignored it the first time it was recommended as I didn't know who MegaLag was, but 2nd time around it had 300K views and holy fucking tits.
1:40 TRUE if it actually was good at saving you money, the product would advertise itself with word of mouth. There is no way people wouldnt freely recommend it on their own. The fact that millions of dollars flow to advertisers to promote it is already weird!
1:14 "tell me you're a boomer without telling me ..." I rolled in here to find out what you had against bees. LOL But I'll stick around for the rest, jic.
Same here. Also as I’m sitting in my nfl jersey doing the game, I very nearly made the “bills lions tigers bears” mistake without thinking, because who thinks of the bengals? Nearly got the purple but I don’t know the bills bills bills song
@@AdamMarrthey all start in the exact same order for everyone, so everyone started with them lined up, so logically I also thought they wouldn’t give us the answer 🫠
@@AdamMarrI giggled at it lined up like that on mine, then proceeded to solve the others and it was my last category because there was no way they did that
In relation to your recent video about internal monologues, I picked up on "bees, jays, use" without saying them aloud, because I said them in my head as I read them!
Isn't trusting your team to have done the research into a brand the same trust people _tend_ to put in some UA-camrs? ESPECIALLY educators. That's not to say it's entirely or even mostly on content creators. It's more that this relationship is exactly what marketing is trying to exploit.
pausing the video halfway through to go play connections before Hank, then coming back and watching him struggle through the same leaps of logic I did was fun
I don't know about influencer sponsorships but in Australia, whatever the salesperson of a particular product says about that product, is legally binding. So if someone said this pan will last 100 years in Australia and it didn't then you would be entitled to a refund
At the end of the day it still achieves the users goal of saving them money, they prefer not to think about the other side of it. It happens with so much stuff in our lives, think Shein and other child labour cases, we chose to ignore it because we like the outcome. Humans are kinda shitty
@samwalker2367 the creators sure were fine selling out their fans for a quick buck too (when everyone just thought it was data collection). Didn't seem to bother them a bit
It feels like the Temu app to me, too. I don't have it but co-workers were trying to get me referred which immediately sounds like a pyramid scam. The whole thing just seems off.
But when they said it there wasn't any evidence for it, just people figuring that things can't be free and assuming there was data mining, but now there is evidence of Honey doing things that are so much worse.
UK person who likes Abba. I do know Gimme Gimme Gimme and I don't know US sports team. Got it in one. Happy Christmas to Hank & the whole Nerdfiteria crew.
Hexclad pans are awful. Not non-stick at all. And utensils get stuck on the shapes. And they've convinced all of the other companies to steal their terrible design, so it's hard to get good non-stick pans at all now.
@@sunnyeveningthere was a minutefood episode about how the science says teflon is actually low risk to humans, unless you go to very very high temperatures. Still toxic to the environment, but that is not what I think of when I label something as toxic
If creators are small businesses, and they have customers, they have to provide good products (their content) and good service (the information about their processes or the products they push to their customers through brand deals). If a creator cannot find time to vet the validity or safety of what they're pushing, they should not accept brand deals. If they can't produce content without brand deal funding, they must find a way to vet the companies they push.
i think its interesting that mostly we are discussing the affiliate poaching, which is bad, but not what hurts consumers the most. the thing they are doing that is worst for consumers is that it isnt ACTUALLY searching all the coupons on the internet! often it isnt searching the internet AT ALL. so you believe youve gotten the best deal there is when you havent.
I picked the wrong day to stop sniffing glue. It took me 3 minutes to figure out that this wasn't about counterfeit honey. You know, like what the bees make...
I assumed Honey collected and sold data about people’s shopping habits. I didn’t know they undercut existing discount code. But this method makes sense. Pretty shady if they’re not transparent about it. So if you install Honey and it finds you a 10% discount, you know that’s the minimum you could find if you looked around yourself? I guess it depends on what your time is worth to you and if you care who receives the affiliate kickback. I’m curious if Honey loses users now. Interesting explanation. Thanks, Hank!
I decided that if a creator ever promotes a product that turns out to be dishonest then I'm going to attempt to boycott any of their sponsors in the future (though I may make an exception if they apologize). This basically means that I'm boycotting most sponsors on UA-cam because most creators I have watched have promoted at least some products that ended up being sketchy. Which, on the one hand I get that they need the money, and I'm more sympathetic to small creators trying to take care of their family's but when the creators are far richer than I'll ever be, this isn't a stance I feel bad about.
I was unaware of the context leading to this video, and spent the first few worried minutes worrying that there was some conspiracy that meant I should stop buying delicious bee-created sugar. Glad it's not that 😅
I've also encountered websites that claim they have coupons, and when you try to get those coupons they typically open the site the coupon is for, but the coupons they purport to have often don't work. I wouldn't be surprised if they're using a similar business model of putting their affiliate cookie in at that point trying to be the last and claim those affiliate bucks
Yes, this is always how all of the, have worked, there’s no shocking revelation here, it takes 30 seconds to verify. People know. No one cares except creators, who couldn’t be bothered verifying.
I hate non-stick pans. Stainless steel is much easier to clean after a year or two. The fact you can use a steel pad to clean it if it gets really dirty is a hige advantage. Plus eating less random chemicals.
@@RogalDorn01 That's not really true. HexClad has PTFE which is a forever chemical, and Teflon pans today also have the same chemical. HexClad's marketing campaign says that HexClad doesn't have PFOA, but regular nonstick pans these days also don't have PFOA these days. Better to get stainless steel if one is concerned about forever chemicals, because PTFE is a forever chemical.
1. I thought Hank was going to talk about most big-store honey being not actual honey because of over-filtration. 2. I, too, saw the Connections "Lions, tigers, and bears, oh my!" right off the bat. But I kept it and eliminated the yellows and blues, too. I also found the purples by process of elimination. I just had no idea at all what those 4 songs were. (music ain't my thing)
I'm reminded of the recent drama surrounding Catly, a game that was announced at the game awards with a lot of influencer endorsements that had all the trappings of a scam. Ai art on it's website, a crypto developer who's last game was nft related, and trailers full of no concept. How does a thing have enough money for all this advertising with no product? You've got to be careful online.
The weirdest thing that's come out of the whole Honey scandal was Linus Tech Tips uncovering the scam and not really letting other content creators know about it. They just simply said that they were no longer taking Honey sponsorships. I haven't seen the original expose video, but I did see Someordinarygamers two cents on the situation.
@@cooldog1994One of their employees dissed other UA-camrs during a tour saying that their testing is better. Gamers Nexus put out a video pointing out mistakes they've made in the recent past. Also, there was some horrible communication and they auctioned off a 1 of 1 prototype which they weren't supposed to. And then they took a hiatus to solve these issues. Nearly at the same time, an ex employee put forth allegations of sexism and lack of support. And honestly, these claims have gone nowhere. Like no one corroborated the story, only confirming she was employed when she said she was. It's not nothing, but it's also not cancel worthy.
Meh, it seems to have been an open secret - 'Original MCW' made a video about the affiliate cookie thing 4 years ago (and other issues he had with honey)
How often do you get to watch/listen to the CEO of a company talk about the minutia and the ins and outs of their company and their thought processes on why they choose to do things as they do? I’d wager, nearly never. Thanks, Hank Green, for consistently being an open door and not only standing by what you say but also explaining why in a way that actually is believable and trustworthy. I get it, and I agree.
Im no hater of hank, but that affiliate bit felt super gross. Talking points that wernt supposed to look like talking points because they were part of a commentary on talking points. Very deadpool! Also a product review that totally wasnt fake at all. C- is my review of that ad spot 😅
Eh, ads are always no fun but the dude's gotta make cash somehow, and it was pretty neat to fold it into the discussion to use it for educational purposes. Did it look like he was trying to hide that it was an ad to you? It was the most blatant thing I've ever seen in my life. He literally said 'IF YOU DO THIS, I WILL MAKE MONEY OFF OF IT' like 3 times.
@@gingganggoolieit’s a 30 second investigation into your browser cookies. Or you know, the original video just sent them an email asking them and they told him how it worked. Anyone that didn’t know was just willfully ignorant. Affiliates themselves also skim commissions from unrelated products.
Hexclad pans are overpriced garbage, coated in a type of PFAS/forever chemical called PTFE. You can look up the side effects. Instead, buy a carbon steel pan that remains nonstick through bonding oil to the surface of the pan. This is what actual chefs in actual restaurants use. Come on Hank, you’re usually good at googling this stuff.
I've read several places that hexclad recently changed their nonstick to ceramic? On their website, they say their ceramic nonstick does not contain PTFE. But, their FAQ says that many of their products contain PTFE. I don't know how to figure out which products contain it or if the FAQ is out of date. It's possible that their newer pans are safer than the ones they used to make? But, it's not what I want to spend money on right now anyway.
I also thought it was weird to see them get Hank's support. I think he's mainly using it to make a point about sponsorships which is important for the video but it's not a great product
They're enamel coated actually. I literally just looked at the site. I never considered them because I thought they were PTFE too. But when the site said they're compatible with metal utensils, I knew they couldn't be PTFE. Metal scratches it off. I still wouldn't buy them though. Cast iron is fine if seasoned properly and it's way cheaper.
I also was skeptical of honey because they were able to afford so many ads. The concept as described didn't have any way for the company to monetize it, but it was clearly either very profitable or presenting a very different concept to investors.
5:59 I think the size of the channel dictates that. Bigger channels have more resources to vet them as well as more advertising opportunities. Where the smaller channels don’t have as much freedom to be picky or the ability to take on that proper research
If you can't profit without scamming your customers, then you shouldn't have a business. This applies to creators, too. It doesn't matter how big or small a creator is when they are pushing scams onto people who trust them. You don't need a team to google "is blank a scam". This whole "make that bag" culture is baffling to me. Forgoing morality for the sake of profit will always exist, but it should never be the socially acceptable norm.
@@Bonsho the customers/viewers weren't the ones who got scammed with the whole honey situation. In general, yes, creators should (in my opinion) look into the brands before they accept sponsorships-- but what honey is doing is very sneaky and required an above average literacy about web cookies to even have a chance to be noticed. you simply cannot expect creators(in general) to do journalistic levels of research on every brand deal they take, especially coming from a brand that's been doing creator sponsorship deals for years; there's going to be a level of trust there. all of this as a creator who hasn't taken sponsorships deals, but could.
@ I agree with your initial point but I think it’s unfair to put the onus on some of these subscribers to be able to snuff out this kind of scamming. I mean it took some digging and some content creators aren’t capable of that. At least as far as advertisers. With their own business then they have the full responsibility
My advice to understanding how stuff like this takes so long to surface is to imagine the world as a classroom full of 7 billion high school students who are all copying answers off of each other with no teacher to check their work.
I had honey and I honestly just never even used it because the majority of the time it DID pop up saying it would check for a deal, it came back with nothing, so I just got tired of it not doing even remotely the job it was supposed to do.
13:15 You were probably thinking of the Cincinnati Bengals. So you were close, it was a city in Ohio that begins with a C and the team mascot is a type of tiger.
I watched MegaLag's vid on Honey, so it's great to hear your perspective on it. It's kind of like a lot is not in the black or white, but a grey area, somewhere in-between. Some sponsors are terrible but are also a way to make content creation work as a viable career.
2:52 I actually disagree with this- I will full stop not buy something and close out of the window if I can't find a discount. I am stubborn AF, so I will wait MONTHS if I have to for some sort of sale or code to be available for the thing I want. I regularly check back and google for coupon codes to make it happen. To people like me, the discount absolutely drives the sale.
Yeah that’s why he said that right before the time stamp. Some people might not come back if they don’t find a discount. He said that. He was giving two different examples.
@@NayefMaG the equation you have to ghink of is "is it going to be worth tge extra money to have this thing in my posession for the time between now and the next time there's a discount." For some people the extra money gives good value because having the thing now makes other things easier.
My family is like this and as a result so was I thru my mid twenties. It’s a sickness man. Letting prices dictate your wants and purchases, and your life by extension. I was taught to spend 20-30 min looking for parking before thinking about paying for a meter or lot, turning my cell data on and off to conserve my non-unlimited plan, no appetizers or dessert at a restaurant ever, etc, etc… It took me a long time to reverse the patterns that were so ingrained. It felt like I was committing a sin for just buying something that I wanted when I wanted it, at a not optimal price. But sometimes (often actually) it’s fine to just do that. If you’re walking past a store and you see a dope sweater, it’s okay to just get that sweater. You don’t have to google it and wait until you see a similar but kinda different sweater from another brand that’s a much better deal. Don’t wait another 6-12 months to get that new thing because you’re just missing out on using it for 6-12 months! Don’t buy that off brand furniture from Wayfair/Amazon with the sorta Swedish sounding name-just get the real thing. Obviously do this within reason and within your budget. If you have to wait to buy things because you can’t afford to not do that then of course, by all means. But it’s often a self imposed limitation in these situations. I still have that voice in my head every time I buy something but I’m getting better about it every day.
I do think creators are responcible for the deals/brands/products they work with, because another way of wording that is 'products that they push to their audience'. Most creators online are also advertisers/marketers on a fundamental level and there is no escaping that. A creator can choose not to understand or look at that but that doesn't make it any less true- if through their content they are selling things to people then ultimately they are responsible for the things they sell to people, or at least the pressure they put on to do so which is perhaps only a partial amount of the total responsibility. Part of being that type of creator as a requirement should be understanding what you are doing when you push products to people because if you don't understand the way that you're making money that doesn't absolve you of guilt for it. However having said that the area where I feel people can be too harsh/we should consider 'softening' the stance is in terms of consequences when a creator *does* push something that's bad. In my eyes they are accountable for it yes, but at the same time if it's an honest mistake made in earnest then they can be forgiven for it and the most they should suffer is perhaps a knock to their reputation now that it's understood they may not be the best at vetting deals and thus it *should* be harder to trust their future endorsements I think it's reasonable as a consumer to expect the people you watch to not mislead you and thus to vet the products they push to you. If you started watching someone with the *intent* that they mislead you then I think it'd be a different story, but I don't think most people do that somehow. Similarly I think we often under apreciate those creators who go above and beyond to be on the side of their audience and who work hard to stand behind things they do and to only accept deals for products they really and genuinely beleive in. I count you among this group of people! We don't even always agree when it comes to thinking if a product is good or even if you should be promoting it at all, but I *do* strongly feel that you stand behind all the things you advertise and that you've done your due diligence on them. On top of this you're *extremely* transparent when it comes to the why and the how of what you are doing, and so this earns my respect and suppot and I'm happy to hear you promote stuff and have a difference of opinion (only rarely tbh) with you because your fundamental principles are great.
If it’s free, you are the product. I’ve honestly been waiting for someone to figure out how they’re bad, since I’ve always been suspicious of how exactly they make enough money for all of those sponsorships…
I thought this was going to be about how some sugary syrups that are packaged and sold as honey are not actually honey. (Similar to what happens with maple syrup and white chocolate.)
Damn... I needed new pans and have been semi-actively looking for new ones. So you got my hopes up here, Hank. But those pans, as awesome as they may be, are pricey af!
I'm so fascinated by this dystopia where people base their purchase decisions on if they can search for a coupon. Like I live in a world where you decide if you need something, you find the best fitting product for yourself for that, then you search for it in your preferred stores and if not found, find the next store that feels reputable and accessible to your geolocation or so, then shop the product assuming the price isn't wildly different (and if it's way too low in comparison to most places, you get suspicious). Somehow "best non-stick pan I've ever used" translates in my head to "suffering the least with my poor decision". I got rid of my last coated pans some years ago and I've never been happier with how easy and effective cooking is now. I now have a thick cast iron pan I got from grandma who has used it for her whole life or something, a thick stainless steel pan with aluminium layer and a thick carbon steel pan. What was the term? Non-stick, yeah, that's what those are. And they don't bend and twist from heat, the coating doesn't get damaged or peel off and they can be used in the oven. I love it. Honey is a bit like those food delivery services like we used to have pizza service. Just taking a cut from everybody else by providing a website. Pretty much every pizza place had to be part of it to be competitive and the cost was on them. They were already selling at minimum profit around 10-12€ and pizza service would take ~2€. That's a huge cost on the pizza place to pay. And pizza service didn't even offer delivery, they just guided you to the pizza place and the pizza place would have to figure out the delivery as well. And then the food courier companies hit the market and made the couriers pay the costs, offering a website service to order that food. They are practical but so bad for the economy of that field, like causing a 20-40% increase in prices just to provide some owner profit and enslaving the actual workers without job contract but work as entrepreneurs, not even delivery vehicle offered or covered. Funnily enough I lived next to the areas best kebab pizzeria. Why was it the best? It was not part of any of those services, it had some name to it and people would sometimes drive there from further away as well. Which meant they had better quality ingredients/products for the same price because they didn't have to deal with multiple euro cut for nothing. I'd just walk there to get my food. And that's sort of how I like to do my other shopping as well, buy directly from some independent store's/entrepreneur's website (like this guy who does something handy for work and sharpens tools and knives, and has a magnificient sharpening tools retail website, he reviews every product for himself to see if he finds a niche for it in the product catalogue he offers and if he can recommend it for different levels of needs). Or if possible I just go to the nearest specialty store. Oh how I miss the past world where there were specialty stores where the people in would know ins and outs at the deepest level and offer professional advice on whatever you needed. The catalogue was more limited and it wouldn't be available everywhere, but oh how fine stuff you could find. And there was less costs to the entrepreneur themself due to the customers just arriving at their store and not needing online presence and maintenance, you'd just do the work with the staff you needed to run the shop and they'd know the stuff well because that's all they eneded to do and know. Another way to handle things I love and have seen multiple creators adopt is sponsoring their own videos. Have an app that provides professional value, say coaching app directly from how the people whose work you like do it. Or like legal eagle with his own law firm. Or Rick Beato selling his music courses and books. The second favourite is people who find a partner for the specific video topic from real life actually good small companies and products. All that must be hard work and tough to make a good deal, but it's awesome, it's like getting the perfect UA-cam ad for you that you don't skip it once a year. Just the other day I was discussing someone about the economy and how it was a massive mistake to introduce the market something like loans and selling the loans, and god forbid betting on what will happen to those loans. I forget the terms but mass debts, the stuff that caused the economy crash a bit over decade ago. It was inevitable but oh how terrible every step towards more virtual value has been. Like life was hard when you had a plow and a hammer and a bag of grains and had to trade for something, but it was so understandable and simple. Today nobody knows how economic things affect each other and everything, it's layers upon layers of artificial value. And generating money from nothing which is a really scary thing and can easily lead to terrible crashes. And you have to play that game as big organisations or even states because you're going to be economically behind if you just ignore it. And being economically behind is terrible when for some reason you've set your economy up with the idea of infinite growth and the continuation of that growth is the only thing that allows for the system to keep running.
Affiliate marketing is a powerful tool for small businesses to reach customers without spending too much on traditional advertising campaigns. It is a great opportunity for content creators and industry experts to earn money in a fair and transparent way. When used properly, this model helps promote innovation and creates a healthy competitive environment for products and services.
Hank: "and the other villain is..." Me: "just say capitalism, literally just say capitalism cuz that's what builds these monstrosities, including PayPal" I'm very unfazed by these news to be honest, I actually find it a little odd people are shocked at all about this. We've been in this high level scam age of the internet for a while now y'all 😅
If Marques Bronlee and Mr. Beast are promoting it, I’d be highly suspicious that it’s a scam. The only vetting either would ever do on a sponsor is making sure the check clears.
@@chinkasuyaro8983 I think while LMG knew a bit of the problem with Honey, I don't think they know the full scope of the issues considering that Megalag clearly spent a while researching the issues with Honey. It's likely that LMG just didn't think sharing details about them ending a deal with a "free" deals browser extension was worthy of making a public statement about. It's easy to say that LMG should have talked about it now, knowing how Honey operates but at at the time, it probably didn't seem like a big problem.
it wasn't just "Marques Bronlee and Mr. Beast", in the Megalag video, he shows videos from a ton of creators with many different types of creator content not just those that are big and have controversy.
@@chinkasuyaro8983 I think while LMG knew a bit of the problem with Honey, I don't think they know the full scope of the issues considering that Megalag clearly spent a while researching the issues with Honey. It's likely that LMG just didn't think sharing details about them ending a deal with a "free" deals browser extension was worthy of making a public statement about. It's easy to say that LMG should have talked about it now, knowing how Honey operates but at at the time, it probably didn't seem like a big problem.
@@chinkasuyaro8983 I think while LMG knew a bit of the problem with Honey, I don't think they know the full scope of the issues considering that Megalag clearly spent a while researching the issues with Honey. It's easy to say that LMG should have talked about it now, knowing how Honey operates but at at the time, ending a sponsorship with a "free" browser extension probably didn't seem worthy of a public statement on it.
Thank you! I didn't know this. Just uninstalled the extension. I haven't used it in a while, since it is usually worthless anyway. I should've figured some kind of scam was involved!
@aukora129 Ya, I get ecogeek hasn't really been a thing for a while now but like, seeing someone whose brand used to be so tied into environmentalism shilling pfas pans is gonna take an adjustment from me. My how things have changed
Honestly, I thought Honey was making money through relatively innocuous data harvesting/trend analysis and partner deals. Obviously I was wrong about that but I don't think it's a situation where UA-camrs who took those brand deals just didn't think it through. Many companies make money legitimately through methods invisible to end users these days. I don't think it's fair to say Markiplier predicted this was problematic so therefore everyone should have, especially considering this was a commonly used product and very very few people seemed to be aware there was a problem.
This Honey thing straightforwardly violates like a half dozen FTC and CFPB rules about deception and abusive practices. Without enforcement of that stuff criminals will devour legitimate commerce.
Not me getting ready to watch Hank perform a deep dive on why the bees are lying to us...
Worship our Bee Overlords!
The bumble ones tried to have us believe that they couldn't fly!
To be fair, the World Beekeeping Awards have removed the honey prize due to fraud in the honey world
beez nutz
@@RobinCapper if Bee Movie taught me anything, we're the ones trying to convince ourselves 😂 soon we'll think they can't speak human language or form strange romantic relationships with definitely-normal florists either.
I was skeptical of honey because I figured it was a data mining operation and I wasn't into it, but this took a turn I didn't expect. Thanks for the insights.
Same
That's what I figured, and really they probably do that in addition to injecting their referral codes. Shopping habits are an incredibly valuable thing to track, and Honey has incredible access to that info per-item and across stores.
I think this is what most people assumed..."Oh, more stupid money chasing after big data."
Same here
Whenever there’s something free and shady (as in, I can’t tell where the money is coming from) I assume it’s data mining. Nice of Honey to come up with something new, along with what I assume is also data mining
The biggest issue I see with Honey is that it's even stealing affiliate commissions from people they aren't sponsoring. They get one UA-camr to do the ad, and then pretty much everyone that took that UA-camr's advice to use Honey that then clicks on a different affiliate's link is going to end up giving the commission that affiliate earned to Honey. People who took the sponsorship at least got ad money, and they should have considered who they partner with, but other creators are also paying that price.
Also, think about company employee, healthcare workers, and a specific hidden discount code that should not be available to customers, but honey searches the code and the code history, and applies old but available codes, or apply unavailable codes from the people who are deserved that code , even veteran discounts, or disabled people discount, or cancer patient discount codes, that you get in store with proof, but online, because not all systems have fail safes and have the 2 systems linked... and if the company does not pay honey to show the lower 5%-15% discounts instead of 20%-80% discounts that are not available, and the company loses money, and needs to inflate the prices to meet the loss from honey, and then we drive the sales down because of the inflated price, and make that company bankrupt and lose local businesses... we have such a hekapoo concoction that deserves their own place down there.
For some reason this isn't emphasized enough in most of the discussions (videos/articles) I've seen about it. Lot's of people end up commenting about whether something is buried in the TOS or in the sponsorship agreement. But people are getting ripped off who have absolutely no affiliation with Honey. It seems this makes the scam (and potential lawsuit), much, much bigger.
Yeah. It's like (to use the metaphor in that video) the UA-camr suggested that you, the viewer, sign up to have some commissioned sales guy to follow you around and interject on _all_ of your shopping expeditions.
Coupons always did this though.
If you have a coupon, it tells the system at checkout that you were brought here by an ad.
Coupons aren’t stealing affiliate money. They inform the company what marketing you came from. When you use a coupon, you tell the company that promotion that got the valid coupon sent you.
Honey is “stealing” as much as going to a store to ask questions and then going to a store with better prices is “stealing” that sale.
@@lazyfoxplays8503 You sound like you didn't quite watch the original video exposing Honey. Did you watch it?
Markiplier's thoughts on not knowing where Honey was making their money instantly turned me off from them years ago. The whole thing just felt incredibly shady when I though about those concerns in the context of, "If you're not paying for the product, you're probably the product."
I watch SOG and remember that phrase when I see that anything is free
It's also why I'm so super skeptical of apps like Upside.
Like, I absolutely need to know, where the hell are they making their money?
Yeah I was always skeptical of Honey bc I wasn’t sure how they were generating revenue. But I think they claimed they were getting money from the businesses, which ig is similar to credit cards. Though credit cards also get a lot of revenue from APR when ppl don’t pay their statement in full. And still sketchy bc they didn’t really explain how they were getting money from businesses
@@Veronicz I believe they said business would pay to be part of the group they worked with because working with Honey increased the likelihood of some people shopping with the business. Because Honey increased business the companies signed up with them, so that’s supposedly where the profits came from
the youtubers are the ones getting screwed
im just getting a slight discount on 1/10 items
Side not: i cant wait for the ten second markiplier video with a non-referential title or description in which he makes direct eye contact with the camera and just says "i was right. I was right." And nothing else.
He already made the tweet XD
I can't wait to see LegalEagle's review on this entire situation. It's gonna be a good one I'm sure!
That’s what I’m waiting for as well. See how this holds up legally. There will be some loophole, I bet anything.
he's very biased sometimes so idk, his mrbeast video was atrocious and i lost all faith in him after that (which had already crumbled at some points before that). though that was clearly because he was friends with him and i dont know if he has any connection to honey, if he does it probably wont be a good one lol
I am curious if this is even illegal. It might not legally be considered a scam. But ethically and morally it feels like one, literally pouching other's people's commissions and lying about how big of a discount you can get.
@leaf111 Legal Eagle has no personal affiliation with Mr. Beast. He only covered what Mr. Beast could be liable for legally, which is a possible violation of Gerogia's sweepstakes laws. As for the allegations from that one disgruntled employee and his questionable associations there isn't really anything to talk about legally speaking. That is just drama and up to individuals to believe whether or not their claims hold water in the sphere of public opinion.
I'm not sure any law is being broken unless Honey's claims about finding the best deal, while objectively not giving the best deal through backchannel deal with the storefront, constitutes a false advertising or fraud claim. That being said those taglines often always have some clause in the terms of service that free them of responsibility if they do not find the best deal.
Never trust something if you can't see where it keeps its money-making mechanism
...if it's a for profit cooperation. I don't think you should assume everything is capitalistic by default. People *choose* to be capitalistic and prioritize money over people. It's not normal.
@@jjuniper479if something is non profit, they will tell you
@@jjuniper479 All companies must make money in some way in order to keep existing. Doesn't matter if it's for-profit or not, there are employees, those employees to be paid for their time, and business expenses must be paid. If you don't know where the money to maintain its existence is coming from, you have to be cautious about it.
@jjuniper479 I'd argue that it applies to non-profits, too. Sure, not everything is a capitalist venture, but the culture is still there, and a buck is a buck. Nonprofits are regularly outed for dishonest handling of finances, services, people, or other resources, only to remain functional because they have the public opinion that they're doing more good than bad. Honey poured into looking like a nonprofit business model. Thats why they got away with it for so long.
Even for plenty where you can see, you shouldn't trust that they're not doing anything else too (like Microsoft charging you for the operating system but still selling your data)
A good rule of thumb is that if you see a product being shilled by many influencers, there's a very high chance it's either a scam, or just not very good value.
I don't know if I'd go that far, but my rule is it is Definitely worth a good google search or two before committing to it.
That's the inherent irony in sponsorships these days. If I see an ad on many creators all at once, it massively devalues the product in my eyes.
Seeing it once is enough for me. Social media sponsors and their products/services are scams and/or overpriced garbage until proven otherwise.
@@JosephDavies I feel this way with games. If I see a game getting a ton of creators to play it. I'm assuming it's trash.
There are a few exceptions: Kiwi Crates were legit awesome for my kid; I don't use it, but people I know in the flesh say Ground News is worth it. But I really do wonder about Brilliant...
I work in beekeeping and clicked in anticipation of a very different video 😂
The beekeeper cult shivered in their timbers seeing the title lmaoo
This is why I am LESS likely to try goods/services that a UA-camr promotes 99.99% of the time.
But what about raid shadow legends??
how about Brilliant? I don't think a learning website can be anything this shady
@@CarlosMagikarpianoThe edutainment sphere of things like masterclass and brilliant are there own can of worms when they make claims about increasing your job prospects and skillets when 90% of their coursework is introductory level knowledge that is often freely avaliable elsewhere. It is basically a less egregious version of the non accredited college scams that don't provide a quality education or viable trade skillset.
The only thing I'd consider is nebula since it seems to be more of just a different platform like Patreon but you get access to multiple creators with one fee
I've looked up Brilliant and Raycon in the past, both had pretty terrible reviews back then.
Honestly I would have appreciated if Honey was just an honest "you let us record your shopping habits across different stores on the internet and we give you coupons so you consent to the spyware"
Definitely also what I originally thought they were doing - but now I wonder - where exactly is the money in that?
Paypal's not even owned by ebay anymore so what's the point of collecting that data? They don't control a platform where they can show you ads. The folks who own the platforms that show you ads have much better data on you. If you sell the data you're in a low margin business (why would you pay top dollar for data anyone else can pay for? No competitive advantage).
Compared to that, taking the affiliate money is a few *percent* on the dollar value of the transaction rivaling or dramatically exceeding the transaction fees you collect with e.g. pay with paypal. Not even close.
@@vikramkr382 PIE. The people who made honey are making a new platform that is supposed to do the same thing except with ads. Block ads, show you ads, make money off of you, pay you a tiny tiny percentage of that money.
@@vikramkr382 paypal has jumped on the AI train, so that's what they're doing with all your data.
And yet that was already more than they were willing to admit.
Except that's not what was making Honey it's money. It was stealing commissions (even when no discount was 'found') and making deals with stores to hide the best coupons and taking a cut for themselves.
>Mentions brand deal and encourages viewing the link
>Doesn't actually include link
That is so Hank-coded
Quick edit: turn off adblock and expand the description, sponsor link will show up
Right I'm like..... I'd like the pans lol
I see it on the top of the description now. Either he saw the comments and fixed it, or its not available in your area if you don't see it now.
Just expand the description once to see it.
All that's showing in my description is the Original video link
My cast iron is nice but it can't take the abuse I give it
Ah! It's in the UA-cam product commission section but not in the description. I think I have an extension blocking that function on my desktop, but it shows right up on mobile!
How noble of Hank. He deserves a lairdship. Let's all pitch in and buy 1 square foot of Scotland!
Let's check Honey to find out if there are any deals for that.
That'll help establish a respectable title. I wish there were a company that would help us do this.
I forgot about those sponsorships until I read this comment 😅 the fact that youtube ads and sponsorships go through cycles is something I just dont ever think about. E.g. raidshadow legends, Lootcrates, etc
Doesn't Laphroaig whisky give you one? 😃
That was the first thing I remembered when listening to this! lol!
I always assumed it was just data gathering. Which made me suspicious, because there has to be some crazy sh*t they're doing with the data if they can have the level of sponsorships that they do.
Big same
Never downloaded it because I also thought they had to be doing something crazy with data harvesting to generate enough money for their marketing. I didn’t see the stealing of affiliate commissions though.
The fact that it was *undisclosed* data gathering told me everything I needed to know about the ethics of the company and whether it was safe to install.
Paypal Doing something sketchy and borderline illegal? Noo waayy i couldn't have thought this was possible 😮
Honestly this. Paypal should have been nationalized and its assets siezed long ago for villianous crap like this.
But but but how could Peter Thiel, the billionaire Gawker-killing literal vampire, be a bad person???
Way, waaaay past borderline. So par for the course for Paypal.
@@BlackCanary87Speaking of which, he got Trump into the White House again, no way is Trump going to actually nationalise PayPal, unless it means Trump and his cronies control all of the USA.
i did not expect this to turn into a cookware ad 5 minutes in 😂
Yeah I did not appreciate the hard shift
Doubly ironic because Hexclad is kind of a scam - they claim to be more durable while also being non stick, a claim that doesn't hold up in testing. You're better off getting a cheap non-stick and replace it regularly.
And go figure, it's for an overpriced marketing-forward product like Hexclad. Honestly it's extremely disappointing that Hank basically clickbaited off of a viral video and decided to use the opportunity to shill. I get that creators gotta eat, but between this and the bad "but it's just hustle culture" takes throughout this video I'm unsubscribing.
@@lalaurlalalait was clearly illustrative of his point and not an actual ad lol
@@bryanlewis5233it was to illustrate his point it wasn’t a legitimate sponsor slot, he was just showing how creator commission links work so he could talk about them more thoroughly
I wonder if honey is now liable for false advertising because it’s found that it actually wasn’t always applying the best deal either… the set up where companies pairing with honey to limit coupons that honey applied.
I will be surprised if there is no class action lawsuit from this. But maybe their fineprint was really tight?
It’s so dumb because it would’ve been so easy to say “Honey gives you good deals” instead of “Honey gives you the BEST deal”. They decided blatant lying was better than being slightly misleading, and now they’ll (hopefully) pay the price for it.
@@GGsquaredI suppose they could argue that it WAS the best deal… for them lol
Not just false advertising. Massive, blatant theft. If the execs (and probably more) aren't arrested, well I won't be surprised because we're in the timeline we're in, but Jesus H Christ...
Sure, but get in line. At one point more than 50% of honey (like, the actual stuff made by bees) sold in the US contained... no honey. The US Government won't sue a large wealthy company or charge a rich person with a crime. False advertising is very hard for an ordinary person to get to court and win, the main way it was enforced in the past was the FTC taking direct action.
The funny thing is, UA-camrs had no problem taking the sponsorship money when everyone just thought that honey was stealing your data / selling marketing information or whatever, it only suddenly became this horrible thing when they found out that it did that, AND took their money
i mean everything is taking data and selling it
Because every single app/site/company already does that, so nobody cares anymore. Can't be mad about getting a bucket of water in your head if you're already in a pool
^ exactly, I don't think people in general really care about data being sold as much anymore, and while it most certainly affects people who use affiliate marketing more than anyone, it actually mostly damages smaller creators trying to make a living. on top of this, it also just doesn't get you deals you want, not even close and can even be intentionally obfuscated by certain sellers, literally only and solely creates a worse experience for everyone including the customers
People just aren't ready to accept that essentially every ad on youtube, even moreso than regular ads, are predatory. Why do you think there's so many "1 month free trials"? They all require you to enter your credit card information in the hopes you forget about it and start having another subscription drain you for a service you either don't use (audible) or don't need (vpns).
You are not understanding the situation. The data mining was expected and agreed to by anyone that has been online for more than a minute. The affiliate stealing is annoying for creators but can make sense and doesn't impact the consumer.
The issue is honey partnering with stores to give fake coupon codes that are worse than what is available elsewhere and then lying about that in their paid promotions. It is that last part that is illegal and unethical.
I came to the same conclusion markiplier did when honey first started advertising. Coupon codes on the internet have always felt like a weird hold over from radio/tv anyway.
They make sense from an analytics perspective. It lets the seller track the source of sales
Coupon codes are a pretty integral part of our economy, so I don't fault them for still existing. A crux of capitalism is finding a way to charge people the most you can get away with charging, and coupons play into that by allowing people to still afford certain things for a lower price ONLY if they are under enough pressure to do so. Someone with $500 to throw away on a paycheck wont blink twice at their $20 fast food meal. Someone who has to feed two kids on their single parent income will only take that time and effort because it benefits them to do so. That means the provider still gets to make that sale with minimal effort, as the bartering is done automatically by the consumer.
Ding ding ding. Discounts are a tried and true marketing tactic that has only become more optimized as we've moved from commerce to e-commerce. Clearance sales used to be a legitimate win-win discount for sellers and consumers. Now logistics has been abstracted away to contractors, brick and mortar is left to the big companies that can afford to snuff out their competition, and on-demand production proliferates. So the need to clear inventory has essentially become a thing of the past and the only discounts we're left with are just priced-in marketing for consumers that like to feel "savvy". It's basically a law of physics: the parasitic marketing industry will always find a way to make individualistic rubes of all consumers.
@@beakling1this used to be the entire business model for Domino’s Australia. A delivery could be more than double the price of a pick up order and they had perpetual 40% off coupons and a range of basic pizzas with a fixed, low price. One person could spend $7, one could spend $12 and another could spend $30 for the same pizza.
Unrelated but I love your username and profile pic lol
It took me a while to realize Hank was talking about "pans" and not "pants"
It's really hard to find good non-stick pants that can survive high heat, last for a long time, and not cost too much. 😀
@@yarondavidson6434Yeah and hexclad arent them.
“I just bought a little one first” wdym a little pair of pants???
in the next few days, we are going to see creators who already signed a contract be sponsored by honey and get obliterated in the comments 😭
honestly, those creators are the real victims here. Or rather, any creators with affiliate links are potential victims to honey.
@@LaPoubelle42this! I have a feeling many of the creators that smelled something off were too late in the process to be able to say something free of retaliation. The ones that have turned around publicly are either long past their contractual speech agreements or don't know theyre still under contract. Hopefully, it's the prior.
@@LaPoubelle42except LinusTechTips, who knew and did not tell others. thats pretty messed up, especially for a tech-based channel. they had a responsibility to take accountability since they were the 3rd most sponsored by Honey.
In the past when bombshell reports like this have come up (see that one irish title scam) incomplete deals were canceled. I'm not even sure Honey could penalize creators who pull out because they could argue that they were mislead about what the product is and does.
I mean, they could not take the money. This isn't a forced labor situation
I admit I didn't understand the particular nature of the particular scam, but no matter how many times people told me about Honey, I wasn't gonna touch it. Free money? Might as well be a neon sign with the word "scam".
The more people that advertise a product like Honey, the more suspicious I am. Ad money comes from somewhere and even if it's not an outright scam, you're paying for the advertisements in a higher price or worse product.
There are no free lunches.
Their new "pie" adblocker was giving me similar vibes. Now I'm wondering if it's legit malware; kinda the only place to go from a scam.
If it had operated the way they sold it it’d still save all consumers money. They probably saw an opportunity to steal affiliate commissions and turn it into a totally different kind of enterprise. I bet they couldn’t believe their luck when no one added up what was going on for so long.
The more marketing I see about something, the less I trust it.
This will get buried in the comments but its gold!
Best health diet I ever heard. Don't eat anything that is advertised.
me 5 minutes ago: Oh cool Hank made a succinct explanation of this Honey drama
me now: Am I watching an ad for cookware?
'Disruptor': another way to concentrate all the worlds wealth into the fewest possible hands, but make it seem iconoclastically cool, and just an exercise in 'freedom'.
A lot of technological innovation is elegant theft of your time, money, and resources. Most tech businesses are only concerned with extracting as much money from you as possible with no regard for the quality of the product or ethics. They create the shittiest thing they think they can get away with and hope you don’t notice or complain.
No lie. My first exposure to Mr Beast was a Honey Ad that was a pre roll on a video i wanted to watch, and I thought and thought 'this sounds like a scam'. And that coloured my view of Mr Beast for all these years.
One of the things about this that ticked me off is that the Linus Tech Tips team (LTT) knew about what honey was doing. And said nothing openly. They ought to of made videos or other notices of what was going on. They let it happen for years to MANY creators. They had a channel where they could of made a noticable video commentary. It would of spread enough to keep more damage from happening
Yeah the whole LTT situation is weird. I know they have no issue badmouthing/criticizing companies they've associated with before because I have literally seen them do it, so quietly detaching from Honey but not saying anything about it was sketchy.
Maturing is realizing the brands that youtubers gett sponsored by are corrupt. First it was betterhelp, then that one that makes the water have flavor, then the one that sends you daily meals and now honey
AirUp and the meal kits aren't scams per se, but you don't really need them
@@BryanLu0way expensive if you know how to grocery store.
@@thoughtfulconundrumwhich definitionaly isn't a scam. Overpriced with healthy profit margins? Yes, but you actually receive a product that you paid for at the end of the day.
Its capitalism baby, they're all out to get your money one way or another.
leaky bottle that makes you swallow air with overpriced disgustingly artificial aromas in a pod while making the most misofphonia triggering sound possible. It's somehow even more unpleasant than those 0 nic vapes and it's a hard thing to beat
it's hankmas and today we're exploring the questionable ethics of coupon "secret deals" culture in ecommerce. thanks, as always, for helping me understand a messy internet thing, hank
Affiliate links do get abused, but they also encourage of some of the most legit "here is something you might actually find useful" sort of good marketing.
For any commercial transaction, the question should always be "how is this a win-win"? Because if it isn't a win-win, someone is getting screwed
Honey themselves were also lying in the actual ads they were paying for as prerolls and midrolls on youtube. They weren't just paying creators to lie for them. They specifically said in the youtube ads that honey will search the internet for you and find the best possible coupon code. That is a lie.
If they had just claimed "we will save you the effort of searching for coupon codes" then I wouldn't have minded. That is a service that would save some people time, and it's also a service to the companies making the products. Tbh I'm relieved that it's not a data harvesting/tracking scam. It still sounds like one, and I wouldn't be shocked if they were also tracking and collecting user data, but it's nice to know it's at least possible for them to make money without doing that.
"This is why it's good to play this game out loud" is rich considering you've talked about not having an internal monologue. At least some of the people quietly working out the puzzle *are* hearing the words, Hank!
You should know what the followup to that video is. Once Honey has inserted itself into the value chain, they start taking a bigger cut from the merchant. So if Honey channels a large enough part of a merchant's sales, the merchant will raise prices for everybody.
It's exactly like cashback and reward cards (except payment card providers actually add something to the payment process obvs), once enough people participate in them, shops raise prices, and the only winner is the leech in the middle.
This is a big danger of for-profit middle-men. I don't think people realize how bad it is to fund all of those "we erase your online presence" companies that advertise on UA-cam, either. In the absolute best case, they do what they say they do and then go out of business. So the best case is probably not what's happening, or at the very least their partnerships will "evolve" and who gets priority will change as their success leads to a need to maintain the _need_ for their business. After all, being effective means building relationships with the data brokers, and those data brokers will *always* have more money than you do.
where do you think the referral codes come from? merchant partners with honey to give them referral codes
just a reminder that the makers of Honey are now making an extension to steal ad revenue as well, called Pie.
In addition to the predictable class action lawsuits, what action is Amazon going to take against Honey for violating article 5.1 of their affiliate program operating policies?
YES! Finally a UA-camr/Educator adding actual context to this story and explaining it all so well!
What's wrong with the MegaLag video? I thought he explained it perfectly
@@geneticjen9312 he likely didn't see it. That video was excessively good. I ignored it the first time it was recommended as I didn't know who MegaLag was, but 2nd time around it had 300K views and holy fucking tits.
But Hank, how could it be stealing and lying if we told you that we were gonna steal from and lie to you on page 55 of 180 in our legal agreement?
1:40 TRUE if it actually was good at saving you money, the product would advertise itself with word of mouth. There is no way people wouldnt freely recommend it on their own. The fact that millions of dollars flow to advertisers to promote it is already weird!
1:14 "tell me you're a boomer without telling me ..." I rolled in here to find out what you had against bees. LOL But I'll stick around for the rest, jic.
I had the exact same reaction to "Lions Tigers Bears". I just could not believe they'd do that.
Same here. Also as I’m sitting in my nfl jersey doing the game, I very nearly made the “bills lions tigers bears” mistake without thinking, because who thinks of the bengals?
Nearly got the purple but I don’t know the bills bills bills song
@@laiika511 Destiny's Child (the group Beyonce came from)
The best part is they were literally lined up on row 1, in order, when he opened connections
@@AdamMarrthey all start in the exact same order for everyone, so everyone started with them lined up, so logically I also thought they wouldn’t give us the answer 🫠
@@AdamMarrI giggled at it lined up like that on mine, then proceeded to solve the others and it was my last category because there was no way they did that
In relation to your recent video about internal monologues, I picked up on "bees, jays, use" without saying them aloud, because I said them in my head as I read them!
Isn't trusting your team to have done the research into a brand the same trust people _tend_ to put in some UA-camrs? ESPECIALLY educators.
That's not to say it's entirely or even mostly on content creators. It's more that this relationship is exactly what marketing is trying to exploit.
pausing the video halfway through to go play connections before Hank, then coming back and watching him struggle through the same leaps of logic I did was fun
real!
I don't know about influencer sponsorships but in Australia, whatever the salesperson of a particular product says about that product, is legally binding. So if someone said this pan will last 100 years in Australia and it didn't then you would be entitled to a refund
And if the store advertised it ad last 100 years they would be fined
People have been calling honey a scam for a long long time and most just ignored it.
At the end of the day it still achieves the users goal of saving them money, they prefer not to think about the other side of it. It happens with so much stuff in our lives, think Shein and other child labour cases, we chose to ignore it because we like the outcome. Humans are kinda shitty
@samwalker2367 the creators sure were fine selling out their fans for a quick buck too (when everyone just thought it was data collection).
Didn't seem to bother them a bit
It feels like the Temu app to me, too. I don't have it but co-workers were trying to get me referred which immediately sounds like a pyramid scam. The whole thing just seems off.
But when they said it there wasn't any evidence for it, just people figuring that things can't be free and assuming there was data mining, but now there is evidence of Honey doing things that are so much worse.
in hindsight due 2 year investigation.
UK person who likes Abba. I do know Gimme Gimme Gimme and I don't know US sports team. Got it in one. Happy Christmas to Hank & the whole Nerdfiteria crew.
Hexclad pans are awful. Not non-stick at all. And utensils get stuck on the shapes. And they've convinced all of the other companies to steal their terrible design, so it's hard to get good non-stick pans at all now.
It’s also toxic Teflon, I’m really surprised he’s working with them
Yeah.. cast iron is the only way. I have stainless but they are harder to clean.
@@phrebh
All nonstick pans are crap. Use stainless steel or cast iron or carbon steel. Just make sure to thoroughly dry them and never soak them.
they use ceramic not teflon@@sunnyevening
@@sunnyeveningthere was a minutefood episode about how the science says teflon is actually low risk to humans, unless you go to very very high temperatures. Still toxic to the environment, but that is not what I think of when I label something as toxic
If creators are small businesses, and they have customers, they have to provide good products (their content) and good service (the information about their processes or the products they push to their customers through brand deals). If a creator cannot find time to vet the validity or safety of what they're pushing, they should not accept brand deals. If they can't produce content without brand deal funding, they must find a way to vet the companies they push.
If a product is free to you, you are the product and your information is what's for sale.
So close to realizing capitalism is the big bad guy.
++
i think its interesting that mostly we are discussing the affiliate poaching, which is bad, but not what hurts consumers the most.
the thing they are doing that is worst for consumers is that it isnt ACTUALLY searching all the coupons on the internet! often it isnt searching the internet AT ALL. so you believe youve gotten the best deal there is when you havent.
And they told that lie themselves in preroll and midroll ads on UA-cam
and the _other_ other villain is how capitalism is built on, and rewards doing everything you can to make more money, including harming other people
i always get so excited at "lets play connections"
I picked the wrong day to stop sniffing glue. It took me 3 minutes to figure out that this wasn't about counterfeit honey.
You know, like what the bees make...
I assumed Honey collected and sold data about people’s shopping habits. I didn’t know they undercut existing discount code. But this method makes sense. Pretty shady if they’re not transparent about it.
So if you install Honey and it finds you a 10% discount, you know that’s the minimum you could find if you looked around yourself? I guess it depends on what your time is worth to you and if you care who receives the affiliate kickback. I’m curious if Honey loses users now.
Interesting explanation. Thanks, Hank!
I decided that if a creator ever promotes a product that turns out to be dishonest then I'm going to attempt to boycott any of their sponsors in the future (though I may make an exception if they apologize). This basically means that I'm boycotting most sponsors on UA-cam because most creators I have watched have promoted at least some products that ended up being sketchy. Which, on the one hand I get that they need the money, and I'm more sympathetic to small creators trying to take care of their family's but when the creators are far richer than I'll ever be, this isn't a stance I feel bad about.
Do you still watch the content, when there isn't an apology?
@@geeksdo1tbetter It depends on the situation, but oftentimes yes, because otherwise I would have to stop watching many of my favorite creators.
I was unaware of the context leading to this video, and spent the first few worried minutes worrying that there was some conspiracy that meant I should stop buying delicious bee-created sugar. Glad it's not that 😅
I didn't have Hank yelling "Are the Cleveland Tigers a thing??" multiple times in one video, but here we are lmao
I've also encountered websites that claim they have coupons, and when you try to get those coupons they typically open the site the coupon is for, but the coupons they purport to have often don't work.
I wouldn't be surprised if they're using a similar business model of putting their affiliate cookie in at that point trying to be the last and claim those affiliate bucks
Yes, this is always how all of the, have worked, there’s no shocking revelation here, it takes 30 seconds to verify. People know. No one cares except creators, who couldn’t be bothered verifying.
I hate non-stick pans. Stainless steel is much easier to clean after a year or two. The fact you can use a steel pad to clean it if it gets really dirty is a hige advantage. Plus eating less random chemicals.
Cast iron is where it's at.
I really like my Hexclad, works great, easy to clean, doesn't have all the wild forever chems that you get in most nonstick. 10/10
@@RogalDorn01 That's not really true. HexClad has PTFE which is a forever chemical, and Teflon pans today also have the same chemical. HexClad's marketing campaign says that HexClad doesn't have PFOA, but regular nonstick pans these days also don't have PFOA these days. Better to get stainless steel if one is concerned about forever chemicals, because PTFE is a forever chemical.
Hexclad is enamel coated (ceramic) not Teflon/PTFE. I still wouldn't buy them though. Too expensive.
1. I thought Hank was going to talk about most big-store honey being not actual honey because of over-filtration.
2. I, too, saw the Connections "Lions, tigers, and bears, oh my!" right off the bat. But I kept it and eliminated the yellows and blues, too. I also found the purples by process of elimination. I just had no idea at all what those 4 songs were. (music ain't my thing)
Didn’t know that about point 1
The purples are the only one I could find, I was so sure the obvious one wasn't real that I ran out of lives hunting for sports teams 😭
I'm reminded of the recent drama surrounding Catly, a game that was announced at the game awards with a lot of influencer endorsements that had all the trappings of a scam. Ai art on it's website, a crypto developer who's last game was nft related, and trailers full of no concept. How does a thing have enough money for all this advertising with no product? You've got to be careful online.
The weirdest thing that's come out of the whole Honey scandal was Linus Tech Tips uncovering the scam and not really letting other content creators know about it. They just simply said that they were no longer taking Honey sponsorships.
I haven't seen the original expose video, but I did see Someordinarygamers two cents on the situation.
Oh goody, another reason to hate Linus Tech Tips!
@@FiveFoxesInATrenchcoati hadnt even really heard of them before this, are there other issues with them?
@@cooldog1994 It wouldn't be the first scandal of its kind I've heard about coming from them.
@@cooldog1994One of their employees dissed other UA-camrs during a tour saying that their testing is better. Gamers Nexus put out a video pointing out mistakes they've made in the recent past. Also, there was some horrible communication and they auctioned off a 1 of 1 prototype which they weren't supposed to. And then they took a hiatus to solve these issues. Nearly at the same time, an ex employee put forth allegations of sexism and lack of support. And honestly, these claims have gone nowhere. Like no one corroborated the story, only confirming she was employed when she said she was.
It's not nothing, but it's also not cancel worthy.
Meh, it seems to have been an open secret - 'Original MCW' made a video about the affiliate cookie thing 4 years ago (and other issues he had with honey)
How often do you get to watch/listen to the CEO of a company talk about the minutia and the ins and outs of their company and their thought processes on why they choose to do things as they do? I’d wager, nearly never. Thanks, Hank Green, for consistently being an open door and not only standing by what you say but also explaining why in a way that actually is believable and trustworthy. I get it, and I agree.
Also! Hank stepped down from CEO at Complexly last year.
Im no hater of hank, but that affiliate bit felt super gross.
Talking points that wernt supposed to look like talking points because they were part of a commentary on talking points. Very deadpool!
Also a product review that totally wasnt fake at all.
C- is my review of that ad spot 😅
Eh, ads are always no fun but the dude's gotta make cash somehow, and it was pretty neat to fold it into the discussion to use it for educational purposes. Did it look like he was trying to hide that it was an ad to you? It was the most blatant thing I've ever seen in my life. He literally said 'IF YOU DO THIS, I WILL MAKE MONEY OFF OF IT' like 3 times.
I knew Honey was skimming affiliate commissions, but I didn't realize how deep the rabbit hole went.
I've seen a couple of people say the same thing, but I'm wondering how people knew. were people discovering it themselves? rumours?
@@gingganggoolieit’s a 30 second investigation into your browser cookies. Or you know, the original video just sent them an email asking them and they told him how it worked. Anyone that didn’t know was just willfully ignorant.
Affiliates themselves also skim commissions from unrelated products.
That was the smoothest ad transition in the history of UA-cam.
Many years watching you, merry Christmas hank
Hexclad pans are overpriced garbage, coated in a type of PFAS/forever chemical called PTFE. You can look up the side effects. Instead, buy a carbon steel pan that remains nonstick through bonding oil to the surface of the pan. This is what actual chefs in actual restaurants use. Come on Hank, you’re usually good at googling this stuff.
I've read several places that hexclad recently changed their nonstick to ceramic? On their website, they say their ceramic nonstick does not contain PTFE.
But, their FAQ says that many of their products contain PTFE. I don't know how to figure out which products contain it or if the FAQ is out of date. It's possible that their newer pans are safer than the ones they used to make?
But, it's not what I want to spend money on right now anyway.
I also thought it was weird to see them get Hank's support. I think he's mainly using it to make a point about sponsorships which is important for the video but it's not a great product
They're enamel coated actually. I literally just looked at the site. I never considered them because I thought they were PTFE too. But when the site said they're compatible with metal utensils, I knew they couldn't be PTFE. Metal scratches it off. I still wouldn't buy them though. Cast iron is fine if seasoned properly and it's way cheaper.
It seems like they recently changed to ceramic.
Wrong
I also was skeptical of honey because they were able to afford so many ads. The concept as described didn't have any way for the company to monetize it, but it was clearly either very profitable or presenting a very different concept to investors.
5:59 I think the size of the channel dictates that. Bigger channels have more resources to vet them as well as more advertising opportunities. Where the smaller channels don’t have as much freedom to be picky or the ability to take on that proper research
If you can't profit without scamming your customers, then you shouldn't have a business. This applies to creators, too. It doesn't matter how big or small a creator is when they are pushing scams onto people who trust them. You don't need a team to google "is blank a scam". This whole "make that bag" culture is baffling to me. Forgoing morality for the sake of profit will always exist, but it should never be the socially acceptable norm.
@@Bonsho the customers/viewers weren't the ones who got scammed with the whole honey situation.
In general, yes, creators should (in my opinion) look into the brands before they accept sponsorships-- but what honey is doing is very sneaky and required an above average literacy about web cookies to even have a chance to be noticed. you simply cannot expect creators(in general) to do journalistic levels of research on every brand deal they take, especially coming from a brand that's been doing creator sponsorship deals for years; there's going to be a level of trust there. all of this as a creator who hasn't taken sponsorships deals, but could.
@ I agree with your initial point but I think it’s unfair to put the onus on some of these subscribers to be able to snuff out this kind of scamming. I mean it took some digging and some content creators aren’t capable of that. At least as far as advertisers. With their own business then they have the full responsibility
To clarify a bit I think making sure your advertisers don’t run scams is different then running it yourselves I think the distinction matters
@@AngryMax thank you. You articulated what I was trying to say better
My advice to understanding how stuff like this takes so long to surface is to imagine the world as a classroom full of 7 billion high school students who are all copying answers off of each other with no teacher to check their work.
6:36 This must be one of the weirdest frames I ever stopped video on…
I had honey and I honestly just never even used it because the majority of the time it DID pop up saying it would check for a deal, it came back with nothing, so I just got tired of it not doing even remotely the job it was supposed to do.
13:15 You were probably thinking of the Cincinnati Bengals. So you were close, it was a city in Ohio that begins with a C and the team mascot is a type of tiger.
Got some of your tea for the holidays, couldn't be happier with the product. Good store ftw
I watched MegaLag's vid on Honey, so it's great to hear your perspective on it. It's kind of like a lot is not in the black or white, but a grey area, somewhere in-between. Some sponsors are terrible but are also a way to make content creation work as a viable career.
Hank, your takes are getting me through this long cold winter. Thank you.
2:52 I actually disagree with this- I will full stop not buy something and close out of the window if I can't find a discount. I am stubborn AF, so I will wait MONTHS if I have to for some sort of sale or code to be available for the thing I want. I regularly check back and google for coupon codes to make it happen. To people like me, the discount absolutely drives the sale.
Yeah that’s why he said that right before the time stamp. Some people might not come back if they don’t find a discount. He said that. He was giving two different examples.
I’m with you here. Paying more than the best sale price seems unwise if all I need to do is wait a few months.
@@NayefMaG the equation you have to ghink of is "is it going to be worth tge extra money to have this thing in my posession for the time between now and the next time there's a discount." For some people the extra money gives good value because having the thing now makes other things easier.
A discount never drives a sale.
You wanting the product drives the sale.
Completing the sale is where the discount comes in.
My family is like this and as a result so was I thru my mid twenties. It’s a sickness man. Letting prices dictate your wants and purchases, and your life by extension. I was taught to spend 20-30 min looking for parking before thinking about paying for a meter or lot, turning my cell data on and off to conserve my non-unlimited plan, no appetizers or dessert at a restaurant ever, etc, etc… It took me a long time to reverse the patterns that were so ingrained. It felt like I was committing a sin for just buying something that I wanted when I wanted it, at a not optimal price. But sometimes (often actually) it’s fine to just do that. If you’re walking past a store and you see a dope sweater, it’s okay to just get that sweater. You don’t have to google it and wait until you see a similar but kinda different sweater from another brand that’s a much better deal. Don’t wait another 6-12 months to get that new thing because you’re just missing out on using it for 6-12 months! Don’t buy that off brand furniture from Wayfair/Amazon with the sorta Swedish sounding name-just get the real thing. Obviously do this within reason and within your budget. If you have to wait to buy things because you can’t afford to not do that then of course, by all means. But it’s often a self imposed limitation in these situations. I still have that voice in my head every time I buy something but I’m getting better about it every day.
If you charge someone more than they expected from a product, but then tell them that you gave them a discount, 95% of them will thank you.
I do think creators are responcible for the deals/brands/products they work with, because another way of wording that is 'products that they push to their audience'. Most creators online are also advertisers/marketers on a fundamental level and there is no escaping that. A creator can choose not to understand or look at that but that doesn't make it any less true- if through their content they are selling things to people then ultimately they are responsible for the things they sell to people, or at least the pressure they put on to do so which is perhaps only a partial amount of the total responsibility. Part of being that type of creator as a requirement should be understanding what you are doing when you push products to people because if you don't understand the way that you're making money that doesn't absolve you of guilt for it.
However having said that the area where I feel people can be too harsh/we should consider 'softening' the stance is in terms of consequences when a creator *does* push something that's bad. In my eyes they are accountable for it yes, but at the same time if it's an honest mistake made in earnest then they can be forgiven for it and the most they should suffer is perhaps a knock to their reputation now that it's understood they may not be the best at vetting deals and thus it *should* be harder to trust their future endorsements I think it's reasonable as a consumer to expect the people you watch to not mislead you and thus to vet the products they push to you. If you started watching someone with the *intent* that they mislead you then I think it'd be a different story, but I don't think most people do that somehow.
Similarly I think we often under apreciate those creators who go above and beyond to be on the side of their audience and who work hard to stand behind things they do and to only accept deals for products they really and genuinely beleive in. I count you among this group of people! We don't even always agree when it comes to thinking if a product is good or even if you should be promoting it at all, but I *do* strongly feel that you stand behind all the things you advertise and that you've done your due diligence on them. On top of this you're *extremely* transparent when it comes to the why and the how of what you are doing, and so this earns my respect and suppot and I'm happy to hear you promote stuff and have a difference of opinion (only rarely tbh) with you because your fundamental principles are great.
If it’s free, you are the product. I’ve honestly been waiting for someone to figure out how they’re bad, since I’ve always been suspicious of how exactly they make enough money for all of those sponsorships…
I thought this was going to be about how some sugary syrups that are packaged and sold as honey are not actually honey. (Similar to what happens with maple syrup and white chocolate.)
Damn... I needed new pans and have been semi-actively looking for new ones. So you got my hopes up here, Hank. But those pans, as awesome as they may be, are pricey af!
Honestly hank, I don't even know what your point was in this video
I'm so fascinated by this dystopia where people base their purchase decisions on if they can search for a coupon. Like I live in a world where you decide if you need something, you find the best fitting product for yourself for that, then you search for it in your preferred stores and if not found, find the next store that feels reputable and accessible to your geolocation or so, then shop the product assuming the price isn't wildly different (and if it's way too low in comparison to most places, you get suspicious).
Somehow "best non-stick pan I've ever used" translates in my head to "suffering the least with my poor decision". I got rid of my last coated pans some years ago and I've never been happier with how easy and effective cooking is now. I now have a thick cast iron pan I got from grandma who has used it for her whole life or something, a thick stainless steel pan with aluminium layer and a thick carbon steel pan. What was the term? Non-stick, yeah, that's what those are. And they don't bend and twist from heat, the coating doesn't get damaged or peel off and they can be used in the oven. I love it.
Honey is a bit like those food delivery services like we used to have pizza service. Just taking a cut from everybody else by providing a website. Pretty much every pizza place had to be part of it to be competitive and the cost was on them. They were already selling at minimum profit around 10-12€ and pizza service would take ~2€. That's a huge cost on the pizza place to pay. And pizza service didn't even offer delivery, they just guided you to the pizza place and the pizza place would have to figure out the delivery as well. And then the food courier companies hit the market and made the couriers pay the costs, offering a website service to order that food. They are practical but so bad for the economy of that field, like causing a 20-40% increase in prices just to provide some owner profit and enslaving the actual workers without job contract but work as entrepreneurs, not even delivery vehicle offered or covered. Funnily enough I lived next to the areas best kebab pizzeria. Why was it the best? It was not part of any of those services, it had some name to it and people would sometimes drive there from further away as well. Which meant they had better quality ingredients/products for the same price because they didn't have to deal with multiple euro cut for nothing. I'd just walk there to get my food. And that's sort of how I like to do my other shopping as well, buy directly from some independent store's/entrepreneur's website (like this guy who does something handy for work and sharpens tools and knives, and has a magnificient sharpening tools retail website, he reviews every product for himself to see if he finds a niche for it in the product catalogue he offers and if he can recommend it for different levels of needs). Or if possible I just go to the nearest specialty store. Oh how I miss the past world where there were specialty stores where the people in would know ins and outs at the deepest level and offer professional advice on whatever you needed. The catalogue was more limited and it wouldn't be available everywhere, but oh how fine stuff you could find. And there was less costs to the entrepreneur themself due to the customers just arriving at their store and not needing online presence and maintenance, you'd just do the work with the staff you needed to run the shop and they'd know the stuff well because that's all they eneded to do and know.
Another way to handle things I love and have seen multiple creators adopt is sponsoring their own videos. Have an app that provides professional value, say coaching app directly from how the people whose work you like do it. Or like legal eagle with his own law firm. Or Rick Beato selling his music courses and books. The second favourite is people who find a partner for the specific video topic from real life actually good small companies and products. All that must be hard work and tough to make a good deal, but it's awesome, it's like getting the perfect UA-cam ad for you that you don't skip it once a year.
Just the other day I was discussing someone about the economy and how it was a massive mistake to introduce the market something like loans and selling the loans, and god forbid betting on what will happen to those loans. I forget the terms but mass debts, the stuff that caused the economy crash a bit over decade ago. It was inevitable but oh how terrible every step towards more virtual value has been. Like life was hard when you had a plow and a hammer and a bag of grains and had to trade for something, but it was so understandable and simple. Today nobody knows how economic things affect each other and everything, it's layers upon layers of artificial value. And generating money from nothing which is a really scary thing and can easily lead to terrible crashes. And you have to play that game as big organisations or even states because you're going to be economically behind if you just ignore it. And being economically behind is terrible when for some reason you've set your economy up with the idea of infinite growth and the continuation of that growth is the only thing that allows for the system to keep running.
07:03 video cuts out for a few seconds
What do you think that means?
Affiliate marketing is a powerful tool for small businesses to reach customers without spending too much on traditional advertising campaigns. It is a great opportunity for content creators and industry experts to earn money in a fair and transparent way. When used properly, this model helps promote innovation and creates a healthy competitive environment for products and services.
Hank: "and the other villain is..."
Me: "just say capitalism, literally just say capitalism cuz that's what builds these monstrosities, including PayPal"
I'm very unfazed by these news to be honest, I actually find it a little odd people are shocked at all about this. We've been in this high level scam age of the internet for a while now y'all 😅
+1
There is no economic system that will cure people from wanting more.
Considering how structured Hank talks in his Shorts, which I have to say was how I was introduced to this channel, this video is super chaotic.
Hankschannel is the chaotic stream of consciousness channel, Vlogbrothers is the more structured channel. :)
If Marques Bronlee and Mr. Beast are promoting it, I’d be highly suspicious that it’s a scam. The only vetting either would ever do on a sponsor is making sure the check clears.
And Linus. LMG apparently limited the information and their exposure, when they could have made it common knowledge.
@@chinkasuyaro8983 I think while LMG knew a bit of the problem with Honey, I don't think they know the full scope of the issues considering that Megalag clearly spent a while researching the issues with Honey.
It's likely that LMG just didn't think sharing details about them ending a deal with a "free" deals browser extension was worthy of making a public statement about.
It's easy to say that LMG should have talked about it now, knowing how Honey operates but at at the time, it probably didn't seem like a big problem.
it wasn't just "Marques Bronlee and Mr. Beast", in the Megalag video, he shows videos from a ton of creators with many different types of creator content not just those that are big and have controversy.
@@chinkasuyaro8983 I think while LMG knew a bit of the problem with Honey, I don't think they know the full scope of the issues considering that Megalag clearly spent a while researching the issues with Honey.
It's likely that LMG just didn't think sharing details about them ending a deal with a "free" deals browser extension was worthy of making a public statement about.
It's easy to say that LMG should have talked about it now, knowing how Honey operates but at at the time, it probably didn't seem like a big problem.
@@chinkasuyaro8983 I think while LMG knew a bit of the problem with Honey, I don't think they know the full scope of the issues considering that Megalag clearly spent a while researching the issues with Honey.
It's easy to say that LMG should have talked about it now, knowing how Honey operates but at at the time, ending a sponsorship with a "free" browser extension probably didn't seem worthy of a public statement on it.
Thank you! I didn't know this. Just uninstalled the extension. I haven't used it in a while, since it is usually worthless anyway. I should've figured some kind of scam was involved!
Them: Download this for free!
Me: Nothing is free, what's the catch?
Them: Someone will research this and leak it YEARS later
Just watched Critikal cover this, and with the mention of Markiplier, I feel like a dozen of my worlds just collided into one big blob.
"Yes, this has felt like a scam for a while. Anyway, heres a product I actually can wholeheartedly endorse" absolute king behavior, Hank
Except that the product is well kinown to be harmful and actively lying about it's capabilities.
@aukora129 Ya, I get ecogeek hasn't really been a thing for a while now but like, seeing someone whose brand used to be so tied into environmentalism shilling pfas pans is gonna take an adjustment from me.
My how things have changed
@@aukora129If you're talking about PFAs, they've recently changed to ceramic. I don't think Hank endorsed this product before they changed to ceramic
Honestly, I thought Honey was making money through relatively innocuous data harvesting/trend analysis and partner deals. Obviously I was wrong about that but I don't think it's a situation where UA-camrs who took those brand deals just didn't think it through. Many companies make money legitimately through methods invisible to end users these days. I don't think it's fair to say Markiplier predicted this was problematic so therefore everyone should have, especially considering this was a commonly used product and very very few people seemed to be aware there was a problem.
This is the third anti-Honey video I've seen this week. My question: why now? If Honey has been around for years, what exposed it?
Megalag did the investigation, he looks into scam companies and he did one for Honey.. Its a great video and Honey should be ashamed
The first anti-honey vid you saw this week, assuming you watched them in the order in which they released
a youTuber called MagaLag exposed them first 2 days ago now everyone is talking about it
Um ... @@drummerofawethis video was released an hour or two ago. I saw the first one a couple of days ago.
The Megalad video was the video that uncovered what they were doing. People didn't know before. And now that they know, they are talking about it.
This Honey thing straightforwardly violates like a half dozen FTC and CFPB rules about deception and abusive practices. Without enforcement of that stuff criminals will devour legitimate commerce.
so nice to see you covering this!
Merry Christmas Hank! And best of the season to the world.