Yup, the only reason youtubers call it "biggest scandal on yt" is because it hits their wallets, they will shill any garbage service for a pouch of silvers. Trust no one
I don't know if this is the biggest scandal but clearly this is a major scam from Paypal who clearly stole commissions from hundreds of youtubers. They should definitely be sued with a class action lawsuit
Back in the day, radio presenters pushing Herb-A-Life relentlessly, and later got in zero trouble for pushing the scam weight loss pills for years. Trust very few people.
@@SpittingBritTeaEarlGreybrilliant was actually good when I used it a while back, but I'm not sure if it's different now, worth researching if you're actually wondering
I love how suddenly everyone is talking about Honey after MegaLag’s video. It’s bringing proper awareness to this Honey THEFT scam, and the multiple voices canNOT be silenced! I’d love to see some proper justice play out!
Ngl Paypal doing the ol' switcharoo with affiliate links is so cartoonishly diabolical I can't help but chuckle, makes me wonder how much they've raked in through that method alone.
This is how all voucher/coupon websites have worked since the invention of the cookie. It is crazy how many people are outraged by Honey and not the whole affiliate industry. This must be a US thing
To elaborate, I am amazed how so many supposedly-expert tech UA-camrs seem surprised, when this is how affiliate extensions/toolbars/plugins have always worked. They can't do a Honey sponsorship, get paid $3 per install, and then expect to get paid again for Amazon affiliate links in the video descriptions. And what about other creators? Well tough - there can only be one referrer and that's how the affiliate business works. If you don't like it, make your own merch or ask for donations through Patreon or wherever. In the tier list of UA-cam sponsorship shadiness, I place Honey in D tier. The CSGO gambling sites go in A tier.
@@terrsus at worst it is dark patterns. There are plenty of real scams and fraud in UA-cam sponsor spots. PayPal is an evil, immoral company that needs to be broken up, but this is the least of their crimes.
Also thumbnail is without a face doing stupid fake expressions, no red circles and no arrows. Basically, one of the best tech news channel on YT, with occasional farming advice video. PS: Hello, fellow Blarghonite.
That's no different then getting a coupon code that wasn't given to you, so long you actually do what's advertised and save people money (which honey does) then I don't see a problem with it.
I was hoping you would talk some technical stuff about how they swap the cookie. MegaLag showed Honey opening up a sneaky Chrome tab, that's something I haven't seen before.
Tried to use honey once 10 years or something g like that ago and it didn’t find any coupons so I said this is stupid and deleted. Didn’t know how much of a bullet I dodged there
Honestly I'm a little annoyed at this situation, not because Honey is a scam, scams and scammers are a part of life. It's the fact that UA-camrs will reccomend their viewers all this shady shit, "there's no catch!", "it protects your privacy/protects you from hackers!" they will lie to people for money, and sleep soundly at night, but as soon as THEY get fucked over it's something we're all meant to care about.
Yep, I got to the original video becase somebody just posted the reference in their announcements. Suddenly the hell broke loose and I have seen at least 4 others who jumped on the bandwagon to benefit from years of investigation by the guy. And it is jut the beginning. I wonder when will somebkdy pick up on misleading claims of deleteme and similar services. It is also being pushed down my throat by almost every talking head that accepts sponsors. Annoying.
I learned my lesson several years back concerning influencer-marketed products. I bought RayCons once. I took them out of the box, put them in my ears, and I didn't even get 30 seconds through the song I used to test their fidelity. I put them back in the box and sent them back. The sonic equivalent of breathing swamp gas. I don't know how people can rock those things. You can get 1000x better sounding full-wireless for the same price. RayCON indeed.
I think RayJ or whatever (the guy who started the company) named it raycon as a tongue and cheek thing. He knew you could call it a con and people will still buy it
This is really just a summary of megalag's video right down to the analogy and examples they used. You should have made that clear in the video not just a note in the description
LTT are at their lowest point in regards to their reputation. They can't afford another public fuckup like this. It's messed up but I wouldn't call their behavior baffling, it's expected at this point. Just avoid them entirely and encourage everyone you know to do the same.
Honey is a sneaky with this one, not gonna lie. I did download it to try it out, but it didn't work. I think I've tried it twice maybe? I couldn't find any of the coupons I said to myself "fuck this, it doesn't work anyway", then uninstalled it.
In this case, they shouldn't be. The influencers that promoted Honey were not made aware that it was performing shady stuff until recently. The only team that was aware of it years ago was LTT and they just stopped working with honey and withheld the information and didn't sound the alarm about it.
@@_therax LTT should definitly face backlash, for their lack of talking about it ages ago, and not providing good answer to megalag when he asked. I say this as a fan of LTT aswell
Everyone knew Honey was pretty much guaranteed to be mining shopping data, it doesn't take a genius to figure out it was a scam, so you're right that we should be disappointed in creators for promoting it (especially tech channels who should know better). But the extent of the scam is definitely surprising.
I think the shittier part of the affiliate hijacking is it probably didn't even really hurt the people promoting honey as much as the smaller creators who weren't promoting honey, because audience overlap and all. Honey stole basically all affiliate links, even if they didn't have coupons to give or anything else. All without informing the user they were doing this, or giving you lesser coupons. And probably building a gigantic tracking database. And, apparently, giving out coupons that weren't actually supposed to be public in some cases, from the sounds of it.
I called this back in 2018. Nobody listened and my tweet was largely ignored. On the record, I don't trust Ryan Hudson or his companies. I'm highly skeptical of the ad blocker Pie. Maybe you could look into this one?
Upper Echolon did that yesterday already. At least he added something new to the discussion unlike this video which is only a lame rehash of MegaLag's investigation. Very disappointed!
As a rule, I never click on something someone is telling me that I need. Especially so called influencers. And I also never click affiliate links of UA-camrs.
I haven't even watched it, after watching the original content yesterday. I am here just for the comments, not expecting to hear anything new here LOL.
It has nothing to do with the video, but I love how 0:27 the coffee is spilled and he just keeps smiling and pretend it didn't happen. Super introvert energy.
i love connecting to sites that start with htps (i wasn't gonna say it, but when i saw an off-topic comment referring to the same spot in the video, i couldn't help it 😭)
I just bought a jar of honey paying with cash, and I'm pretty sure none of the bees will even see a penny of it, but luckily they are all asleep this time of the year.
Somehow, Honey was able scam everyone on the chain: Product Affiliates (having 100% of commissions stolen by PayPal) Product Vendors (although not really a scam, but end users pay lower prices for products) End Users (probably getting spied on and not really getting the best prices)
I think the affiliates that hid discount codes are the most idiotic of individuals, because if you don't want people to get a better discount then...just don't offer that discount? Don't make it a code that would work in the first place, and BOOM, no partnership needed, they're actively hurting themselves. I know they have some unethical logic, but I still want to slam them for their behavior.
Or to lure new customers in. Business is not that easy. Utilities have been doing it since I remmember: getting a better deal to switch while lasting customers got rise in price after the cheap period ended. One had to keep hopping from provider to provider to save. Internet, sim deals, bank accounts... and your credit score suffers, but those who understant, those know you are just being savvy. And some will appreciate that.
While I would agree, coupons should also be used to lure customers in. I'm repeating the narrative that the earlier reply (@D.von.N) made, but you get the point. More customers = more taco tuesdays for your business.
Man I feel bad for some of the people who promoted this. The one guy Noodle actually looked through the terms to make.sure they kept things private, was one of the earliest people who got sponsored, and they're not a tech guy at all, they'd never have been able to know this was a thing. Like LTT and others like em are scum for not telling people about this, but the smaller content creators who survived because of the sponsorships don't deserve this or any hate.
Unfortunately, Mozilla isn't long for this world. A court ruled against Chrome paying mozilla to be their primary search engine, which is 80% of their revenue, and the rest of the money is being divvied up amongst Mozilla's dwindling executive board. It's crazy what happens when companies focus more on activism than their primary product.
Another false advertising thing people seem to ignore is the claim that "crypto is untraceable." It's the most traceable thing in existence, literally every transaction is logged.
You should have mentioned Megalag in the video itself rather than a small mention in the description that most people wouldn't read Given that your entire video is solely just repeating his work
I always had the mind set of " when something is too good to be true then there is twist " The internet is place to make profit out of anything from the user : time , info , money even a mindset And the more i send in the internet the more i see it
I like your videos but this one felt way too much copy paste from MagaLag’s video (also compared to other UA-camrs who have since made their own videos). Only the thumbnail was shown but no real attribution imo
You really should have given the guy who broke the story credit before rereading his script for your own youtube video I don't think you'd appreciate it if someone did that to you
Lmao when they started ads on this years ago I thought to myself "cookies are making them money" Yeah turns out it's way worse than that. They're stealing from other cookie providers. As a cookieman, I wholeheartedly deny this as a legitimate business model.
It seems like it's a seller / creators problem. Not a user problem. If it saved a user even $1, then it's done it's job. We, the majority, don't care where the commission goes. I have no doubt they're collecting data on spending habits, but so is every other tech company.
It deliberately lies to it's user base that they get the best offer possible so that they don't go around finding a better deal themselves. How is that not a user problem?
i called it back when people were shilling for it like crazy a few years ago or something, and now this ends up happening. just like the legend from dragon ball had said: *CALLED IT.*
9:00 100% my point,the youtubers who promoted honey didn't even have the decency to look at their FAQ let alone background research which reveals a lot about how much do they care about their audience.
"Everyone" Me a person on youtube. Hold up! Are you imply I believed for even the slightest of moment a for profit entity was going to give me a "Deal" as their expense? Come on that's just insulting! Lol, joking because it takes one hell of a sucker to think something is free from a corporation, no cost is not the same as free.
I am honestly shocked that people didn't understand this to be how honey operated. Did everyone really think they were just trying to get you the best deal? It exists to make money.
How about crediting the person that did the excellent investigative piece exposing honey! U seem to re-sent as you realised this when u clearly saw megalags video, Ure also echoing what penguin and Austin said, Alton they clearly from the outset reference and acknowledge megalag investigative expose
So is JLCPCB a scam too? I've had nothing but a great experience ordering my PCB designs from them, I even started a small business selling some guitar pedals in my local venues lol
it's obviously not fully their fault, but I think this should be a wakeup call for youtubers to not promote just anybody who pays them to their massive audiences.
This is exactly the reason why i'm against affiliate in general. I wont click these links, i'll just go to the site myself without an affiliate link and also clear my cookies.
I love you 4 eye cat man, in the video itself you never gave attribution to the original investigator. You even used the thumbnail and screenshots from the original video itself. It would be nice if you at least linked to the original video in the description instead of just a footnote saying their name
why watch this video instead of the MegaLag one? you said basically the same but worse. I was hoping you would give a different insight or viewpoint, but there was nothing added to the subject. Ah no, ripping other people’s work and putting a link to their channel (not even the video) is not enough
The most scummy thing is Honey advertises "partnerships" where the company can limit the sale percentage. For example a company partners with Honey, Then the company tells Honey "do not show discounts above 10%" So there might be coupons for 15% or 20% off but those coupons won't show on Honey, even if you try to manually add the code.
This scam actually hurts the other creators who didn't partner with honey as well because if any of their subscribers click on their affiliate links, they don't get the money even though they haven't even heard honey's name.
This was such an eye-opener! I’ve always been a bit skeptical about these influencer promotions, but hearing all the details about Honey and how they’re exploiting both consumers and creators really made me rethink everything. It’s crazy how they’re profiting off of data and even hijacking affiliate links. Thanks for breaking this down so clearly. It's a shame that so many people, including influencers, get caught up in these schemes. Definitely need to stay more cautious online!
i was literally like 14-15 when i first saw honey ads and i still felt there was something fishy about it like i thought "how are they making money without ads or purchases?"
as what others said, you should've given megalag credit within the video itself, preferably at the start since he was the one who publicised it (Ik there was a comment and I'm quite sure he gave credit to it within his video which led mega to discover this scam anyways)
Even if it wasn't a scam, using coupons has always been such a small benefit that even if I used one on every single purchase I made I might save enough per year to pay off a speeding ticket
This is totally unacceptable. I will discuss this with my BetterHelp therapist as soon as i get back from visiting my plot of land in Scotland!
Wistfully staring at your fractional share of a piece of art as you ponder the magnitude of this situation
i hope this comment abaut BetterHelp is ironic
@oskark312 don't worry it bleeds irony.
@oskark312 it is
safe trip home, Lord Hectorchkomba7670!
I'm disappointed to find out Honey isn't a Honeypot.
true
Five Eyes must be affiliated ain’t no way!!!!
L(MAOZEDONG) yea
Depends on the perspective, I guess.
Peter The Eal.
"And your really only going to hear about it if the sponsor is scamming the creators as well" this hits hard
Its sooooo true
So tired of all these scumbags, they're so phony on top of everything. Just blocked most of their channels.
@@I-ONLY-BUILD-MECHS-AND-DUSTERS same here
they are not really victims here, they get the sponsorship money.
you're
Yup, the only reason youtubers call it "biggest scandal on yt" is because it hits their wallets, they will shill any garbage service for a pouch of silvers. Trust no one
the thing its scam everyone involve in the chain and even ppl who aren't, it some point this no scam it does to theft/hack
Nearly 10 years ago, "free speech" UA-camrs promoted an app designed to train an algorithm to be more effective at censorship. It was called Candid.
I don't know if this is the biggest scandal but clearly this is a major scam from Paypal who clearly stole commissions from hundreds of youtubers.
They should definitely be sued with a class action lawsuit
Honey is a scam, brought to you by RAID: SHADOW LEGENDS! 🤣
@@Melpheos1er *sad violin noises*
this is why use sponsor block I had no idea honey was running this scam.
Spreading the good word of sponsorblock
Honey has been sponsors for YT channel for yeeeears. You have definitely heard of them.
@@muizzsiddique oh I heard of them I just had no idea they were running a scam because I was using sponsorblock for so long.
I didn't even knew what "Honey" meant in this context lol. Sometimes, ignorance is indeed a bliss.
Great! And now sponsor block has your data?
Never use or buy ANYTHING peddled by UA-camrs
Back in the day, radio presenters pushing Herb-A-Life relentlessly, and later got in zero trouble for pushing the scam weight loss pills for years. Trust very few people.
how about Brilliant sponsor ads
@@SpittingBritTeaEarlGreybrilliant was actually good when I used it a while back, but I'm not sure if it's different now, worth researching if you're actually wondering
I would change that to „never use or buy anything without deeper research“
@@SpittingBritTeaEarlGreythat’s just paying for educational youtube videos
I love how suddenly everyone is talking about Honey after MegaLag’s video. It’s bringing proper awareness to this Honey THEFT scam, and the multiple voices canNOT be silenced!
I’d love to see some proper justice play out!
I thought it was based, fuck influencers
yea I've been a subscriber to megalag for a year now and i love his videos and this one is HUGE .
It probably enraged a lot of youtubers to discover one of their sponsors was stealing their commissions.
Yeah. I'm hoping the video doesn't get taken down, just in case, I downloaded it and this one too.
Paypal needs to get fucked.
If it's free, you are the product.
Buddy, paid products also make you the product.
There is no winning. You just have be be smart enough to do your due diligence.
@@mohammedgodertrue indeed.
Ublock Origin 😅
I tried explaining this to my dad after seeing his Android phone full of adware and shady apps. SMH.
looks like u r a product too cuz u use youtube???
Ngl Paypal doing the ol' switcharoo with affiliate links is so cartoonishly diabolical I can't help but chuckle, makes me wonder how much they've raked in through that method alone.
Love the wording
This is how all voucher/coupon websites have worked since the invention of the cookie. It is crazy how many people are outraged by Honey and not the whole affiliate industry. This must be a US thing
you're probably right
Personally i just never heard about these types of scams/ fraud going around
Sounds like.
To elaborate, I am amazed how so many supposedly-expert tech UA-camrs seem surprised, when this is how affiliate extensions/toolbars/plugins have always worked. They can't do a Honey sponsorship, get paid $3 per install, and then expect to get paid again for Amazon affiliate links in the video descriptions. And what about other creators? Well tough - there can only be one referrer and that's how the affiliate business works. If you don't like it, make your own merch or ask for donations through Patreon or wherever.
In the tier list of UA-cam sponsorship shadiness, I place Honey in D tier. The CSGO gambling sites go in A tier.
@@terrsus at worst it is dark patterns. There are plenty of real scams and fraud in UA-cam sponsor spots. PayPal is an evil, immoral company that needs to be broken up, but this is the least of their crimes.
This is basically just a retelling of MegaLag's video. But at least it's shorter than the original and it's not named "The Honey Situation is Insane"!
Also thumbnail is without a face doing stupid fake expressions, no red circles and no arrows. Basically, one of the best tech news channel on YT, with occasional farming advice video.
PS: Hello, fellow Blarghonite.
>hello fellow redditnite
@@RmFrZQ Get DeArrow, I had no idea how cancerous was the original thumbnail and title before seeing it in this video.
@@RmFrZQ Agreed. Plus this complaint, retelling - that's how the news work, duh
so what. I don't know who you are talking about. And I'm subscribed to this channel. Mental Outlaw wins, MegaLax lost. Get over it.
If it's promoted by big influencers, it's a scam.
facts
You ain't lying
@@SporianSummit No it is not.. get a reality check
@@njpme yes.. they are.. thats outright paranoia 100%
Very bad immature take
This gave me an idea to just become my own affiliate and create a plugin that hijack's everyone else's affiliate links with my own.
I'm nearly certain that's how honey originated.
That's no different then getting a coupon code that wasn't given to you, so long you actually do what's advertised and save people money (which honey does) then I don't see a problem with it.
@@jamesinnitbruv I mean just for my own purposes, but I could probably release a plugin so anyone can replace all affiliate links with their own.
New Villain of UA-cam (red circles and arrow, acrylic paint filter, white eyes)
people did that long ago in 2010.. i did it fulltime actually on a popular tech forum
While vpns don’t exactly protect you from advertisers and hackers, they do protect you from your isp when you torrent stuff.
Yes they have their uses, just their necessity is often overblown
Also for getting around country wide blocks or accessing streaming services that are geo locked
@@jasonoutman420 accessing streaming services that are geo locked is legally equivalent to torrents anyway.
I was hoping you would talk some technical stuff about how they swap the cookie. MegaLag showed Honey opening up a sneaky Chrome tab, that's something I haven't seen before.
That's straight up a malware like behavior, and usually it could instantly trigger the virus protection
Tried to use honey once 10 years or something g like that ago and it didn’t find any coupons so I said this is stupid and deleted. Didn’t know how much of a bullet I dodged there
Yeah same, I also noticed the coupons that it was supposedly trying seemed randomly generated and fake but I had no idea how big of a scam it all was.
Lol real, and it has this goofy animation of "cracking" the codes
LTT not saying a word after they found out is disgusting. Their mods on the LTT forum are banning anyone who calls them out too.
It’s probably part of their deal with Honey that they can’t say anything to be honest
@@omduggineniI find it hard to give LTT the benefit of the doubt these days.
@@omduggineniwdym they can't?
Stopped watching LTT ages ago, I think around the time some scandal happened
Just so you know, they lost money too.
Honestly I'm a little annoyed at this situation, not because Honey is a scam, scams and scammers are a part of life. It's the fact that UA-camrs will reccomend their viewers all this shady shit, "there's no catch!", "it protects your privacy/protects you from hackers!" they will lie to people for money, and sleep soundly at night, but as soon as THEY get fucked over it's something we're all meant to care about.
youtubers try not to be shekel-pilled challenge: IMPOSSIBLE
I am happy that you credited megalag in the description but you realllyyy should've said it in the video as well at the start!
agreed, or make a pinned comment crediting the original video and the channel it's from
Yep, I got to the original video becase somebody just posted the reference in their announcements. Suddenly the hell broke loose and I have seen at least 4 others who jumped on the bandwagon to benefit from years of investigation by the guy. And it is jut the beginning. I wonder when will somebkdy pick up on misleading claims of deleteme and similar services. It is also being pushed down my throat by almost every talking head that accepts sponsors. Annoying.
@@HeidenLam it was obviously not legit and i did aff links fulltime for big money in 2011...
Yes
Totally agreed, It looks shady that he didn't mention him at all in his video. It's really good practice to mention the source of your information.
I learned my lesson several years back concerning influencer-marketed products. I bought RayCons once. I took them out of the box, put them in my ears, and I didn't even get 30 seconds through the song I used to test their fidelity. I put them back in the box and sent them back. The sonic equivalent of breathing swamp gas. I don't know how people can rock those things. You can get 1000x better sounding full-wireless for the same price. RayCON indeed.
Yeap, Ridge wallet is also super overpriced for what it does
I think RayJ or whatever (the guy who started the company) named it raycon as a tongue and cheek thing. He knew you could call it a con and people will still buy it
This is really just a summary of megalag's video right down to the analogy and examples they used. You should have made that clear in the video not just a note in the description
+1
A summary? This is just straight up plagarism
I'm still baffled LTT didn't do an expose, but just stayed quiet.
LTT are at their lowest point in regards to their reputation. They can't afford another public fuckup like this. It's messed up but I wouldn't call their behavior baffling, it's expected at this point. Just avoid them entirely and encourage everyone you know to do the same.
They are not exactly good at apologizing.
Honey is a sneaky with this one, not gonna lie.
I did download it to try it out, but it didn't work. I think I've tried it twice maybe? I couldn't find any of the coupons I said to myself "fuck this, it doesn't work anyway", then uninstalled it.
Honey Shills on their podcasts: "Honey! It's free! You're stupid if you don't get it"
I guess I'm stupid then.
They criticized Mr Beast for his "subscribe for a cookie/car" and here is a literal insult
UA-camrs and podcasters are never held responsible for promoting these scams.
yeah they are lmao
In this case, they shouldn't be. The influencers that promoted Honey were not made aware that it was performing shady stuff until recently. The only team that was aware of it years ago was LTT and they just stopped working with honey and withheld the information and didn't sound the alarm about it.
Copy paste comment that doesn't spply here.
@@_therax LTT should definitly face backlash, for their lack of talking about it ages ago, and not providing good answer to megalag when he asked. I say this as a fan of LTT aswell
@@CentreMetre I agree. LTT has been getting a lot of heat recently lmao. i wonder what issue's going to pop up about them in the coming future.
Shocking revelation! Megacorporations don't have your best interest in mind.
Neither does the government, politicians or 99% of strangers. Welcome to reality.
"But people need coupons to survive"
there are upsides of living under a rock and not trusting sponsorships bulshit :)
Everyone knew Honey was pretty much guaranteed to be mining shopping data, it doesn't take a genius to figure out it was a scam, so you're right that we should be disappointed in creators for promoting it (especially tech channels who should know better). But the extent of the scam is definitely surprising.
I think the shittier part of the affiliate hijacking is it probably didn't even really hurt the people promoting honey as much as the smaller creators who weren't promoting honey, because audience overlap and all. Honey stole basically all affiliate links, even if they didn't have coupons to give or anything else. All without informing the user they were doing this, or giving you lesser coupons. And probably building a gigantic tracking database. And, apparently, giving out coupons that weren't actually supposed to be public in some cases, from the sounds of it.
hey, that last bit is pretty cool
I called this back in 2018. Nobody listened and my tweet was largely ignored. On the record, I don't trust Ryan Hudson or his companies. I'm highly skeptical of the ad blocker Pie. Maybe you could look into this one?
Upper Echolon did that yesterday already. At least he added something new to the discussion unlike this video which is only a lame rehash of MegaLag's investigation. Very disappointed!
As a rule, I never click on something someone is telling me that I need. Especially so called influencers. And I also never click affiliate links of UA-camrs.
Attempt # 9.
Trying to get your attention to check your microphone because your S letters sound like a sword cutting something.
tihi can't unhear it now
I shouldnt have read this 😢 now I cant unhear it ahhhhh
Oh god i hate when that happens in videos
It sounds like a knife cutting paper and I hate that you brought attention to it cause now it's all I hear
I haven't even watched it, after watching the original content yesterday. I am here just for the comments, not expecting to hear anything new here LOL.
It has nothing to do with the video, but I love how 0:27 the coffee is spilled and he just keeps smiling and pretend it didn't happen. Super introvert energy.
it do be like that huh
Your point stands, but isn't that what the tiny little plates those teacups come on are for? Actual question lol I don't coffee 😅
@@skootz24 kinda! But generally, it's the drinker who spills some coffee while sipping, and not the barista lol
i love connecting to sites that start with htps
(i wasn't gonna say it, but when i saw an off-topic comment referring to the same spot in the video, i couldn't help it 😭)
I just bought a jar of honey paying with cash, and I'm pretty sure none of the bees will even see a penny of it, but luckily they are all asleep this time of the year.
Honey scamming before GTA 6 is nasty work
At first I found all this GTA6 stuff annoying, but I'll admit it's starting to make me laugh. 😆
Same@@raumfahreturschutze
Stop it. Get some help.
Somehow, Honey was able scam everyone on the chain:
Product Affiliates (having 100% of commissions stolen by PayPal)
Product Vendors (although not really a scam, but end users pay lower prices for products)
End Users (probably getting spied on and not really getting the best prices)
I think the affiliates that hid discount codes are the most idiotic of individuals, because if you don't want people to get a better discount then...just don't offer that discount? Don't make it a code that would work in the first place, and BOOM, no partnership needed, they're actively hurting themselves. I know they have some unethical logic, but I still want to slam them for their behavior.
Your data is their prize, don't forget! You are just a milking cow here.
Tbh all public coupons are sketchy. Why give discounts openly? Coupons shold be directed to repeat customers.
Or to lure new customers in. Business is not that easy. Utilities have been doing it since I remmember: getting a better deal to switch while lasting customers got rise in price after the cheap period ended. One had to keep hopping from provider to provider to save. Internet, sim deals, bank accounts... and your credit score suffers, but those who understant, those know you are just being savvy. And some will appreciate that.
While I would agree, coupons should also be used to lure customers in. I'm repeating the narrative that the earlier reply (@D.von.N) made, but you get the point. More customers = more taco tuesdays for your business.
Man I feel bad for some of the people who promoted this. The one guy Noodle actually looked through the terms to make.sure they kept things private, was one of the earliest people who got sponsored, and they're not a tech guy at all, they'd never have been able to know this was a thing. Like LTT and others like em are scum for not telling people about this, but the smaller content creators who survived because of the sponsorships don't deserve this or any hate.
but the problem is, where does the money come from that they are sponsoring their shills with?
@@ElusiveEelBro… freaking PayPal owns honey.
8:45 This is scummy behavior, that's why I use the old fashion Firefox.
Unfortunately, Mozilla isn't long for this world. A court ruled against Chrome paying mozilla to be their primary search engine, which is 80% of their revenue, and the rest of the money is being divvied up amongst Mozilla's dwindling executive board. It's crazy what happens when companies focus more on activism than their primary product.
brave is one of the scummiest browsers out there and will constantly lie to consumers
I recommend u try librewolf
I don't get why Brave is so popular anyway
@mangu4558 librewolf is better
Another false advertising thing people seem to ignore is the claim that "crypto is untraceable."
It's the most traceable thing in existence, literally every transaction is logged.
Just never use or buy anything, ever.
Make your own stuff.
Find people that make their own stuff near you.
Give eachother stuff for free.
Escape the need for money.
Hold our politicians accountable with your vote and actually change things. The only way to do this is to not vote for the two parties ever again
You should have mentioned Megalag in the video itself rather than a small mention in the description that most people wouldn't read
Given that your entire video is solely just repeating his work
that description wasn’t even there last night.
Why didn't you link MegaLag who did the actual investigation?
my lightbulb has lit up: MICROSOFT EDGE has the same thing baked in the browser : ((
I always had the mind set of " when something is too good to be true then there is twist "
The internet is place to make profit out of anything from the user : time , info , money even a mindset
And the more i send in the internet the more i see it
I like your videos but this one felt way too much copy paste from MagaLag’s video (also compared to other UA-camrs who have since made their own videos). Only the thumbnail was shown but no real attribution imo
You really should have given the guy who broke the story credit before rereading his script for your own youtube video
I don't think you'd appreciate it if someone did that to you
Read the description fam.
@@Anonymous4045 ..and self admission makes this okay? is your brain working?
Lmao when they started ads on this years ago I thought to myself "cookies are making them money" Yeah turns out it's way worse than that. They're stealing from other cookie providers. As a cookieman, I wholeheartedly deny this as a legitimate business model.
sounds like the perfect time for someone to step up and create an open-source, non-scam honey, which actually works
It seems like it's a seller / creators problem. Not a user problem.
If it saved a user even $1, then it's done it's job.
We, the majority, don't care where the commission goes.
I have no doubt they're collecting data on spending habits, but so is every other tech company.
True, but the title does say that Honey is scamming UA-camrs (their partners) not people purchasing products.
But they don't offer what they say they offer (the best coupons).
It deliberately lies to it's user base that they get the best offer possible so that they don't go around finding a better deal themselves. How is that not a user problem?
I swear I already saw this video from another creator
i called it back when people were shilling for it like crazy a few years ago or something, and now this ends up happening.
just like the legend from dragon ball had said: *CALLED IT.*
Seen lot of thumbnails floating around on recommendation. I only watch Mental Outlaw's take. Shorter and concise.
I've pretty much just stopped listening to anything promoted on UA-cam. In my experience, the best products never have loud affiliate programs.
How are you any different to honey, literally taking megalag content as your own. Next time try just directing people to his vid instead.
9:00 100% my point,the youtubers who promoted honey didn't even have the decency to look at their FAQ let alone background research which reveals a lot about how much do they care about their audience.
If only there was a mantra you could memorise that would guide you away from these kind of cons, but That Would Be Too Good To Be True
Markiplier said he didnt trust honey years ago.
It would've been nice if you also mention the MegaLag video and give him some credit!
"Everyone" Me a person on youtube. Hold up!
Are you imply I believed for even the slightest of moment a for profit entity was going to give me a "Deal" as their expense? Come on that's just insulting! Lol, joking because it takes one hell of a sucker to think something is free from a corporation, no cost is not the same as free.
Moral of the story: If someone on the internet is telling you to buy something, it IS a scam.
No offense, but you are kind of stealing megalag's video word by word without mentioning him a single time in your video
yea that’s what I said! pretty infuriating
i tried honey many years back, it never even provided coupons in my case, and UI is bad too
breaking news: free product which has large advertising campaign turns out to be bad
I am honestly shocked that people didn't understand this to be how honey operated. Did everyone really think they were just trying to get you the best deal? It exists to make money.
You should give credit to the guy who exposed the scam in the first place. You don’t even link him in the description.
For me, it was Bedhead Bernie's tweet from years back that made me avoid using Honey.
none of this is new, why are people now acting surprised? how else did people think they made money?
Did you get to the part about affiliate links yet?
I'm sorry but this video is just plagiarism from MegaLag
Its strange you didnt mention the source in video. I see link in description, but from video its kind of presented like its your findings.
It would be nice if you linked the video that discussed this problem before you. At least including that you used their thumbnail in this video.
Yes
Honey didn't scam anyone, everyone using Honey agreed to everything Honey did.
How about crediting the person that did the excellent investigative piece exposing honey! U seem to re-sent as you realised this when u clearly saw megalags video, Ure also echoing what penguin and Austin said, Alton they clearly from the outset reference and acknowledge megalag investigative expose
So is JLCPCB a scam too? I've had nothing but a great experience ordering my PCB designs from them, I even started a small business selling some guitar pedals in my local venues lol
I don't think so, but maybe overpriced?
I am delighted to hear that the influencers' relentless ass-selling finally backfired!
UA-camrs only talk about other UA-camrs . . . It’s how they keep the gears turning
it's obviously not fully their fault, but I think this should be a wakeup call for youtubers to not promote just anybody who pays them to their massive audiences.
This is exactly the reason why i'm against affiliate in general.
I wont click these links, i'll just go to the site myself without an affiliate link and also clear my cookies.
I love you 4 eye cat man, in the video itself you never gave attribution to the original investigator. You even used the thumbnail and screenshots from the original video itself. It would be nice if you at least linked to the original video in the description instead of just a footnote saying their name
why watch this video instead of the MegaLag one? you said basically the same but worse. I was hoping you would give a different insight or viewpoint, but there was nothing added to the subject. Ah no, ripping other people’s work and putting a link to their channel (not even the video) is not enough
Literally every promoted product I see on UA-cam these days I just assume is a scam.
They are wild damn
Mentioning the source of your material is really good practice....
The most scummy thing is Honey advertises "partnerships" where the company can limit the sale percentage. For example a company partners with Honey, Then the company tells Honey "do not show discounts above 10%" So there might be coupons for 15% or 20% off but those coupons won't show on Honey, even if you try to manually add the code.
Mental Outlaw has been booming over these past few years. I remember being subbed to him when he was under 100k subs. We're on the road to a million!
"...and you're really only going to hear about it, if the sponsor is scamming the creators as well"
Yup. And that's why I'm subbed.
Advertising something through UA-camrs is the best way to discredit your product.
This scam actually hurts the other creators who didn't partner with honey as well because if any of their subscribers click on their affiliate links, they don't get the money even though they haven't even heard honey's name.
This was such an eye-opener! I’ve always been a bit skeptical about these influencer promotions, but hearing all the details about Honey and how they’re exploiting both consumers and creators really made me rethink everything. It’s crazy how they’re profiting off of data and even hijacking affiliate links. Thanks for breaking this down so clearly. It's a shame that so many people, including influencers, get caught up in these schemes. Definitely need to stay more cautious online!
Its not crazy. More common than you realize.
i was literally like 14-15 when i first saw honey ads and i still felt there was something fishy about it like i thought "how are they making money without ads or purchases?"
When I first heard about honey I installed it for about a week, it had no codes or literal 2 year old ones that obviously didnt work
as what others said, you should've given megalag credit within the video itself, preferably at the start since he was the one who publicised it (Ik there was a comment and I'm quite sure he gave credit to it within his video which led mega to discover this scam anyways)
This is not honey, this is high fructose corn syrup with petroleum food dye.
Even if it wasn't a scam, using coupons has always been such a small benefit that even if I used one on every single purchase I made I might save enough per year to pay off a speeding ticket
Still waiting for the Rocket Money video. I don’t trust them whatsoever.
Generally reputable companies don't have to resort to having UA-camrs shill their products
The main thing VPNs protect against is unencrypted DNS requests and HTTP downgrade attacks
UNSUBSCRIBED for plagiarism. Shame. No attribution of MegaLag and his in-depth investigation who did all the work for this video and an 80% word match
I don't get how these channels didn't realise it was "too good to be true" from the start, and simply refuse to work with Honey.