If something advertises on youtube itβs a scam. Simple to remember really.
this post was submitted on 23 Dec 2024
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I don't mind things that are an actual thing to buy. I want to research it first--you can get a better electric razor than Manscaped for not much more--but at least it's clear how they make their money. Honey was obviously getting money from someone other than their users, and that's an immediate red flag.
I and many other people naturally assumed that honey was getting their money from consumer data collection. Which is why I didn't use the service myself. The surprise is the fact that the scam isn't just consumer data collection but actually stealing commissions from content creators as well as using consumers as a gateway to stealing money from businesses that they have contracts with.
Yeah. PayPal bought a coupon browser extension for how much? If the only thing they do is save YOU money, how come they can afford a sponsored segment in a mr beast video?
This isn't even remotely true. There are lots of advertisers and sponsors that aren't scams. But unfortunately our consumer protection laws haven't quite caught up to the digital marketplace. So there is a lot of room on the internet in general for scammy behavior.
As always, it's buyer beware. As well as a big amount of content creator beware as well.
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I said it in another post: if you see a bunch of influencers all suddenly peddling the same stuff, stay away. All of them can be bought.
Or, just don't trust ads period
Do your own research
Do your own research is the famous last coherent phrase of the QAnon crowd. Idk what the answer is but that phrase will forever make me uneasy.
How long are we going to let the far right keep stealing our words? It's a proud respectable cryptocurrency term.
Grifters all the way down then
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Ltt didn't hide shit, they posted it on a public forum
Some very vocal people on Lemmy just love hating on LTT. I don't think this topic was worth them making a main channel video on, I think their forum post was good and I believe they even mentioned this functionality of Honey a few times on the WAN show. It wasn't a secret, and anyone who cared to do in-depth research on a potential sponsor could have found out.
And yet here's the scandal being exposed TWO YEARS LATER. Yeah, LTT couldn't possibly have handled this better... /s
They told everyone and nobody cared, turns out people care if a YouTube video is made framing the same thing differently. Like yeah, Honey's practice is bad for the creator industry, but is it bad enough to bring it back to the people who took their money? No, I don't think so.I think this is more of an example of how easy it is to get the masses angry with a YouTube video than anything. It's good that more people are going to move away from this information harvesting app, but I really feel like the reaction and hatred is overblown and, at least for the hatred towards creators, unwarranted.
The way I see it, people still take money from predatory gambling sites, and if any creator deserves pushback, it's them.
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Yeah, that not nothing but it isn't far off. They have a massive platform. It deserved at least a video telling people about it.
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I never trusted Honey to begin with but this goes far deeper than I ever expected. I always wondered "yeah, but where do they get their money?" I always figured it was just a way to take people's data and sell it to data brokers (which they probably also do, let's be honest) but this is just blatant fraud. Stealing affiliate money from links and having companies pay them to purposefully give out worse coupon codes is just devious through and through. It's basically free money and everybody else, whether influencer or consumer, get fucked over in the process.
Yeah I always wondered what the catch was? The CEO was always posting on Reddit trying to defend honey and how cool they were.
Either way, I never trust any shopping deal plugins. The whole idea of them is sketchy.
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Linus Tech Tips really is scum. Yet more proof of that.
Same person that said ad blocking was the same as piracy.
edit: People downvoting me like I disagreed with him. Just saying how he looks at it. I think itβs a bit of a false dichotomy but they are definitely similar.
Have you ever heard his full stance on the matter? Because he clearly stated that this is not a judgment against using it. Heck, he's been open about having sailed the high seas himself and still doing so for media he physically owns.
It's just that gaining access to media while circumventing the payment (ads in this case) is basically piracy. Which is fair.
Signed, A uBlock User
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Itβ¦is? Youβre copying digital content without paying for it. I use uBlock but I donβt pretend to have the moral high ground.
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Honestly I thought all of this was common knowledge at this point, back when I used Honey (many years ago) I saw its affiliate code in the address bar and thought "huh, that's how they make money"
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A useful question to ask when hearing about a new company is "What's your business model?"
There is no such thing as a free and benevolent product with an advertising budget.
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I thought it was just collecting and selling user data but while I'd bet it's still happening - wow, this is way craftier.
I used honey for a while and it was working great for me with "exclusive" coupons and Cashback and then one time I bough a cellphone that was supposed to have $250 cashback. I did all the necessary steps, read the t&c, took screenshots of the offer and made the purchase. I never got the transaction to appear on their website. Sending emails it trying to contact them was futile (I even made an automatic script to send an email everyday to follow up). Fuck PayPal
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If you're sitting at a poker table and you can't tell who the sucker is, it's you.
Alternately, if you look at an online service and can't tell what the product is, It's you.
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Can we make a version of this add-on that replaces the links with a choice of charity links?
Might as well do some good in the chaos of the internet.