Before I even clicked it I knew there would be no real journalism involved. It's just parroting the video the LegalEagle put out, so if you'd rather give your click to the creator, just watch the Youtube video, and don't bother with the techcrunch "article".
This article credits Legal Eagle, embeds the original, is much shorter to read than an 8-minute video and doesn’t require me to wear headphones. Lemmy is a text based social media so it makes sense to favour text sources. Definitely better than linking to some overloaded Invidious instance which seems to be the norm.
Lemmy is a text based social media
No it is not. It is a link aggregator. Can be text, can be images, can be video, can be news, etc. etc.
As much as I enjoy watching LTT content, I have to speak out about how they realized Honey was fucking them and then said NOTHING to their audience or to other YouTubers. I think that is just plain shitty of them and has put a sour taste in mouth with their content now. If they did say something, I apologize. I just haven’t seen it since the only “social media” I use is this singular one, Lemmy.
He said on the WAN show that when they dropped Honey a few years ago, the news was going around all over creator circles and a lot of other creators dropped them then too. And they didn't make a video because at the time only the affiliate yoinking was known, and the audience would probably call them shills for making a video about how they're losing money due to their audience saving money.
I don't think his defense is 100% airtight, but it's useful context.
Linus also repeatedly says LMG is not your friend. He knows he fucks the audience over sometimes and wants to absolve himself of it but he's got 100 people on payroll that he needs to capture the surplus labour from.
I mean, is it saving users money though? It’s not, the charge is that it’s just taking other affiliate code out of the link and replacing it with its own. And just doing it to small creators? I don’t know that much about it, maybe that last part isn’t true. But it’s not saving them money that’s the problem, but replacing affiliate links with their own. And they’re saying that it’s just that they were the “last click,” even if it was from an affiliate site. Meaning they probably put it in their code somewhere to briefly load honey looking for “deals,” meaning they were the last one to redirect the click and then they get the money.
Will be interesting to see how they were doing it.
Honey would look for coupom codes, and sometimes it would find them, it wasn't always, but also wasn't never, so yes, they were "saving money" for the user as far as people knew at the time. After MegaLag's video we know that the whole "find all available and working coupons to guarantee the best deal" was horseshit, and they were in partnership with business controlling the whole thing, but back when LTT and other creators dropped Honey, that part wasn't known yet, just that they poached affiliate links. Which is very scummy, but likely not illegal.
I dunno. Because when creators are pushing those affiliate links, they’re offering discounts. That’s why their users go there. And if honey was giving them a bigger discount, I’m sure that’s not illegal. But if it was just poaching the 10% 94 whatever the creator was already offering, giving them still 10%, but taking that “last click” because it checked?
Who knows, the company is bigger and has PayPal at its back. So might makes right in US law. I’m sure that will be the outcome. But I’ve been surprised before.
Affiliate links generally have nothing to do with discounts. Coupon codes do, and custom shop urls also often do, but I don't think those were poached by honey, as they require manual input. Many creators just have affiliate links from amazon (for example) where they just list tools/stuff they used in their videos under the description and you can buy stuff at no extra cost and support the creator. You can also buy the same stuff for the same price by just going to Amazon, and the creator gets nothing. E.g. LTT could have a pc build video and list all the parts on newegg with their affiliate links, they don't need any special partnership for the video, just to be part of neweggs affiliate program. This is hugely important for smaller content creators that don't have the pull to get partnerships.
Spineless tech tips
I mean it seems totally on brand for Linus, especially after auctioning off 1 of 1 prototypes he promised to give back months ago. Only to hide behind the fact the auction was for charity.
That one looks like an honest mistake.
The obvious contempt linus showed for the sloppy prototype and its extortionate cost is an aggravating factor however.
Hah, yeah I guess he does own goal to protect others often.
That's an egregious mistake of a logistics employee wrongly asset tagging a prototype, ending up creating a huge controversy. Linus never named the employee and took all the heat on himself even though the situation had nothing to do with him.
Making a big deal out of Honey taking creator's money would again move all the heat on him while warning other creator's. But I think it would go just as bad.
I don't enjoy watching ltt anymore since a good few years, but I'm still going to come to their defence :)
They discussed dropping Honey on their forum in march 2022: "We ended the partnership with Honey due to the way their service interacted with affiliate links. Essentially, if someone clicked on a affiliate link (For example, one of ours below in the video description on YouTube), and then if they "use honey" and search for a deal, Honey will override that tracking link even if they don't find you a deal. ".
https://linustechtips.com/topic/1415146-weekly-sponsorship-suggestioncomplaint-thread-feb-28-2022/
When they defended themselves against the recent accusations, that they didn't make enough noise when dropping Honey in 2022, their defence was that they thought that only creators were disadvantaged (a few 100 people?). They claim to have been unaware that the users of Honey (the hundreds of thousands of LTT viewers) were being disadvantaged as well. They also seemed to be unaware that Honey's behaviour is likely illegal, at least LTT made no mention on the legality of it. https://therecenttimes.com/news/linustechtips-addresses-megalags-honey-allegations-defends-transparency Which checks out with their 2022 post.
If they had known that the users of Honey were being bamboozled as well, I'm sure that they would have made a video about it. But making a complaint video to basically say that an ex sponsor was stealing some of their marbles, might have given a bad look. + given more publicity to Honey, which LTT probably didn't want to happen.
So the scenario is that they know Honey is losing them money, but it's saving user's money by finding them great deals (since that part of the controversy wasn't known at the time).
And you are proposing they make a video complaining about it. A big YouTuber millionaire telling people "hey, I know this extension is making you money, but please consider not using it because we are profiting off of our affiliate links less when you do and our profits are more important than your savings".
How do you think that would go? We all know how such a video would be received.
I think they talked about it on WAN show and said that other creators already knew which is why you haven't really seen Honey ads anymore even before the recent video came out and they didn't know about the consumer issues so they didn't think it warranted a video.
Reminds me of Opera GX with their sponsors and everyone used their browser.
The very first time I saw an ad for Honey I knew there had to be a catch. Nothing is ever free.
It wasn't immediately obvious how they were going to make money, though. I figured they'd just sell gather and sell user data. I had completely forgotten about affiliate links. But they probably also sell your data for good measure.
The only thing truly free are those little pencils at IKEA.
Those are priced into the products IKEA sells.
I only go there for the free pencils and make my furniture out of the pencils. Checkmate
There are plenty of free things on the Internet. You're commenting on a free social network.
I pay $100/month for internet access.
Lemmy may be free to access, but certainly not free to host. Am I paying for it personally? No, but someone is.
You also don't see Lemmy paying hundreds of YouTubers and influencers for ad spots.
Saved you a click
Among other accusations, MegaLag said that if a YouTuber or other creator promotes a product through an affiliate link, if the viewer has installed Honey, the extension will surreptitiously substitute its own link when the viewer makes a purchase — even if Honey didn’t provide any discounts. That means Honey, not the creator, receives the affiliate revenue for the transaction.
If they'd just been a little less greedy, and only inserted their affiliate link for purchases where none was originally present, and actually provided the service they advertised rather than 'partnering' with merchants to provide worse coupons, they'd probably never have gotten caught and if they had, nobody would have cared. Could have skimmed a significant but lesser amount forever. But no, they had to go full on villain, and here we are.
I agree that Honey is a sleazy extension, but should I be worried that if they lose, it will set a bad precedent? From the video, the Honey extension works by injecting a Honey referral code into all online shopping transactions, possibly overwriting whatever influencer referral code the user was under. If Honey loses, the court decision is likely to say that an extension creator is liable if they tamper with referral codes and tracking links.
This will be a problem for privacy extensions that strip out tracking cookies and referral URLs, since they are also messing with influencer attribution, though not for profit but at the request of the user.
That makes no sense. The problem is not that an extension is tampering with tracker links, it is that it is falsely attributing itself as a sales representative.
Not a lawyer but I think the fact that honey profited, like, a lot from this is a key factor. From my understanding it's hard to say what they didn't wasn't straight up theft. What's more, they lied about what they were doing so the consumer was unaware of the 'product' they were getting. So while I get your concern, I wouldn't be too worried about precedent here. It's less 'this should be made illegal!' and more 'they def committed several actual crimes'
In such case, my opinion would be that referal stripping should be OK. It is the customer choice, even if automated, and the extension clearly tell what he does. You can see it, using the metaphor used in the video exposing the problem, as just not giving the referal card the store salesman gave you.
In the case of Honey, they do it behind the customer back, and the original video metaphor is quite right. They could at least ask i f the user wish to attribute the sale to Honey instead of whatever influencer/website originally pointed you to the product, but they don't.
Nah, honey was marketed as a coupon tool without mentioning the referral manipulation it did that is its actual business model. Those privacy extensions just need to call out that they remove referral trackers too and everything is fine with them.
Not a lawyer and haven't seen the lawsuit but I've watched a lot of legal eagle and other lawyers and I suspect it's not about them manipulating codes. I also doubt this is the sort of case trying to set a precedent in any legal sense.
Likely it's just boring fraud because they deceived content creators and users with lies to make money.
A different company doing the same thing but being honest might be unethical and terrible but probably wouldn't be sued.
Honey has in its terms of services that you accept not to take part in a class action lawsuit and favor arbitration. It seems like these kind of clause is enforceable usually so I'm curious to see how Legal Eagle will navigate the issue.
Edit: Either the creators sue Honey and they will argue it is not illegal to poach affiliate links because they follow the "last click" rule that is standard (it's just that they pushed it to the extreme).
Or its the users that are scammed because they were told the best coupon would be used. But if it's the users, they are under the EULA and should have to comply with the no class action rule.
I'm not a lawyer but this is how I understand the setup for this trial to be.
According to Legal Eagle's video, Honey could be pocketing affiliate link money from creators that had never even anything to do with them.
It's installed on viewer's side, so it makes sense.
I'd also say there are probably limits to what you can enforce arbitration for, especially if you outright lied to your customers, but I am not American and I have no idea how irredeemably fucked up your customer protection laws are.
Youtubers who had their affiliate links hijacked aren't subject to the EULA.
MegaLag has other videos coming. I would assume Honey is also selling a shit ton of purchasing behavior data
I always assumed that was their business model. Can imagine that car content and shopping habits are valuable af.
In this case the class action would be youtubers and other content creators not users of Honey.
The class is people that use referral codes as an income source, so not the users that would have been subject to the terms of service.
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
