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There are loads of voucher code type sites (UK) which literally never have working codes but open the site you want, I’m guessing it’s the same as this, they are just there to get you to click
This is INSANELY predatory. Great investigation, every youtuber who promoted this should make updates to tell consumers what is actually under the hood. We’ve been sold a lie. “It’s free; it’s the best deal” -It’s not the best deal, and it’s stealing from the ppl who actually bring traffic. Can’t wait to see the rest!!!!
Loved how you released during Christmas when these tossers are all on holiday and they can only do limited damage control, and best, discussion around the holiday dinner table and parties will be talking about this. Genius level move in addition to epic research. New sub
Markiplier was right all along LMAOOOO I remember him saying he won't accept honey sponsorships because he just thinks FREE MONEY IS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE AND HE DIDN'T UNDERSTAND HOW THEY MADE MONEY FROM IT
I didn’t even know about Markiplier but I felt the same way in a general sense. I just have an aversion to browser extensions overall. Too scammy. If it’s not clear what your incentives are for providing me the extension, I assume there’s something shady going on.
Yeah, this is classified as malware. If a program does something without your consent and isn't something you'd approve of, it's mal(icious) (soft)ware!
I downloaded honey once years ago just to see if it worked, and immediately I realized I saved more money manually searching for coupons. At the time I thought it was just ineffective but after your video I realize now that it was intentional. Really mind-blowing, you did great work on this video fantastic job 👏
@@admiralkaedenooo but Markiplier said he liked it and he was paid $3000 to say so, why would he lieeee? 🥺 Clarification: I'm talking about sponsorships in general, not Honey. People don't buy sponsored products cause they're good quality, they buy it cause Wendigoon said he liked it, and why would he lie? After all, he was paid to say it
well technically in this case advertisers of said products being bought were the ones getting shafted. But i still 100% agree with the fact you should be weary of any free services being used. If you can't figure out how they're making money, it's likely a lot more deceptive than you think.
Truly free software, where the user is in control of the software and has the freedom to modify it, is quite common and is a counterexample to that quote.
@@JakeSkillman In the video he details how Honey enters paid deals with the retailers to actually suppress the best coupon codes instead of what it claims to do, which is find the best coupon codes available.
@JakeSkillman Honey gives you worse coupons then you wpuld get if you searched yourself. Honey tells you something is the best deal when its not but rather they are making money because of commissions from their partners. Essentially telling you it's the best deal when you could have found a better deal paying less
I will be honest here, this video popped up on my youtube page and I was a bit skeptical that this video from a creator I had never seen before would turn out to be clickbait. Boy was I wrong. Honey is vile. Bad all around. Thanks for your investigation! Subscribed!
I admit the thumbnail is a little attention grabbing in the bad way, feels like farming and made me avoid it for days. But the video is excellent and I concede that the thumbnail is just playing the algorithm game and that's worth it to get this out there
yeah i'm fairly sure paypal bought honey so they could use it to gather data from rival payment processors. no matter what payment method you use, if you use honey, paypal knows about that sale
Same with MrBeast, I watched an old video years ago and he was like "They use new tech to make money faster to give YOU better deals" yeah right, new tech of stealing other's money!
why would anyone in their right mind even listen to influencers or even click any link they provide, or any affiliate link for that matter when i'm not getting paid a penny to click on it? i dont trust anyone's link. it could be malicious for all i know. i go directly to the source and search. and why use honey when Rakuten has been around for years and actually pays AND sends confirmation emails with the dollar amount being deposited to your account? because some influencer said so? the same influencers that fall off of cliffs taking selfies? LOL
So Honey: Steals revenue from the businesses Steals referrals from the promoters And steals data from the users as well? I'm surprised it took this long for us to hear about all of this
Yes it is predatory, don't get me wrong I don't defend Honey, tried it once around 2020ish, but didn't like it. Please don't think that those "Businesess"/"Creators" didn't received plenty of money to advertise Honey, regardless of how big or small they are, so yeah they lose some money, but I can assure you most creaters were compensated handsomely if they have at least basic knowledge in marketing. Also I've almost never seen a Creator mentioning that the provided links include affiliate codes and that they will receive some % of the purchase. I think everyone should take marketing class, or at some point of their life get familiar how marketing works.
I installed it for a few months and realized it was useless. It never found a coupon, NEVER. So I removed it. I knew it was a scam but didn't know they were doing this. WOW. Great work!
Yep, and when I had ads on TH-cam, Better Help was the sponsor half the time. It's as if we got collective amnesia and forgot how shady that business was
You have to be a real muppet to actually take ads seriously on this site. I'm more mad at the "content creators" than Honey. They do the exact same thing except Honey doesn't steal nearly as much of your time.
Advertising honey is not the same as better help tbf. Like the creators are being stolen from and don’t know that the audience is being stolen from aswell. Betterhelp tho just shows who likes a check simply because of the amount of bad publicity it has
Well of course - Honey is stealing from influencers, marketplaces and consumers, not from Google. Google is in the ad selling business - blocking ads affects their bottom line.
The point of the video wasnt just that it was stealing data though, its actively stealing money everytime you use it if you use an affiliate code. That means its active right now and still making money. @Squidom_
@Sayori393 The influences got scammed too though. I think ultimately, a lot of them are kind of just careless about ads. Love a lot of these TH-camrs but seeing some of them evolve from just selling VPNs that don't work to shit like banks and therapy is a little alarming, certain things need a bit more thought put into them than just wanting to save some money using a link from an influencer
There are apps with 4,5 stars that have mostly 1 and 2 star reviews. Its the same om IMDB, stuff get 1 star, yet they ignore them at gives the stuff 8 stars.
Your analogy that explains how Honey is basically a predatory sales associate who hangs out at the register & hands out his own business cards was PERFECT.
yup if you didnt know, Jesus will fulfill you more than anything in this world, I speak from experience (from when i did Romans 10:9-13), he loves you and wants to be in a meaningful (not romantic) relationship with you. :) “that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed. For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” Romans 10:9-13 KJV “and saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.” Mark 1:15 KJV If you want proof that Jesus and the Bible are true look a documentary called “Ron Wyatt discoveries 2022” on TH-cam and a TH-cam channel called Expedition Bible. They both examine archeological sites and discoveries that prove the Bible, and even reference secular sources. (Just don’t convert to 7th day Adventism after watching the documentary) And lastly if you don’t know the gospel and want to be saved search up “abc’s of Salvation Teenmissions” on Google and it should be the first or second result. When you click on it read the whole thing, and do what it says and have faith in Jesus while you are doing it, do not doubt, and if it is hard for you to do what it says, ask Jesus to help you, have faith that he will, and he will. God Bless :)
I was even more amazed that he made $35 on 1 VPN purchase. No wonder every TH-camr is trying to push for VPN sales its basically a gold mine as far as affiliate payouts go.
Well in our current world VPN is necessary. Ppl rarely change their VPN service. So they get influencers incentives to promote them. They want as many of the new users as they can get
That must be an interesting job! My local paper occasionally posts ads for a PI service in the classified section and I've always wondered what it's like day-to-day. Never had any reason to hire one but when I was a kid reading Raymond Chandler it seemed like a exciting career choice!
I just redeemed over $30 in cash back from honey to paypal off 2 purchases. Honey is only good if you know how to use it properly. Coupons are usually a scam they don't work. I only go for cash back purchases when I use honey.
It used to work better because online retailers were worse about tracking their own coupon codes. It's like the old websites for finding coupons used to be pretty effective as well. You would find half off birthday coupon codes that would work all year etc. Now? Yeah they cleaned that up.
I actually got probably like $80 in cash back from offers last year. I used their "offers" for stuff I wanted to buy anyways, and got the cash back deposited back to my PayPal account as cash, so it did work. Haven't used it in months, and just uninstalled it recently because the intrusive popups got annoying. After watching the video, no chance I'm ever trying it again lol
This is absolutely one of the hardest hitting well made videos on TH-cam and I'm super embarrassed to have promoted them and see my name on those lists. This video is about to change things for the better and I will do everything in my power to spread the word and help the cause!
The problem is that there are multiple products that influencers peddle without knowing what they are. The numerous VPN ads, for example, is particularly galling: yet another product that hoovers data from unsuspecting members of the public. But dozens of folks still promote them. Do you?
Just commenting for engagement. I always felt like Honey's claims were too good to be true, but a part of me still wondered if I was missing out. So grateful to know my gut reaction was correct. Thank you for delving deep into this issue and caring enough about those affected to spread the word.
The golden rule of "stay away from anything advertised on TH-cam" is still going strong. Literally every single sponsor eventually gets exposed for some really shady business practices or for being an outright scam.
*Revelation 3:20* Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. HEY THERE 🤗 JESUS IS CALLING YOU TODAY. Turn away from your sins, confess, forsake them and live the victorious life. God bless. *Revelation 22:12-14* And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.
I was always wondering how does a free browser extention company make money themselves if it's all free, but didn't think it would get this diabolical. Thank you for doing a great work uncovering all of this, it's beyond crazy.
I hadn't watched the video. I've used honey only as a spot check for codes then deleted right after. Maybe tried it 4 times with no success and never turf it again
The wondering how something free could make money is the reason I never downloaded it, but prior to this video I just assumed it was massive data harvesting (Chrome extensions can have scary levels of access + malware potential). This is worse
I always assumed they'd make it by gathering your data and selling it or by getting a comission. I didn't expect though that it would delete the referrals of the people who initially promoted a product to you lol.
I always knew something was sketchy. A business model where you see customers benefit more than the company itself is sure to be a scam! Great investigation, we really need to support content like this.
This actually makes so much sense. I myself have seen a decline in affiliate link sales even with an increasing number of clicks. So disappointing. And creators have no real way of finding out how much has been stolen from us without websites giving up the information, if they even keep record of it.
Rule of thumb: if something says it will get you free or easy money, it is a scam. Remember that money has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere will always be the consumers.
Well, people publish free open source code online as a community; that which is actually free. Use as you will, Read as you will, Try at your will. Sharing coupons is not too insane of an idea, it could easily be done on a subreddit or a github repo. Where honey got money to finance itself and ads, was NOT from the coupons, it was from stealing affiliate credit. If it was not donated to the public on a public repo/forum, it is not likely free. They could totally make an open source, community contributed, Honey-like extension, where it relied entirely on user submission. This would be good, and it would be "free coupons" that people shared.
@@phimuskapsiwho is being defrauded? The product works exactly as advertised. Is it good? No. But what do you expect from a product whose main selling point is "free money"
This is amazing. You did a great job finding and exposing the truth about Honey, and trying to deliver justice. I look forward to seeing more on this situation
I was telling my dad when I was younger that we should get honey for free money. He said no because big companies always have something in it for them... He was right
Your father is a wise man. You should tell him about what's happening with honey, show him this video and then compliment him on being a wise father because of what he said back then. Trust me when i say this, he would appreciate it a lot.
@Randomcrap4uo you are not just saying, you are laughing... also for you it is 4 dollars but for the guy who sent the donation it is 100 czech coronas, which is way more when compared to average wage in Czech Republic than 4 dollars compared to average wage in the US
simple rule of thumb I follow- The harder it's pushed on this platform (advertising, sponsorships, etc.), the higher likelihood that it is a scam, or at the very least, incredibly predatory. (Looking at you, Raid: Scam Legends)
approving ads saying this is the best deal you'll find on the internet then deliberately withholding the best deal is THE DEFINITION of false advertising
@@Max-me9ol Literally we Americans owe the EU so much for inadvertently helping protect consumers more than our snail government ☠ we were having some tiny progress with finally at least having a competent person in charge of the FTC but unfortunately we're losing her in January for a guy who doesn't prioritize consumers so we're cooked again
False advertising is only a crime if someone can afford to sue, and only bad for a company if someone sues and gets more money out than the false advertising made. EU regulators are basically the only party in the west that can be that someone in both instances, unless severe health outcomes are involved.
Holy crap this is insane. I never installed Honey because the business model did not pass the sniff test for me. Like it was never clear how Honey make their money so I assumed it had to be something sketchy. This explains everything and I hope they go the way of BonziBuddy.
I just assume that the more content creators who are stumping for a product or company, the bigger a fraud that product or company will turn out to be. That caution hasn't let me down once in all these years. There is zero difference between a content creator making an ad for something and any other form of commercial. It's just another advertisement, full stop. People really need to get over this fantasy that content creator's inherently have a clue, let alone always have their best interests in mind. There is no universe where I'd let a random app hunt for coupon codes for me, let alone just because someone whose videos I enjoy was paid to sell the service to me.
I've been saying for years that there's no way data collection isn't part of their model, because there's no other way a model like this *can* make money. People called me an idiot, because their FAQ says they don't collect data. Turns out that not only was i right, but they're also just poaching free money from other destinations on top of that.
I assumed they were an advertising company. Get an extension that's allowed to know what you are buying, from where, and what links you followed to do it, then sell that information for targeted marketing. They probably _do_ that too, but this is so much worse.
Things are about to get real as the top 1% of 1% of TH-cam creators are now doing reactions to this video, sending viewers to watch this video. Also, in less than 24 hours, the top Google search results for Honey have gone from all but one negative link to the complete opposite. You did good, and are almost certainly on the nice list this year.
A big thing was him pointing out the top TH-camrs in the video. Soft handedly forced them to make a video or look complicit in the scam. Made a lot easier since many of them are victims of the scam.
Scammers are the ultimate bottom-feeders of humanity, thriving on deceit and feeding off the pain of the innocent, proving that their moral void is deeper than any pit of greed or cruelty imaginable.
@MrJones-wk7kt It's almost funny how much better we all could be if they just... didn't exist. Obviously, society still has *_plenty_* of other problems, but fraudsters man...
i tried it before it was being sponsored by youtubers waaaaay back in its first few years and it was so incredibly useless. so every time i saw a youtuber promoting it and saying it saved them money i KNEW i couldn’t trust them
So glad I listened to my gut on this. I was suspicious too. Its not within human nature to want to help people to that level. The still small voice within never lies
Same, used it maybe 2-3 times and always kept it disabled. Browser extensions are scary af, we basically allow them access to all of our browsing data.
@@arturohernandez5509 it weird that you say that because when I used it a few years back, I did get some great deals through them? That basically never happens anymore.
*The crazy thing is, I noticed Honey stopped finding good codes years ago, probably when PayPal bought them, maybe even before that. Now it's starting to make sense.* This is disgusting and Honey has been deleted AND "REPORTED FOR ABUSE" upon uninstall. I knew their business model made 0 sense. Well, now it makes sense.
I have used it and you are right, it did work years ago but everytime I have used it I have never got a discount, in fact, like the video said, just googling discounts worked better.
Doesn't matter, Google owns paypal and paypal owns honey. So they are all the same company, and will never remove the extension from the Chrome store. I recommend everyone switch to Firefox.
Years ago I tried it, and it never found any deals, even then. But like others I thought they just sell marketing data. Never would have thought it would be such a level of fraud.
@@superjke718One does not exclude the other. Hate to play advocate of the devil, but the genius of this scam lies 100% in the simplicity of it. There's a reason it remained virtually undetected for 5+ years.
I blame us as humans for lacking enough curiosity to check for the basic loopholes and for inadequate surface-level tech knowledge. PayPal fully deserved fooling it's consumers, including me. Let alone the thousands of influencers. But I also believe people usually assume the product is safe, since opaque fraud isn't something cooperation's usually do to exploit it's consumers, the other (I don't wanna complete this comment).
@@superjke718 no its actually pretty impressive and deceptive lmao. The scam at its root core is basic though which is what you're probably referring to
Nah, these influencers deserve getting scammed out of their money. you think they care about us? G fuel, factor, raid shadow of legends, raycons, you think they use these products? at the end of the day all they care about is money not giving you the viewer genuinely good product's so i say screw them, happy the lost money out of it.
I’ve been using Honey for years and probably used 1 or 2 coupons from it and never got any gold and was just sitting there in my extensions. I’m glad this video reminded me to delete it.
I will have to say that I have used Honey and it has been good to me. I remember they had some kind of deal where if you bought a Phone and a plan from AT&T you'd get like 6,000 honey gold for free. At the time my IPhone 7 had just broken so I bought an AT&T Cellular Flip IV with a plan for $72 and was able to redeem the 6,000 honey gold which was equivalent to $60 in Giftcards and I could pick what store. So I used it at Walmart which to my surprise actually worked. I also remember I once bought a K&N cone filter for a 2006 Nissan Sentra I had and when I checked out I was saved about 20 dollars from the asking price of about 55 dollars.
Class action lawsuit payouts, unless you are the lawyers, aren’t worth the checks they’re printed on unless serious permanent physical harm can be determined
2:45 I liked when he said khoney instead of honey; referring to the jews who use kh a lot like Khamas instead of Hamas. He needs to be careful, the Mossad can get to him easily.
I don't use it, but I learned a lot from this video. this should be regulated, and the worst of these practices should be criminalized. this makes me so angry
The best way to describe honey is the word parasite, it steals the commission at the last moment while doing nothing to get the customer to buy, it's so lazy
You can apply the same logic to the TH-camrs that shiII these scams... But they're the "victims" because they didn't get to steal a percentage of sales to a site/company they have nothing to do with. No honor amongst thieves.
@@jeanchampelovier2323 Ads don't belong on TH-cam. People don't want to sit through ads. TH-cam should be for the people, by the people. Ads are a waste of time, electricity, and bandwidth. In fact, you can easily argue ads are bad for the environment. If you rely on link referrals to make a living, that's user error. You're essentially crying about who gets to steal a percentage of the sales to a given site.
I never understood how a free extension was able to afford so many promotions on such large youtube channels, and always stayed away from it due to that. Thank you for finding the answers to my concerns!
honestly as a cybersecurity engineer/researcher i am ASTOUNDED by the straight up editing of in browser cookies. people need to stay away from browser extensions as it is literally impossible to scope permissions.
They're not strictly "editing" cookies are they? The new tab in the background would surely Set-Cookie from the originating domain with their affiliate code?
@brentp0 this is exactly what's happening. Given the "last click wins" model, honey fabricates this last click on checkout. That's the only reason the background tab opens. If they could edit cookies, they wouldn't need that tab in the first place Apart from that I do endorse the advice to vet extensions as thorough as possible before installing, even (or maybe especially?) if all your favourite content creators recommend them
@@brentp0 The cookie belongs to the retailer, and gets edited every time you enter the site via a link that contains an affiliate code. Honey opens the new tab as if you clicked a link with their code. Nothing shady, as far as the retailer is concerned
Some individual maybe have found out, but the problem is they know how to show this question on public or discovery enough evidence to show to raise a question.
It has been known for awhile and a ton of privacy advocates have flagged the extension as incredibly invasive. It is surprising that it took this long for someone to make a video that makes it to trending though as it has always been an open secret as to how absolutely terrible honey is.
They have been doing this very successfully for a long time. Everyone who has an online retail business and runs their own affiliate program knows how they operate, as we have to make the decision whether to partner with them or not. Often, we also have to be strategic to prevent our best coupons are not visible to them, such as employee discount codes and ‘friends and family’ discount codes. I’ve personally avoid working with any companies that have browser add-ons. And also avoid working with coupon sites, as they are also in the business of hijacking commissions. I prefer affiliates who add value are the ones to get paid the commission. It’s tough for legitimate affiliate marketers these days. They are losing commissions to browser ads-ons, coupon sites and cashback platforms. Plus some retailers pay out less (or nothing) if PPC is a touchpoint within the customer journey. Many retailers will also pay less if the customer is a return customer (which is out of the affiliates control).
When I saw influencers promoting Honey, I just assumed that they were scraping their users data and making their profit that way but this scheme is beyond my wildest dreams!
I am really annoyed now. I never use apps that "save" me money, so I would have never installed this app. However I *do* use Paypal. It is very annoying to learn that they are, in fact, not a reputable company but a bunch of scammers.
I thought the exact same thing at first but when I saw a Honey sponsorship on every one of the biggest tech youtubers, I didn't understand how they were making enough to afford all those sponsorships. Websites already sell you're shopping data so it's not like you can make that much off it.
Yes I’m smart ! This is a better explanation my only one was saying they felt so sus and annoying every time a TH-camr would promote honey. Honey was getting too comfortable with their repetitive promotions and I was sick of it.
paypal has always been up to shady and deceptive shit and this doesn’t surprise me from THEM, but it is absolutely insane that it’s taken this long to be uncovered.
@@jstewart627I’m not sure that it was mentioned that it changes your affiliate link, rather that it swaps the tracking cookie during checkout. Whether that happens 100% of the time, randomly or under certain conditions is not clear given what was provided in this video. Anyhow, I have no idea about honey but just wanted to point out that technically you’re referring to something else.
"free money" is a phrase everyone should recognise as an immediate scam. there is always something going on in exchange for that money. "Free money" is simply not a thing, it never has been in the history of ever and never will be for the rest of time. remember, people, if something is "free", you're the product
HOLY this would explain why i lost all my sponsors on my gaming channel because i couldnt get ANY affiliates even with 700,000 views a video. Honey caused me to go back to work for minimum wage when i was averaging millions of views a month. that is crazy. i cant believe this i promoted gamersupps for YEARS on my channel, got them easily 50m views across my videos. only to be paid just $100 at the end of it. This would explain that at the very least. all of my affiliates were getting sniped by honey. i am gonna puke edit: asked gamersupps about my lifetime statistics. 50,000,000 views netted me 63 impressions on my link (im assuming these are users without honey at that time) and 3 total sales. on 50M views. im sorry but thats just not statistically reasonable unless someone was stealing my affiliates OR i was faking my views. which i was not. unlucky i guess. missed out on millions potentially.
If a company has tens of millions of dollars spent on ads and you don't understand how they can make that money back, it should always raise suspicion. I've always been suspecting Honey, so thank you for finally bringing the truth to light.
Everyone knew they were selling user data. The scam is that they don't actually provide the best discount codes and that they steal the affiliate revenue from their affiliates
Meanwhile BetterHelp: Everyone knows we're Satan himself, but we have so much blood money from exploiting mentally ill and vulnerable people influencers still sign the long term deal with the devil to promote us.
I can only agree. If a company claims to give you something for free there's always a catch. But Honey seems to be way worse than i thought, i assumed they just collect data of all their users.
Remember to never buy a product from a tech review channel that has an affiliate link because that means they were paid by the company to get you to buy the product. So their review isn't trustworthy
He didn’t actually do anything though, there was no journalism, it’s just outrage bait stretched out long enough to please the algorithm. He thesis doesn’t even make sense as anyone who has worked commission sales knows that this is just how it works
Honestly, I'm glad this happened. Influencers have been promoting bad products for years either because of bad ethics or simple nativity. Either way, they are making a huge disservice to their loyal audiences by not researching the brands they promote. Hope they start researching their sponsors better to serve their audiencies better, now that they are being targeted too and not only the lay man (which speaks volumes about them, to be honest). Anyway, thank you Honey.
You cannot imagine how often I thought that about the clowns who are still promoting RAID Shadow Legends. Having played the game for way too long myself, I know that most of the stuff they claim is either plainly untrue (i.e. them playing themselves) or highly misleading.
@@paulweston8184It does not even find the best coupons. Not only scamming influencers but also you. If you watch the end of the video, it seems that Honey also inflates prices.
WOW! Actual investigative journalism, CNN and the old grey lady haven't been doing that for decades! Hope you get the accolades my dude; you got my sub.
I saw that was being pushed heavily recently, and I got immediately suspicious. At this point I'm questioning if Raid: Shadow Legends was a scam or not
Honey was founded in November 2012 by entrepreneurs Ryan Hudson and George Ruan. Pie adblock About page: "Message from Pie founder, Ryan Hudson, who previously created Honey: I've assembled a team of some of the most creative people that built Honey to invent new ways to share more of the advertising pie with you." LOLOL George Ruan is still CEO/President of Honey.
This is unbelievable. Truly unbelievable. That there is more to expose beyond what this video has already covered is insane. Definitely going to be there for the next video.
What's unbelievable about it? It's American rich people hurting good people and stealing their wealth. This is the least surprising thing ever, the rich people are our fucking enemy.
Jesus will fulfill you more than anything in this world, I speak from experience (from when i did Romans 10:9-13), he loves you and wants to be in a meaningful (not romantic) relationship with you. :) “that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed. For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” Romans 10:9-13 KJV “and saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.” Mark 1:15 KJV If you want proof that Jesus and the Bible are true look a documentary called “Ron Wyatt discoveries 2022” on TH-cam and a TH-cam channel called Expedition Bible. They both examine archeological sites and discoveries that prove the Bible, and even reference secular sources. (Just don’t convert to 7th day Adventism after watching the documentary) And lastly if you don’t know the gospel and want to be saved search up “abc’s of Salvation Teenmissions” on Google and it should be the first or second result. When you click on it read the whole thing, and do what it says and have faith in Jesus while you are doing it, do not doubt, and if it is hard for you to do what it says, ask Jesus to help you, have faith that he will, and he will. God Bless :)
Damn I always just assumed it was a gross data collection scheme. Can't believe it's this much worse. Your videos are top notch man, keep em coming. I wonder if the other similar products (Microsoft’s shopping integration in Edge) are doing shady stuff or…?
@@leonro and for the extension to be possibly able to work, it has to know every URL you visit and can read and edit every webpage to inject the codes it claims to find. That is a level of potential data harvesting I doubt anyone would be comfortable with.
I always had an inkling that something devious going on, because it was known that Honey and stores were partnering with one another, the aim being the generation of additional custom for the store, a portion of which Honey would take as their cut. That is to say, I assumed Honey effectively acted as a marketing tool.
This literally has me fuming. I spend hours of my time making videos. I purchase items out of my pocket for review so not to be influenced on my opinion. Then this dirt bag company swoops in at the last second and steals one of the only ways I get compensation for all my work. From now on along with the disclosure of me getting a commission for clicking the link. I’m also going to add that if you use Honey or any other coupon plugin my commission goes to them.
well, you can say honey gets a 5/10 for base line attempts to 'find' a coupon but loses 10 points for the back end affiliate poaching. for a total of -5 /10, no thanks for playing, bad luck on the next time.
I refused to install Honey because I knew it was some sort of scam. Years later, you confirmed my suspicion. Great work! You sir have earned a new sub!
I wouldnt necessarily say it's a scam to its customers, It doenst really take away anything from the customer if anything it actually helps honey users to save more money. However for influencers its a scam but lets be real these referral bonuses are not the main source of income for those influencers, with that being said I agree its a scam to influencers but to consumers I dont think it matters.
@@jayliu8736 Except when it refuses to show you good discounts that are available, that it clearly knows about. Then it's not good for customers at all. Everyone is getting scammed.
If you would read or listen how sentences are structured, I'm 100% sure would fall under "Puffery" category. Similar to "redbull will give you wings" ad, everybody understands that its impossible to grow wings, it makes it puffery.. Their hook is "honey will search the whole internet for coupons", again, everybody understands it is impossible to search the WHOLE internet and it falls under "Puffery".
@Galgaldas I understand what puffery is but I don't believe it applies here. Even if we accept that by them "searching the entire internet" or whatever wording they used that they can only search so much of the internet, what about the fact that honey and their partners can pick and choose which vouchers show up on the extension? So yeah they'll search as much of the internet as they can, and then hide half of what they find from you. That is not puffery, that is false advertising. The key notes they got TH-camrs to say in sponsor spots is that whatever saving honey gets you is the best possible saving you can possibly get but that's clearly not true when they're often purposely hiding the best deals from you
@@Galgaldasit’s actually pretty easy to scour the whole internet using bots. Nobody believes that a real person is doing that, but it’d be relatively simple to create bots to search for coupon codes.
@@Galgaldas Puffery consists of claims that either can’t be verified or that no one would take literally or seriously (like “Redbull gives you wings”). Honey’s claims to find and present the best discount codes are objectively false in light of the ability for partners to control what offers are displayed to users.
I wouldn't be surprised if Honey did an analysis for each channel to guess roughly how much they could expect to make off stealing their affiliate links, then offered them a percentage back. The affiliates would see that huge sponsorship offer that seemed much better than anything anyone else was offering them and went with it, not realizing they were essentially PAYING honey to be a sponsor on their channel. Actually, I bet you that was a pitch idea to the investors when they were trying to sell this shit to PayPal. "We can get promoters to PAY YOU to promote our product on their channel!".
I’m a pretty dumb guy, but I noticed honey opened another tap but I didn’t know why, and right after a complete that purchase, I went too TH-cam and saw this video, and now I know why, thank you
If a site or extension opens a tab or window when you click something... that's a huge red flag. Internet safety can be hard. Just be wary of everything, honestly.
THIS IS SO SCUMMY! I've been using it for over a year now and was completely unaware of this. The amount of times they pretended they 'found the best coupon' or that they 'didn't find any' is really gross behaviour. Excited to see part 2!
I can't say i feel sorry for anyone that would think anything is free especially in this day and age. How many promote these corrupt companies and products because they got a paycheck to do so.. Didn't Tom Brady and a bunch of celebs get sued for promoting a product where the owner is now in prison? Everyone sells out for money now no matter who it may screw over. Don't worry though they all pray to god and are very religious.. 🤣
@@worldzealot I mean I don't blame content creators for taking sponsorships and such, as long as it's made clear it's to sell you a product. People need to make money to live and sometimes even the people sponsoring these companies are also being lied to and don't know. I'm not sure why you mentioned religion.
@@worldzealot to be fair a coupon site is really nothing new and the business model made sense. We have had coupons for decades but in physical form that's being moved online. Alot of small businesses with send you a 10% code for using their products as an example. It can be a legit business model and the fact PayPal was behind it added some legitimacy. People for the most part even online people tend to assume the good in a business because doing something like this seems actually insane.
This is incredible journalism. I watched your DHL series a couple years ago as well and loved it. Can definitely say this investigation might be the biggest ever done on TH-cam. You deserve the money, keep upholding the truth!
I mean, not really. He did just actually read the details. Literally everything was public information. He just actually read the FAQ and the urls. I guess maybe watching the cookies could be investagive, but those tools are standard in all browsers these days... It's good reporting for sure. But not sure it's "investigative journalism" that usually involves sources and non-public-facing information at the least, if not confidential info.
@@IanZainea1990 even if he didn't infiltrate secret networks or find confidential dossiers, if he brought to attention a serious issue that pretty much no one knew was happening, it is great investigative journalism
@@IanZainea1990UNESCO: Investigative journalism involves exposing to the public matters that are concealed-either deliberately by someone in a position of power, or accidentally, behind a chaotic mass of facts and circumstances that obscure understanding. It requires using both secret and open sources and documents. I don't see how it doesn't count as investigative journalism when he exposed something that is intentionally obscure to the point that millions of people are led to believe otherwise. It doesn't require confidential info to be an investigative journalism only from whatever media may be available.
@@IanZainea1990According to UNESCO: "Investigative journalism involves exposing to the public matters that are concealed-either deliberately by someone in a position of power, or accidentally, behind a chaotic mass of facts and circumstances that obscure understanding. It requires using both secret and open sources and documents." You can use either or both sources. Anything that exposes an intended obscurity that led millions to believe otherwise is enough to call it investigative journalism.
commenting to move this up and also sharing the sentiment that i’ve also subbed. this is a great investigation and this is the content i’d love to see supported.
Now that's a slippery slope. TH-cam Ad Revenue doesn't pay shit nowadays. It's incredibly inconsistent, even for consistent creators. The majority of youtubers make the majority of their money from sponsorships. I just hope this encourages more creators to properly vet the offers they get.
If you guys enjoyed this video, please consider supporting me on Patreon: patreon.com/MegaLag
If you have any inside information about PayPal Honey or believe you can contribute to this story, please feel free to contact me confidentially at megalagtips@proton.me
Honey might be a scam but a Shopify app shop is definitely not a scam, I can't believe how much free stuff I get from them.
There are loads of voucher code type sites (UK) which literally never have working codes but open the site you want, I’m guessing it’s the same as this, they are just there to get you to click
Aphid tech already made a video about honey scam 3 years ago
th-cam.com/video/S6zFyO6vviY/w-d-xo.htmlsi=3KlKB-ybaOeIHUwt
You should call it the "Honey Hive". Also you must have been Buzzy with this.
this is crazy
This is INSANELY predatory. Great investigation, every youtuber who promoted this should make updates to tell consumers what is actually under the hood.
We’ve been sold a lie.
“It’s free; it’s the best deal”
-It’s not the best deal, and it’s stealing from the ppl who actually bring traffic.
Can’t wait to see the rest!!!!
Coffee, I hope you cover this on your main (or void) channel!! The more coverage, the better for sure.
Oh shit coffeezilla here
@@Felinusfish facts
SHIT GET REAL WHEN YOU HAVE THIS DUDE ON YOUR COMMENTS
If Coffezilla thinks this is good investigation, you're on the right track!
This guy is gonna randomly go missing in a week
Ohhh
Yoooo
Real
Don't worry, he has enough AirTags to keep on track
aged badly
Now I'm proud of myself for being too lazy for those 2 clicks for years
me too bro me too
I think i had it for 2 minutes, didnt work for the site i was on/there werent any deals. So i immediately deleted it and never used it again
saameee! Things that are free like that always too good to be true
Felt bro
@JulieFabQ haha same
Loved how you released during Christmas when these tossers are all on holiday and they can only do limited damage control, and best, discussion around the holiday dinner table and parties will be talking about this. Genius level move in addition to epic research. New sub
Great comment. Convinced me to subscribe.
It is genius, if that is what he intended. Or it could just be that he happened to upload it during the holidays.
Markiplier was right all along LMAOOOO I remember him saying he won't accept honey sponsorships because he just thinks FREE MONEY IS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE AND HE DIDN'T UNDERSTAND HOW THEY MADE MONEY FROM IT
That's exactly the reason I was never tempted to install it
MY MIND INSTANTLY WENT TO THAT TOO- like I think about this on a regular Basis helppppp
My first thought when I saw the title was "holly shit mark was right!!!" The mad man called it 4 years ago!!!
Thats exactly why i suspicious of it the mark said that and I knew.
I didn’t even know about Markiplier but I felt the same way in a general sense. I just have an aversion to browser extensions overall. Too scammy. If it’s not clear what your incentives are for providing me the extension, I assume there’s something shady going on.
seeing those cookies sneakily get replaced in real time makes honey look like malware
It's like the modern version of anti-virus software that you cannot remove from your computer and keeps popping up even when you uninstall it lmao
it actually qualifies as malware without a doubt
some forms of malware literally does this
It is literally classified as malware and spyware
Yeah, this is classified as malware. If a program does something without your consent and isn't something you'd approve of, it's mal(icious) (soft)ware!
YT journalism is getting really good
It's becoming the de facto standard. Extremely interesting how that just sort of happens when people are just given a platform to use.
between this guy, Coffezilla, and Friendly Jordies you have some pretty great story telling.
@@ThootenTootinTabootinits not lol
yeah the "legacy media" hate it.
Between guys like this and coffezilla as well as guys like Tommy G it really is impressive how high quality the productions are getting
I downloaded honey once years ago just to see if it worked, and immediately I realized I saved more money manually searching for coupons. At the time I thought it was just ineffective but after your video I realize now that it was intentional. Really mind-blowing, you did great work on this video fantastic job 👏
U didn’t need to donate money , he doesn’t care abt you or your money
@@DoctorcockterDude, don’t speak for the creator. It is just a tip. Get over it.
I tried it once too and it didn't find 1 coupon code.
At this point if I see something advertised on TH-cam I automatically assume it's a scam.
Fr
Affiliate products are often worse products too u are literally paying for it
@@admiralkaedenooo but Markiplier said he liked it and he was paid $3000 to say so, why would he lieeee? 🥺
Clarification: I'm talking about sponsorships in general, not Honey. People don't buy sponsored products cause they're good quality, they buy it cause Wendigoon said he liked it, and why would he lie? After all, he was paid to say it
And if a product isn't a scam that is getting its word around through sponsorships I will assume it is a scam but it just hasn't been uncovered
It's gone so far that there were a company or two who I thought made good products who I started doubting after seeing them pop up in Instagram ads
"If something is free, you're the product" is a great line.
Yes it's very old
well technically in this case advertisers of said products being bought were the ones getting shafted. But i still 100% agree with the fact you should be weary of any free services being used. If you can't figure out how they're making money, it's likely a lot more deceptive than you think.
Truly free software, where the user is in control of the software and has the freedom to modify it, is quite common and is a counterexample to that quote.
@@NickvonZWay older than that show lol
Adam is a clown
@@wilh3lmmusic I think it needs to be specified a bit, "If something free is promoted, you are the product"
In the name of protecting naive users everywhere from predatory, malicious, and conniving companies online. Thank you for your great video.
How does it hurt the users?
My man❤
@@JakeSkillman Well you'd have to watch the video. He couldn't make it more clear.
@@JakeSkillman In the video he details how Honey enters paid deals with the retailers to actually suppress the best coupon codes instead of what it claims to do, which is find the best coupon codes available.
@JakeSkillman Honey gives you worse coupons then you wpuld get if you searched yourself. Honey tells you something is the best deal when its not but rather they are making money because of commissions from their partners. Essentially telling you it's the best deal when you could have found a better deal paying less
I will be honest here, this video popped up on my youtube page and I was a bit skeptical that this video from a creator I had never seen before would turn out to be clickbait.
Boy was I wrong. Honey is vile. Bad all around. Thanks for your investigation! Subscribed!
Same, was suggested to me and I watched it in preview for a while before he pulled me in. Awesome video though.
I admit the thumbnail is a little attention grabbing in the bad way, feels like farming and made me avoid it for days. But the video is excellent and I concede that the thumbnail is just playing the algorithm game and that's worth it to get this out there
I thought honey was tracking marketing data. I was way off
Holy crap
Pretty sure they are doing that too. On top of everything else. Probably way more invasive than anyone would accept if they truly knew too.
I always thought they just added their referral to any purchase
Yeah I always kind of assumed there was a grift somewhere so never installed it to be safe. I didn't realise they were scamming literally everyone.
yeah i'm fairly sure paypal bought honey so they could use it to gather data from rival payment processors. no matter what payment method you use, if you use honey, paypal knows about that sale
When something is _"FREE",_ *you're* the product.
“WHERE DOES HONEY GET THE MONEY?!” -Markiplier 2019
HE WAS RIGHT TO BE SUSPICIOUS!!! 😂
Same with MrBeast, I watched an old video years ago and he was like "They use new tech to make money faster to give YOU better deals" yeah right, new tech of stealing other's money!
@@zapx1239 yea if they had some magic new tech to make money they would use it to simply make money and be done with it.
Everything with #PeterThiel involved is filthy!😮💨
why would anyone in their right mind even listen to influencers or even click any link they provide, or any affiliate link for that matter when i'm not getting paid a penny to click on it? i dont trust anyone's link. it could be malicious for all i know. i go directly to the source and search. and why use honey when Rakuten has been around for years and actually pays AND sends confirmation emails with the dollar amount being deposited to your account? because some influencer said so? the same influencers that fall off of cliffs taking selfies? LOL
@@zapx1239 your first problem was watching Mr. Beast. The dude is illegitimate and a scammer, don’t give him any media attention.
So Honey:
Steals revenue from the businesses
Steals referrals from the promoters
And steals data from the users as well?
I'm surprised it took this long for us to hear about all of this
U just named 3 things millions of companies do bro lol this is america.
@ESMorg not everyone lives in "lying about freedom land"
what do they not steal
I'm proud to say that I have never had a PayPal account and have never used any PayPal service 😊
Yes it is predatory, don't get me wrong I don't defend Honey, tried it once around 2020ish, but didn't like it. Please don't think that those "Businesess"/"Creators" didn't received plenty of money to advertise Honey, regardless of how big or small they are, so yeah they lose some money, but I can assure you most creaters were compensated handsomely if they have at least basic knowledge in marketing. Also I've almost never seen a Creator mentioning that the provided links include affiliate codes and that they will receive some % of the purchase. I think everyone should take marketing class, or at some point of their life get familiar how marketing works.
I installed it for a few months and realized it was useless. It never found a coupon, NEVER. So I removed it. I knew it was a scam but didn't know they were doing this. WOW. Great work!
Half of those influencers shown STILL promote Better Help as a legit product too, so I’m not surprised.
Yep, and when I had ads on TH-cam, Better Help was the sponsor half the time. It's as if we got collective amnesia and forgot how shady that business was
yeah, there's a channel that made a video saying figures like Andrew tate are bad for men's health and instead pushed better help.
You have to be a real muppet to actually take ads seriously on this site. I'm more mad at the "content creators" than Honey. They do the exact same thing except Honey doesn't steal nearly as much of your time.
Curious. What is fishy with Better Help?
Advertising honey is not the same as better help tbf. Like the creators are being stolen from and don’t know that the audience is being stolen from aswell. Betterhelp tho just shows who likes a check simply because of the amount of bad publicity it has
Adblocker? “Doesn’t follow the best practices for chrome extensions” ❌
Literal thief extension? Perfectly fine ✅
we are talking about google here. they probably get a small cut themselves
Well of course - Honey is stealing from influencers, marketplaces and consumers, not from Google. Google is in the ad selling business - blocking ads affects their bottom line.
At this point, my expectations of google are worse than actual government and mafia
I mean I like ad block but it's sort of similar to theft.
AdBlocker: "Honey? What honey?"
Uninstalled the extension. Thank you for making this public!
@@Squidom_who doesn’t already lmaoooooo
@@Squidom_ Just sign up to Delete Me or any of those other promoted products lol. Wondering if these are also legit...
The point of the video wasnt just that it was stealing data though, its actively stealing money everytime you use it if you use an affiliate code. That means its active right now and still making money. @Squidom_
@JoeyLoey445 who doesn't, what?
You really installed it? Are you mentally challenged?
This is probably telling you that influencers are not to trust, not because they're evil, but because they are immensely naive.
many of the same ones also touted that "buy land in scotland , become a Lord" scam
Yup, like my set of content creators but man anything they plug is something I generally steer completely clear of.
I don’t even think it’s naive, they just care more about money from the sponsorship than looking into what they are selling their viewers
@Sayori393 The influences got scammed too though. I think ultimately, a lot of them are kind of just careless about ads.
Love a lot of these TH-camrs but seeing some of them evolve from just selling VPNs that don't work to shit like banks and therapy is a little alarming, certain things need a bit more thought put into them than just wanting to save some money using a link from an influencer
They are stupid too, in many cases.
Reminder for everyone to leave a 1 STAR review upon uninstalling! Great way to warn unaware consumers!
this
Apple hides reviews at the request of billionaires like Thiel.
when i gave my reason for uninstalling I clicked "Other: Fraud"
There are apps with 4,5 stars that have mostly 1 and 2 star reviews.
Its the same om IMDB, stuff get 1 star, yet they ignore them at gives the stuff 8 stars.
They might delete bad reviews, though. So keep an eye on that!
Your analogy that explains how Honey is basically a predatory sales associate who hangs out at the register & hands out his own business cards was PERFECT.
100%
yup
if you didnt know, Jesus will fulfill you more than anything in this world, I speak from experience (from when i did Romans 10:9-13), he loves you and wants to be in a meaningful (not romantic) relationship with you. :) “that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed. For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” Romans 10:9-13 KJV “and saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.” Mark 1:15 KJV If you want proof that Jesus and the Bible are true look a documentary called “Ron Wyatt discoveries 2022” on TH-cam and a TH-cam channel called Expedition Bible. They both examine archeological sites and discoveries that prove the Bible, and even reference secular sources. (Just don’t convert to 7th day Adventism after watching the documentary) And lastly if you don’t know the gospel and want to be saved search up “abc’s of Salvation Teenmissions” on Google and it should be the first or second result. When you click on it read the whole thing, and do what it says and have faith in Jesus while you are doing it, do not doubt, and if it is hard for you to do what it says, ask Jesus to help you, have faith that he will, and he will. God Bless :)
Not an analogy when that's what it is.
@@Sugondeese tell me you do not know what an analogy is without telling me you have no idea what in analogy is
@@superbadisfunny 🤣
I was even more amazed that he made $35 on 1 VPN purchase. No wonder every TH-camr is trying to push for VPN sales its basically a gold mine as far as affiliate payouts go.
Yeah, I was a bit blown away on that too! 40%?!
Wasn't BetterHelp $100 for every person who signed up? Not even every paid subscriber, just signed up? I might be mixing up with some other company.
TH-camrs are disingenuous greedy fake people.
If you see on the sides, there is a 100%, then 40%
By guess, I say new sponsors get 100% of the cut for the first month, and then 40% later on
Well in our current world VPN is necessary. Ppl rarely change their VPN service. So they get influencers incentives to promote them. They want as many of the new users as they can get
"Free tool to save money? Pfft, too good to be true!"
-Me, a couple years back, not knowing the horrors Honey actually hides
I smell a big ol' class-action lawsuit brewing
As a PI, I know how difficult and time consuming investigations of this magnitude can be. You did amazing work, thank you!
PIs don't exist, you're just a walking hoodie and sunglasses. Nice try though.
Hi Magnum 👋
@ magnum? What lol.
OH. Is that you, Higgins??
That must be an interesting job! My local paper occasionally posts ads for a PI service in the classified section and I've always wondered what it's like day-to-day. Never had any reason to hire one but when I was a kid reading Raymond Chandler it seemed like a exciting career choice!
U can afford to tip $10 as a PI ?
I fell for honey pretty quickly, had it for a few months, didn't save a single cent, and deleted the trash.
It actually worked like 10 years ago. They got bought out in 2020. That's probably the exact moment it stopped working.
I just redeemed over $30 in cash back from honey to paypal off 2 purchases. Honey is only good if you know how to use it properly. Coupons are usually a scam they don't work. I only go for cash back purchases when I use honey.
It used to work better because online retailers were worse about tracking their own coupon codes. It's like the old websites for finding coupons used to be pretty effective as well.
You would find half off birthday coupon codes that would work all year etc.
Now? Yeah they cleaned that up.
I actually got probably like $80 in cash back from offers last year. I used their "offers" for stuff I wanted to buy anyways, and got the cash back deposited back to my PayPal account as cash, so it did work. Haven't used it in months, and just uninstalled it recently because the intrusive popups got annoying. After watching the video, no chance I'm ever trying it again lol
Whats going on above me.
This is absolutely one of the hardest hitting well made videos on TH-cam and I'm super embarrassed to have promoted them and see my name on those lists. This video is about to change things for the better and I will do everything in my power to spread the word and help the cause!
If you TRULY want to do "everything in your power" like you say and you want to keep your word, be the first to get a lawyer and SUE them!
I subbed you, I wanna see your follow up video to this!!
It's David!
@@TiffaniSpeakzwhy would he make a follow up video
The problem is that there are multiple products that influencers peddle without knowing what they are. The numerous VPN ads, for example, is particularly galling: yet another product that hoovers data from unsuspecting members of the public. But dozens of folks still promote them. Do you?
Just commenting for engagement. I always felt like Honey's claims were too good to be true, but a part of me still wondered if I was missing out. So grateful to know my gut reaction was correct. Thank you for delving deep into this issue and caring enough about those affected to spread the word.
The golden rule of "stay away from anything advertised on TH-cam" is still going strong. Literally every single sponsor eventually gets exposed for some really shady business practices or for being an outright scam.
*Revelation 3:20*
Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.
HEY THERE 🤗 JESUS IS CALLING YOU TODAY. Turn away from your sins, confess, forsake them and live the victorious life. God bless.
*Revelation 22:12-14*
And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be.
I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.
Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.
Yo an AC fan
and thats why you should use NORD VPN
Only believe the small creators.
@@JesusPlsSaveMe man get out of here
I was always wondering how does a free browser extention company make money themselves if it's all free, but didn't think it would get this diabolical. Thank you for doing a great work uncovering all of this, it's beyond crazy.
It's easy, the Jewish creators
I hadn't watched the video. I've used honey only as a spot check for codes then deleted right after. Maybe tried it 4 times with no success and never turf it again
The wondering how something free could make money is the reason I never downloaded it, but prior to this video I just assumed it was massive data harvesting (Chrome extensions can have scary levels of access + malware potential). This is worse
@whenhen yea, I figured they were scrapping cookies and open tabs/ activity. Like a much worse version of Facebook and Google tracking
I always assumed they'd make it by gathering your data and selling it or by getting a comission. I didn't expect though that it would delete the referrals of the people who initially promoted a product to you lol.
I always knew something was sketchy. A business model where you see customers benefit more than the company itself is sure to be a scam! Great investigation, we really need to support content like this.
I smell a beautiful new era of TH-cam coming...
And I always stand with this mantra: If a product is "free", the you're the product
@@huwawwew youtube is free...
200 donation is crazy
@kakakoko5427 that is around 2 USD maybe a little over. still good to donate to good youtubers you like though
Remember:
If something is free, *YOU’RE THE PRODUCT*
This actually makes so much sense. I myself have seen a decline in affiliate link sales even with an increasing number of clicks. So disappointing. And creators have no real way of finding out how much has been stolen from us without websites giving up the information, if they even keep record of it.
LUKEE!! :D
I wonder if you can use any laws to get the information out of them
@Xnoob545 I hope so. I just worked out how much money they have potentially stolen from me as a small TH-camr and it’s a depressingly large amount 😞
On Luke 🤰
Honey likely has the information in logs, class action discovery was pretty much made for this
Rule of thumb: if something says it will get you free or easy money, it is a scam. Remember that money has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere will always be the consumers.
if the product is "free", then remember you are the product
The classic "If you aren't paying for the product, you are the product"
But what if that man is dressed like the riddler and screaming on the TV at 3am ?
Can tell if PIE is safe it free ad blocker created by former honey employees
Well, people publish free open source code online as a community; that which is actually free. Use as you will, Read as you will, Try at your will.
Sharing coupons is not too insane of an idea, it could easily be done on a subreddit or a github repo. Where honey got money to finance itself and ads, was NOT from the coupons, it was from stealing affiliate credit. If it was not donated to the public on a public repo/forum, it is not likely free.
They could totally make an open source, community contributed, Honey-like extension, where it relied entirely on user submission. This would be good, and it would be "free coupons" that people shared.
This is going to be a huge class action lawsuit. Calling it now.
Agreed 100%. They defrauded both consumers and the influencers. I think there could be 2 different class actions.
Should be, but there's no way it's going to happen. Laws aren't enforced
It's literal fraud. Someone is going to jail.
@@phimuskapsiwho is being defrauded? The product works exactly as advertised. Is it good? No. But what do you expect from a product whose main selling point is "free money"
You are absolutely naive to think anything will ever happen to these people
This is amazing. You did a great job finding and exposing the truth about Honey, and trying to deliver justice. I look forward to seeing more on this situation
Previous patterns have shown me that if a business pumps out ads on YT about something, it's most likely a scam.
They all are
I've been seeing a lot of ads for the new Red Magic phone
Totally wrong dude... RAID Shadow Legends is totally not a scam XD
@@AmxDude1969 typing this comment on a redmagic 9 pro, it's a great phone! *Not an ad*
Nordvpn is a scam guys!!!
I was telling my dad when I was younger that we should get honey for free money. He said no because big companies always have something in it for them...
He was right
I hope you can show your dad this video and tell him that you appreciate he was right
Same
He is a fortune teller but he just told a literal fortune(if you know what i mean)
Being lazy to find honey was finally useful
Your father is a wise man.
You should tell him about what's happening with honey, show him this video and then compliment him on being a wise father because of what he said back then.
Trust me when i say this, he would appreciate it a lot.
One of the best investigations I've watched recently. Both technical and understandable!
First reply!!!! (get me to 69 likes)
4 dollars lol
@Randomcrap4uo So how much did you donate this year to the creators whose content you watch? Or developers whose software you use?
Bro chill, I'm just saying, calm down lil man
@Randomcrap4uo you are not just saying, you are laughing... also for you it is 4 dollars but for the guy who sent the donation it is 100 czech coronas, which is way more when compared to average wage in Czech Republic than 4 dollars compared to average wage in the US
simple rule of thumb I follow- The harder it's pushed on this platform (advertising, sponsorships, etc.), the higher likelihood that it is a scam, or at the very least, incredibly predatory. (Looking at you, Raid: Scam Legends)
approving ads saying this is the best deal you'll find on the internet then deliberately withholding the best deal is THE DEFINITION of false advertising
They should get shafted by the EU. Not the first time for Paypal either. 😂
@@rkan2i love how you got no hope the US will do anything about it since they got no customer rights whatsoever and put all your hope on the EU.
They don't say on the internet, but on that specific shop. Coupons included.
@@Max-me9ol Literally we Americans owe the EU so much for inadvertently helping protect consumers more than our snail government ☠
we were having some tiny progress with finally at least having a competent person in charge of the FTC but unfortunately we're losing her in January for a guy who doesn't prioritize consumers so we're cooked again
False advertising is only a crime if someone can afford to sue, and only bad for a company if someone sues and gets more money out than the false advertising made. EU regulators are basically the only party in the west that can be that someone in both instances, unless severe health outcomes are involved.
Holy crap this is insane. I never installed Honey because the business model did not pass the sniff test for me. Like it was never clear how Honey make their money so I assumed it had to be something sketchy. This explains everything and I hope they go the way of BonziBuddy.
I just assume that the more content creators who are stumping for a product or company, the bigger a fraud that product or company will turn out to be. That caution hasn't let me down once in all these years.
There is zero difference between a content creator making an ad for something and any other form of commercial. It's just another advertisement, full stop. People really need to get over this fantasy that content creator's inherently have a clue, let alone always have their best interests in mind. There is no universe where I'd let a random app hunt for coupon codes for me, let alone just because someone whose videos I enjoy was paid to sell the service to me.
It's nice to see you alive man :D , always watched your videos back in the days until you stopped posting videos :(
I've been saying for years that there's no way data collection isn't part of their model, because there's no other way a model like this *can* make money. People called me an idiot, because their FAQ says they don't collect data. Turns out that not only was i right, but they're also just poaching free money from other destinations on top of that.
What I hate is that nowadays, even if you pay for the service as a subscription, they still harvest your data, because nothing ever is enough.
I assumed they were an advertising company. Get an extension that's allowed to know what you are buying, from where, and what links you followed to do it, then sell that information for targeted marketing. They probably _do_ that too, but this is so much worse.
Things are about to get real as the top 1% of 1% of TH-cam creators are now doing reactions to this video, sending viewers to watch this video. Also, in less than 24 hours, the top Google search results for Honey have gone from all but one negative link to the complete opposite.
You did good, and are almost certainly on the nice list this year.
A big thing was him pointing out the top TH-camrs in the video. Soft handedly forced them to make a video or look complicit in the scam. Made a lot easier since many of them are victims of the scam.
all the big youtubers and streamers are owned by the same talent agency - Right Media (swap R with N)
A youtuber did the same video 4 years ago th-cam.com/video/n1Cz4S5jNU8/w-d-xo.html
@@mcgruff3309 how did you put a link on comments
@@mcgruff3309 how do I know if this not a bot
This is a great quality video! As a Creator, I'm a little concerned...
I noticed that extra tab opening and closing...thank you for telling me what that is and more! Absolutely disgusting. You got a new subscriber.
I subbed as well
Scammers are the ultimate bottom-feeders of humanity, thriving on deceit and feeding off the pain of the innocent, proving that their moral void is deeper than any pit of greed or cruelty imaginable.
@MrJones-wk7kt
It's almost funny how much better we all could be if they just... didn't exist. Obviously, society still has *_plenty_* of other problems, but fraudsters man...
No replys over 27$ dam
@@GIGANTHEGOAT1Here's another one.
$200? Oh this is ridiculous.
Edit: It’s like people are asking to be reported.
Cons and Piracy . conspiracy is the system not a theory
I feel so vindicated for being suspicious of honey for years.
Frr
i tried it before it was being sponsored by youtubers waaaaay back in its first few years and it was so incredibly useless. so every time i saw a youtuber promoting it and saying it saved them money i KNEW i couldn’t trust them
So glad I listened to my gut on this. I was suspicious too. Its not within human nature to want to help people to that level. The still small voice within never lies
Same, used it maybe 2-3 times and always kept it disabled.
Browser extensions are scary af, we basically allow them access to all of our browsing data.
@@arturohernandez5509 it weird that you say that because when I used it a few years back, I did get some great deals through them? That basically never happens anymore.
someone finally spoke about this fake discount bs. Thanks man
*The crazy thing is, I noticed Honey stopped finding good codes years ago, probably when PayPal bought them, maybe even before that. Now it's starting to make sense.*
This is disgusting and Honey has been deleted AND "REPORTED FOR ABUSE" upon uninstall. I knew their business model made 0 sense. Well, now it makes sense.
I have used it and you are right, it did work years ago but everytime I have used it I have never got a discount, in fact, like the video said, just googling discounts worked better.
Doesn't matter, Google owns paypal and paypal owns honey. So they are all the same company, and will never remove the extension from the Chrome store. I recommend everyone switch to Firefox.
Years ago I tried it, and it never found any deals, even then. But like others I thought they just sell marketing data. Never would have thought it would be such a level of fraud.
Paypal is the scammiest company around
Did the exact same.
You have to give props to whoever engineered the system, this is unethically genius.
Not really. It’s incredibly basic and scummy.
@@superjke718One does not exclude the other. Hate to play advocate of the devil, but the genius of this scam lies 100% in the simplicity of it. There's a reason it remained virtually undetected for 5+ years.
I blame us as humans for lacking enough curiosity to check for the basic loopholes and for inadequate surface-level tech knowledge. PayPal fully deserved fooling it's consumers, including me. Let alone the thousands of influencers.
But I also believe people usually assume the product is safe, since opaque fraud isn't something cooperation's usually do to exploit it's consumers, the other (I don't wanna complete this comment).
@@superjke718 no its actually pretty impressive and deceptive lmao. The scam at its root core is basic though which is what you're probably referring to
@@superjke718 so basic that this system has kept running for years unnoticed? no it's pretty genius.
Guys, let's report the Honey extension and give it a 1-star review so no one gets scammed by them
A great idea!
So i havent used honey in months as it was shit. constantly popping up to tell me nothing there. but i went and 1 star and bad review
Yes
done already
Nah, these influencers deserve getting scammed out of their money. you think they care about us? G fuel, factor, raid shadow of legends, raycons, you think they use these products? at the end of the day all they care about is money not giving you the viewer genuinely good product's so i say screw them, happy the lost money out of it.
They just launched their Pie adblock extension. I wonder what predatory behavior it does!
I’ve been using Honey for years and probably used 1 or 2 coupons from it and never got any gold and was just sitting there in my extensions. I’m glad this video reminded me to delete it.
Fuck, same here.. I'ma delete it right now. :/
And worse, they are stealing from merchants with unauthorized discounts as much as 50%. Crazy!
Yeah I never like Honey. Multiple times it would say “We don’t have anything” so I’d go searching manually and find several. I removed it years ago.
I will have to say that I have used Honey and it has been good to me. I remember they had some kind of deal where if you bought a Phone and a plan from AT&T you'd get like 6,000 honey gold for free. At the time my IPhone 7 had just broken so I bought an AT&T Cellular Flip IV with a plan for $72 and was able to redeem the 6,000 honey gold which was equivalent to $60 in Giftcards and I could pick what store. So I used it at Walmart which to my surprise actually worked.
I also remember I once bought a K&N cone filter for a 2006 Nissan Sentra I had and when I checked out I was saved about 20 dollars from the asking price of about 55 dollars.
@@richardwetzeliii4195you are part of the problem, keep feeding the beast. My favorite Human is sheeple.
This smells like a good “Class Action Lawsuit!”
They scammed the influencers, but worse, they scammed you, the consumers who used it.
Class action lawsuit payouts, unless you are the lawyers, aren’t worth the checks they’re printed on unless serious permanent physical harm can be determined
@@Brent-jj6qi So, What... Do nothing? Or say Fk it and just go Luigi on em?? There has to be some middle ground.
Otherwise it's just chaos.
Actually this is fraud and criminal charges should be filed against paypal. They bought the company and knew the coding was illegal.
But Saul goodman😢@@Brent-jj6qi
by what the video ended on they also scammed people that sold products seems like it was a scam on all fronts
Investigative journalism done right for the benefit of the masses. Thank you!
Can you imagine if our news networks did journalism like this? We would live in a different world.
LOL obvious scam wasn't obvious enough... needs moar influencers lol pfffffft
2:45 I liked when he said khoney instead of honey; referring to the jews who use kh a lot like Khamas instead of Hamas.
He needs to be careful, the Mossad can get to him easily.
How dare TH-cam hide this from me for 2 days
Immediately deleted Honey 2 minutes into the video...Thank you for bringing awareness to these scams
you were using it tried it one time like a decade ago and shit didnt worked i deleted it immediatly assuming it was stealing my data
I don't use it, but I learned a lot from this video.
this should be regulated, and the worst of these practices should be criminalized. this makes me so angry
If you were silly enough to install honey, ever, there is no saving you.
@@tim.martin i had no idea people were still using it in 2024🤣
Well done for not getting scammed anymore
One more notch in my "never use any product you've heard about from a YT influencer" policy.
Another win for the SponsorBlock crowd.
the only one that's done me right is a delta 8 company
Pickings are getting slim, aren't they?
@@Romanticoutlaw just wait long enough
What about surfshark vpn
The best way to describe honey is the word parasite, it steals the commission at the last moment while doing nothing to get the customer to buy, it's so lazy
Only lazy people can beat honey.
exactly why are companies rewarding them for customers paying less while at the checkout
It is not only parasitic but also actively griefing smaller content creators that might rely on referral links commissions, way worse
You can apply the same logic to the TH-camrs that shiII these scams... But they're the "victims" because they didn't get to steal a percentage of sales to a site/company they have nothing to do with.
No honor amongst thieves.
@@jeanchampelovier2323 Ads don't belong on TH-cam. People don't want to sit through ads. TH-cam should be for the people, by the people. Ads are a waste of time, electricity, and bandwidth. In fact, you can easily argue ads are bad for the environment.
If you rely on link referrals to make a living, that's user error. You're essentially crying about who gets to steal a percentage of the sales to a given site.
I never understood how a free extension was able to afford so many promotions on such large youtube channels, and always stayed away from it due to that. Thank you for finding the answers to my concerns!
honestly as a cybersecurity engineer/researcher i am ASTOUNDED by the straight up editing of in browser cookies. people need to stay away from browser extensions as it is literally impossible to scope permissions.
They're not strictly "editing" cookies are they? The new tab in the background would surely Set-Cookie from the originating domain with their affiliate code?
@brentp0 this is exactly what's happening. Given the "last click wins" model, honey fabricates this last click on checkout. That's the only reason the background tab opens. If they could edit cookies, they wouldn't need that tab in the first place
Apart from that I do endorse the advice to vet extensions as thorough as possible before installing, even (or maybe especially?) if all your favourite content creators recommend them
@@brentp0 The cookie belongs to the retailer, and gets edited every time you enter the site via a link that contains an affiliate code. Honey opens the new tab as if you clicked a link with their code. Nothing shady, as far as the retailer is concerned
Ublock extension my beloved
@@x3woots Good thing Ublock open source, it can't hide from me :)
I'm really surprised this wasn't discovered sooner.
honey is literally the definition of "if it sounds too good to be true, it is"
Some individual maybe have found out, but the problem is they know how to show this question on public or discovery enough evidence to show to raise a question.
It has been known for awhile and a ton of privacy advocates have flagged the extension as incredibly invasive. It is surprising that it took this long for someone to make a video that makes it to trending though as it has always been an open secret as to how absolutely terrible honey is.
Yes, Same. How in the world did they get to do this for this long?
@@Kraton_ YT algorithm world. Apparently this time showed at right time and with right tags.
They have been doing this very successfully for a long time. Everyone who has an online retail business and runs their own affiliate program knows how they operate, as we have to make the decision whether to partner with them or not. Often, we also have to be strategic to prevent our best coupons are not visible to them, such as employee discount codes and ‘friends and family’ discount codes.
I’ve personally avoid working with any companies that have browser add-ons. And also avoid working with coupon sites, as they are also in the business of hijacking commissions. I prefer affiliates who add value are the ones to get paid the commission.
It’s tough for legitimate affiliate marketers these days. They are losing commissions to browser ads-ons, coupon sites and cashback platforms. Plus some retailers pay out less (or nothing) if PPC is a touchpoint within the customer journey. Many retailers will also pay less if the customer is a return customer (which is out of the affiliates control).
When I saw influencers promoting Honey, I just assumed that they were scraping their users data and making their profit that way but this scheme is beyond my wildest dreams!
I am really annoyed now. I never use apps that "save" me money, so I would have never installed this app. However I *do* use Paypal. It is very annoying to learn that they are, in fact, not a reputable company but a bunch of scammers.
I thought the exact same thing at first but when I saw a Honey sponsorship on every one of the biggest tech youtubers, I didn't understand how they were making enough to afford all those sponsorships. Websites already sell you're shopping data so it's not like you can make that much off it.
Oh, they’ll be doing that too.
Yes I’m smart ! This is a better explanation my only one was saying they felt so sus and annoying every time a TH-camr would promote honey. Honey was getting too comfortable with their repetitive promotions and I was sick of it.
paypal has always been up to shady and deceptive shit and this doesn’t surprise me from THEM, but it is absolutely insane that it’s taken this long to be uncovered.
I just filed a report to the FTC based on the allegations and evidence presented in this video, thank you!
I just installed and tested the service and did not see it change my affiliate link.
@@jstewart627 gee a scummy company suddenly changes behavior after they're exposed, what a shocker
@@jstewart627nice Honey bot account
@@jstewart627 Nice try, Honey.
@@jstewart627I’m not sure that it was mentioned that it changes your affiliate link, rather that it swaps the tracking cookie during checkout. Whether that happens 100% of the time, randomly or under certain conditions is not clear given what was provided in this video. Anyhow, I have no idea about honey but just wanted to point out that technically you’re referring to something else.
"free money" is a phrase everyone should recognise as an immediate scam.
there is always something going on in exchange for that money. "Free money" is simply not a thing, it never has been in the history of ever and never will be for the rest of time.
remember, people, if something is "free", you're the product
Also the phrase, "It costs you nothing" 🙄
Quick, easy and free - the 3 ghosts of internet scams
facts (im here at 250 likes, but this comment will prob get thousands soon)
THANK YOU. I wondered how everyone wasn't skeptical of Honey from the jump. Nobody is paying so much for ads for something "free".
Even for the government because the taxpayer pays for it.
HOLY this would explain why i lost all my sponsors on my gaming channel because i couldnt get ANY affiliates even with 700,000 views a video.
Honey caused me to go back to work for minimum wage when i was averaging millions of views a month. that is crazy. i cant believe this
i promoted gamersupps for YEARS on my channel, got them easily 50m views across my videos. only to be paid just $100 at the end of it. This would explain that at the very least. all of my affiliates were getting sniped by honey. i am gonna puke
edit: asked gamersupps about my lifetime statistics. 50,000,000 views netted me 63 impressions on my link (im assuming these are users without honey at that time) and 3 total sales.
on 50M views. im sorry but thats just not statistically reasonable unless someone was stealing my affiliates OR i was faking my views. which i was not. unlucky i guess. missed out on millions potentially.
This is so sad. I’m so sorry.
Can't imagine the stress it caused, hopefully now that this is exposed sponsors would be more lenient with previous partners.
holy shit dude down with honey
I am very sorry for you, especially since you seem to have really interesting content on your channel
Time to sue
1 video and I'm subscribed. Best kind of content right here
If a company has tens of millions of dollars spent on ads and you don't understand how they can make that money back, it should always raise suspicion. I've always been suspecting Honey, so thank you for finally bringing the truth to light.
Everyone knew they were selling user data. The scam is that they don't actually provide the best discount codes and that they steal the affiliate revenue from their affiliates
Meanwhile BetterHelp: Everyone knows we're Satan himself, but we have so much blood money from exploiting mentally ill and vulnerable people influencers still sign the long term deal with the devil to promote us.
Here I was, assuming they we're just making money off selling data of consumer spending habits or something. And I thought *that* was shitty.
@@-Sabine not nearly enough money would be made that way. Stealing affiliate commissions must be them printing several millions dollars monthly.
I can only agree. If a company claims to give you something for free there's always a catch.
But Honey seems to be way worse than i thought, i assumed they just collect data of all their users.
That's a HUGE expose. Thank you MegaLag for that investigation you just saved a lot of money to a lot of people
Remember to never buy a product from a tech review channel that has an affiliate link because that means they were paid by the company to get you to buy the product. So their review isn't trustworthy
This is real journalism. Very impressive. You earned a new subscriber!
and 5 bucks
He didn’t actually do anything though, there was no journalism, it’s just outrage bait stretched out long enough to please the algorithm.
He thesis doesn’t even make sense as anyone who has worked commission sales knows that this is just how it works
I just installed and tested the service and did not see it change my affiliate link.
He also has a dog in the fight. If it didn't affect his purse, he probably wouldn't give a single fuck.
did you do it on deferent ip addresses?
If they know it’s you, they wouldn’t change it right?
Honestly, I'm glad this happened. Influencers have been promoting bad products for years either because of bad ethics or simple nativity. Either way, they are making a huge disservice to their loyal audiences by not researching the brands they promote. Hope they start researching their sponsors better to serve their audiencies better, now that they are being targeted too and not only the lay man (which speaks volumes about them, to be honest). Anyway, thank you Honey.
You cannot imagine how often I thought that about the clowns who are still promoting RAID Shadow Legends. Having played the game for way too long myself, I know that most of the stuff they claim is either plainly untrue (i.e. them playing themselves) or highly misleading.
Imagine half way through the video he says “let’s talk about honey, the sponsor of this video”
Imagine if ninja got a low taper fade
@@ShaneisCool777 It's still a massive meme
@stephensemchishon3100
_"Absolute garbage"_
hOnEy Is A fReE blah blah blah
Yeah, my cursor has been hovering the X button for a while. Doesn’t matter what the sponsor is about.
Thank you for exposing this. Removing Honey right now. 😃
Why? You don't want a discount because the youtuber isn't getting a commission for selling you a product?
Did you watch the video? They also do not give out the best discount codes. Also why would you keep supporting a fraud?@@paulweston8184
@paulweston8184 I've tried to get discounts and it always says that there arnt any discounts and that you have the best prices
@@paulweston8184 Did you even watch the video my guy?
Holy.
@@paulweston8184It does not even find the best coupons. Not only scamming influencers but also you. If you watch the end of the video, it seems that Honey also inflates prices.
Appreciate the Christmas gift.
This video likely saved me lots of time and money not bothering with that scam. Great video!
fr
Same here!!
WOW! Actual investigative journalism, CNN and the old grey lady haven't been doing that for decades! Hope you get the accolades my dude; you got my sub.
Makes me feel good about my decision to not do sponsorships.
hey cody. great to see you here
Good idea
Hello Mr. Scientist
yo u are the chemistry guy. Smart as always.
wow cody's here
Beware that the people behind Honey are also behind the Pie adblock extension.
That's a good shout!
You mean the one ad that somehow bypasses ublock for me? More reasons to hate it huh
I saw that was being pushed heavily recently, and I got immediately suspicious. At this point I'm questioning if Raid: Shadow Legends was a scam or not
@@morningshade2347Idk that one just seems like a shitty pay to win mobile game. Which is way more honest
Honey was founded in November 2012 by entrepreneurs Ryan Hudson and George Ruan.
Pie adblock About page:
"Message from Pie founder, Ryan Hudson, who previously created Honey:
I've assembled a team of some of the most creative people that built Honey to invent new ways to share more of the advertising pie with you." LOLOL
George Ruan is still CEO/President of Honey.
This is unbelievable. Truly unbelievable. That there is more to expose beyond what this video has already covered is insane. Definitely going to be there for the next video.
Yooooo 20$
What's unbelievable about it? It's American rich people hurting good people and stealing their wealth. This is the least surprising thing ever, the rich people are our fucking enemy.
sounds like they do find discount codes, aply them, dont tell you about it and poket the money themselves
Mr rich guy ehh
if you donate in a different currency, are youtubers still able to transfer it to their own country's currency and get the money?
I'm so hungry for good research journalism like this. God this is good!
Cant wait for part 2!
As a side note, the Wikipedia page for PayPal Honey is locked to editing "to prevent vandalism"
Yea as if I needed another reason to keep ignoring Wikipedia's decade long e-begging campaign.
@@thelolrus7491 it feels like every few years they add another paragraph of pan handling as if that’s going to get them any more donations
Yeah, they do that for pages with a lot of traffic
Jesus will fulfill you more than anything in this world, I speak from experience (from when i did Romans 10:9-13), he loves you and wants to be in a meaningful (not romantic) relationship with you. :) “that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed. For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” Romans 10:9-13 KJV “and saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.” Mark 1:15 KJV If you want proof that Jesus and the Bible are true look a documentary called “Ron Wyatt discoveries 2022” on TH-cam and a TH-cam channel called Expedition Bible. They both examine archeological sites and discoveries that prove the Bible, and even reference secular sources. (Just don’t convert to 7th day Adventism after watching the documentary) And lastly if you don’t know the gospel and want to be saved search up “abc’s of Salvation Teenmissions” on Google and it should be the first or second result. When you click on it read the whole thing, and do what it says and have faith in Jesus while you are doing it, do not doubt, and if it is hard for you to do what it says, ask Jesus to help you, have faith that he will, and he will. God Bless :)
That’s jokes 😂
Damn I always just assumed it was a gross data collection scheme. Can't believe it's this much worse. Your videos are top notch man, keep em coming.
I wonder if the other similar products (Microsoft’s shopping integration in Edge) are doing shady stuff or…?
yep, never trust these ads, these coupon addons never worked
Don't worry, they are probably also engaged in data harvesting. We can't help but maximise all of our profits, can we?
@@leonro and for the extension to be possibly able to work, it has to know every URL you visit and can read and edit every webpage to inject the codes it claims to find. That is a level of potential data harvesting I doubt anyone would be comfortable with.
I always had an inkling that something devious going on, because it was known that Honey and stores were partnering with one another, the aim being the generation of additional custom for the store, a portion of which Honey would take as their cut. That is to say, I assumed Honey effectively acted as a marketing tool.
Same definitely just assumed it was to sell ad data or something
This literally has me fuming. I spend hours of my time making videos. I purchase items out of my pocket for review so not to be influenced on my opinion. Then this dirt bag company swoops in at the last second and steals one of the only ways I get compensation for all my work.
From now on along with the disclosure of me getting a commission for clicking the link. I’m also going to add that if you use Honey or any other coupon plugin my commission goes to them.
🤣🤣🤣🤣
@@rockalot1783 Wow what a great member of society you are. Bully kids in school?
They deceived both the content creators and the consumers, it is infuriating.
Yes that's the way man reverse marketing, will add it my self ❤
well, you can say honey gets a 5/10 for base line attempts to 'find' a coupon but loses 10 points for the back end affiliate poaching. for a total of -5 /10, no thanks for playing, bad luck on the next time.
Thanks for bringing all this to light. Will be sharing this around with anyone I even *think* might use Honey
I refused to install Honey because I knew it was some sort of scam. Years later, you confirmed my suspicion. Great work! You sir have earned a new sub!
Same here. I've always felt that anything that is free like they advertised is too good to be true. Turns out it was.
i used it about 2 months then got rid of it after it never working lol i just search online so much better
I have no idea why ppl would click it in the first place . Ppl are gullible . It's like a phishing scam .
I wouldnt necessarily say it's a scam to its customers, It doenst really take away anything from the customer if anything it actually helps honey users to save more money. However for influencers its a scam but lets be real these referral bonuses are not the main source of income for those influencers, with that being said I agree its a scam to influencers but to consumers I dont think it matters.
@@jayliu8736 Except when it refuses to show you good discounts that are available, that it clearly knows about. Then it's not good for customers at all. Everyone is getting scammed.
So at 19:00 it's undeniable that Honey is guilty of false advertising, one of the most common crimes businesses get attacked for
If you would read or listen how sentences are structured, I'm 100% sure would fall under "Puffery" category. Similar to "redbull will give you wings" ad, everybody understands that its impossible to grow wings, it makes it puffery.. Their hook is "honey will search the whole internet for coupons", again, everybody understands it is impossible to search the WHOLE internet and it falls under "Puffery".
@Galgaldas I understand what puffery is but I don't believe it applies here. Even if we accept that by them "searching the entire internet" or whatever wording they used that they can only search so much of the internet, what about the fact that honey and their partners can pick and choose which vouchers show up on the extension? So yeah they'll search as much of the internet as they can, and then hide half of what they find from you. That is not puffery, that is false advertising. The key notes they got TH-camrs to say in sponsor spots is that whatever saving honey gets you is the best possible saving you can possibly get but that's clearly not true when they're often purposely hiding the best deals from you
@@Galgaldasit’s actually pretty easy to scour the whole internet using bots. Nobody believes that a real person is doing that, but it’d be relatively simple to create bots to search for coupon codes.
@@Galgaldas Puffery consists of claims that either can’t be verified or that no one would take literally or seriously (like “Redbull gives you wings”). Honey’s claims to find and present the best discount codes are objectively false in light of the ability for partners to control what offers are displayed to users.
the sale of the list of suckers is prob dark net gold right now
dumb people and the internet are why youtube is the way it is
I must admit it’s clever how they managed to make the people they were technically stealing from to promote them.
its incredibly clever, to the point where I am almost mad I didn't think of it myself.
I wouldn't be surprised if Honey did an analysis for each channel to guess roughly how much they could expect to make off stealing their affiliate links, then offered them a percentage back. The affiliates would see that huge sponsorship offer that seemed much better than anything anyone else was offering them and went with it, not realizing they were essentially PAYING honey to be a sponsor on their channel. Actually, I bet you that was a pitch idea to the investors when they were trying to sell this shit to PayPal. "We can get promoters to PAY YOU to promote our product on their channel!".
Actual honey trap.
They offer them money and then poach their income.
It's not that clever my friend, you just have to be a psychopath and a programmer.
@@Hirohitorunguardwell after the investigation is finished, they’re gonna be screwed so you should be thanking god u didn’t think of it yourself😭
Honestly I'm impressed, like who comes up with such a genius scam
I’m a pretty dumb guy, but I noticed honey opened another tap but I didn’t know why, and right after a complete that purchase, I went too TH-cam and saw this video, and now I know why, thank you
If a site or extension opens a tab or window when you click something... that's a huge red flag. Internet safety can be hard. Just be wary of everything, honestly.
Okuyasu from JoJo:
Why would you say you’re dumb ? You’re not dumb. ldi0t.
what a way to start a sentence... gosh
THIS IS SO SCUMMY! I've been using it for over a year now and was completely unaware of this. The amount of times they pretended they 'found the best coupon' or that they 'didn't find any' is really gross behaviour. Excited to see part 2!
a sucker is born twice a minute
I can't say i feel sorry for anyone that would think anything is free especially in this day and age. How many promote these corrupt companies and products because they got a paycheck to do so.. Didn't Tom Brady and a bunch of celebs get sued for promoting a product where the owner is now in prison?
Everyone sells out for money now no matter who it may screw over. Don't worry though they all pray to god and are very religious.. 🤣
@@worldzealot I mean I don't blame content creators for taking sponsorships and such, as long as it's made clear it's to sell you a product. People need to make money to live and sometimes even the people sponsoring these companies are also being lied to and don't know.
I'm not sure why you mentioned religion.
@@worldzealot to be fair a coupon site is really nothing new and the business model made sense. We have had coupons for decades but in physical form that's being moved online. Alot of small businesses with send you a 10% code for using their products as an example. It can be a legit business model and the fact PayPal was behind it added some legitimacy. People for the most part even online people tend to assume the good in a business because doing something like this seems actually insane.
Well, at least you know better now. Stop being stupid and gullible.
Thank you for exposing Honey, I've removed their extension so I can at least ensure affiliate income goes to people adding value.
The animation and scenarios really helped understanding, thank you!
This is incredible journalism. I watched your DHL series a couple years ago as well and loved it. Can definitely say this investigation might be the biggest ever done on TH-cam. You deserve the money, keep upholding the truth!
Good boy
@@SCROTUMMgood boy is crazy work
Where's my 10 bucks?
There are literally other videos on youtube like from 4 years ago exposing this and no one cared 😂
@@ReignofRavensthe power of our beloved algorithm
Found you through Cr1TiKaL reacting to this video. Dude, you have earned yourself a sub. Incredible work!
same, just watched his vid coverage on it. and started sharing this vid to others.
ah, i see he's still just doing that lol
@@colorblockpoprocks6973 lol fr he has no original content and is as entertaining as paint drying
@@colorblockpoprocks6973 he is the honey of youtubers provides zero value and gets money from it
Did he also recommend honey because I see he posted a video but I can’t tell if he did it trying to save his own ass
This is real investigative journalism at its finest. Hats off to you! 🎩
Great stuff, is Rakuten much better?
I mean, not really. He did just actually read the details. Literally everything was public information. He just actually read the FAQ and the urls. I guess maybe watching the cookies could be investagive, but those tools are standard in all browsers these days...
It's good reporting for sure. But not sure it's "investigative journalism" that usually involves sources and non-public-facing information at the least, if not confidential info.
@@IanZainea1990 even if he didn't infiltrate secret networks or find confidential dossiers, if he brought to attention a serious issue that pretty much no one knew was happening, it is great investigative journalism
@@IanZainea1990UNESCO: Investigative journalism involves exposing to the public matters that are concealed-either deliberately by someone in a position of power, or accidentally, behind a chaotic mass of facts and circumstances that obscure understanding. It requires using both secret and open sources and documents.
I don't see how it doesn't count as investigative journalism when he exposed something that is intentionally obscure to the point that millions of people are led to believe otherwise. It doesn't require confidential info to be an investigative journalism only from whatever media may be available.
@@IanZainea1990According to UNESCO: "Investigative journalism involves exposing to the public matters that are concealed-either deliberately by someone in a position of power, or accidentally, behind a chaotic mass of facts and circumstances that obscure understanding. It requires using both secret and open sources and documents."
You can use either or both sources. Anything that exposes an intended obscurity that led millions to believe otherwise is enough to call it investigative journalism.
Thank you for doing this. As someone who has used the extension I feel utterly sick.
I'm both impressed and shocked after discovering their business model. This video need to go viral.
Yeah I had no idea. I use Rakuten and PriceLasso instead.
It's gonna and gotta
👍👍👍
fan hâm mộ lâm năm của anh ạ :3
This business model started in the late 90's. GD you are all insufferable.
I'm really just commenting for the algorithm. This is something that needs to be front and center. You've earned another subscriber!
Im just commenting to move your comment up
Im also just commenting to move your comment up
Commenting for the algorithm
👌👌
commenting to move this up and also sharing the sentiment that i’ve also subbed. this is a great investigation and this is the content i’d love to see supported.
This man might single handedly kill off youtube sponsors entirely and I am HERE for it
Now that's a slippery slope. TH-cam Ad Revenue doesn't pay shit nowadays. It's incredibly inconsistent, even for consistent creators. The majority of youtubers make the majority of their money from sponsorships. I just hope this encourages more creators to properly vet the offers they get.
whats up peety0792, knew your name seemed familiar
@@IGoByLotsOfNames oh hi there. nice to see you
I guarantee you this will not kill off sponsorships at all.
@@squillz8310 Maybe trying to make a living off internet videos isn't a good thing