Don't. Use. Honey.
Category
🗞
NoticiasTranscripción
00:00Alright, so if you've been online in the past week, you've probably had some headline
00:08cross your path or in some way been recommended to watch the video about the greatest scam
00:13in the history of the creator economy or whatever else it's being called.
00:17And it's actually, it's actually kind of an incredible story.
00:21It's around one of the biggest YouTube sponsors ever.
00:24It involves almost every high-profile creator that I can think of, including myself.
00:29And it kind of came out of nowhere, surfaced by a creator called Megalag.
00:35And yeah, that is me in the thumbnail.
00:38So you're probably wondering how we got here.
00:41So let's just break this down.
00:42It's all around this company slash product called Honey.
00:45And if you somehow haven't heard of Honey up until this point, here's what it claims
00:48to be.
00:49And I'm specifically using that phrasing, it's what it claims to be.
00:52Honey is a free browser extension that claims to find you the best coupon codes at checkout
00:58when you're buying things online.
01:00That's the pitch.
01:01So you know, you're checking out some online purchase and there's that box to input coupon
01:04codes.
01:05So you go to checkout on Amazon or Best Buy, whatever it is.
01:08And if you have Honey installed, you hit apply Honey at checkout and it goes through its
01:12huge database of all the coupon codes it knows about and applies the best ones there to save
01:17you the most money on your purchase.
01:20Seems great.
01:21It's one of the most popular browser extensions of all time.
01:23It has 17 million users in the Chrome extension store as of right now.
01:28It's insanely popular.
01:29And they for years have also had a massive budget to pay creators as well to run ads
01:35on YouTube.
01:36So they have also become one of the biggest, one of the most proliferate proliferate proliferating
01:42prominent.
01:44They've been one of the biggest YouTube sponsors of all time.
01:47And you know, one thing about being a YouTube creator and I can attest to this is sponsors
01:53in general are very important to the business, but can also be very difficult to work with
01:58all the time.
01:59And so if there is a sponsor that comes around and starts doing ads, that is very easy to
02:04work with and just gets it like just lets the YouTuber do their thing.
02:07Very lenient word about that gets around.
02:11And so I'm about to talk about all the horrible things Honey did in a second.
02:14But if you want to give them credit for anything, it's that they were very YouTube forward.
02:18They were one of the most YouTube forward marketing companies ever in the mega lag video.
02:24He goes over it.
02:25Apparently there were hundreds of creators across billions of views across all the videos
02:31they advertised in, including three of my own.
02:35More on that later.
02:36But unfortunately, there are two major, extremely shady things that Honey has been doing this
02:43entire time.
02:44One of them kind of behind the scenes and the other just in plain sight.
02:48So the first thing had to do with affiliate codes.
02:52So now again, if you spent a lot of time online, you've probably heard about these a lot.
02:56But if you haven't, the way this generally works is if I'm a creator and I make a video
03:01about a product and I have an affiliate link to that product and you click it and then
03:05go through the checkout and buy the product, I will get a small kickback for referring
03:09you to that sale.
03:11Almost like a car salesman will get a referral or a real estate agent gets a referral.
03:15Same idea.
03:16And you can even sometimes see the little affiliate code up in a URL bar when you're
03:20clicking on them and checking out.
03:22It's very common.
03:23This is how they're supposed to work.
03:24Now there's lots of other complicated dynamics and variables even within that system.
03:28But the bottom line here is lots of online retailers have affiliate programs and encourage
03:34people to use them.
03:36But Honey, the thing about Honey is they were always the last step before checkout
03:42for basically every online purchase that the people who've installed it are making.
03:48So if you went to click on that link in a video and even click a creator's referral
03:53code, no matter what, if you click apply Honey at checkout, they would remove the creator's
04:00affiliate code and replace it with their own every single time.
04:06So they collect the affiliate revenue for the sale on every site, every time, no matter
04:11who actually referred you to go buy that thing.
04:14Already incredibly slimy behavior, very behind the scenes shady stuff.
04:19And that by itself would be enough, I think, for basically any creator to hear about that
04:23and stop working with Honey.
04:25Like that, just that one thing would be enough.
04:29But like I said, there's two things.
04:31So then number two, okay, so think about this.
04:34If you are an online retailer, you actually don't really like Honey, right?
04:40Like this is a web browser extension that a bunch of people have that every time they
04:44buy something from your site, it like goes through and makes sure that they apply coupon
04:48codes, which takes away from your bottom line and make sure you make less money.
04:52So it's not their favorite thing in the world, just by default.
04:56So Honey, with all this leverage, they would go around trying to convince stores and online
05:01retailers to partner with them.
05:04And one of the key benefits of partnering with Honey was that you get to choose which
05:09coupon codes show up in Honey's database for all of its users.
05:15So that means if there's a 20% coupon code and a 3% coupon code, you're definitely going
05:21to make sure only the 3% coupon code shows up for Honey users by default.
05:27So this specific doublespeak, I think is worthy of using the word scam because we use that
05:34word kind of loosely these days.
05:36But this sort of doublespeak of out of one side of your mouth, you're telling customers,
05:42you should use Honey because it can make sure you get the best deals and coupon codes whenever
05:49you check out.
05:51And on the other side of your mouth, you're telling retailers, you should partner with
05:55Honey because you can prevent customers from getting the best deals and coupon codes when
06:01they use Honey.
06:03They can't both be true.
06:04It's basically Honey going up to these stores and being like, hey, just give us 3%, give
06:08us 5% commission on your sales, and we'll make this coupon code problem go away.
06:12That double messaging is the core of why Honey is being called a scam.
06:16It's because you have to be lying to one of those sides to make any of this work.
06:20And I'll give you a hint, they're lying to users.
06:23So they are stealing from creators and journalistic outlets, anyone that uses affiliate codes
06:28by poaching their affiliate revenue.
06:31And they are clearly not giving the best coupon codes and discounts to users because of the
06:36way they operate.
06:38I think, obviously, if I had known any of this, I never would have worked with Honey
06:43and neither would the creators who did.
06:46But clearly nobody knew about this going on because according to that Megalag video,
06:50again, like I said, they've sponsored 5,000 plus different videos, which ended up totaling
06:56nearly 8 billion views.
06:58It's crazy in hindsight how much they've pulled this off, just being super easy to work with
07:03and then doing all this behind our backs.
07:05I think Austin Evans said it best in his video.
07:08They're paying creators up front for the ad and then stealing from their back pockets.
07:13So what do we do about it?
07:14What is the actual answer here?
07:16I think, obviously, number one is uninstall Honey if you have it installed.
07:21If you didn't ever install Honey, good for you, keep it that way.
07:25And then you can actively go around and tell people, like warn people not to install Honey
07:30because it actively takes away from the blogs and creators that you could be supporting.
07:35And then for me personally, so I had three videos sponsored by Honey.
07:40These were all four plus years ago.
07:42They were all in 2020, around the same time.
07:45My Poco M3 review, my Moto Edge Plus review, and my Galaxy S20 Fan Edition review, so three
07:52smartphone reviews.
07:53These were all back in the brief period where I was working with Standard and I'd actually
07:56almost signed up to do two more in 2021, but then I stopped working with Standard.
08:00Long story.
08:01But what I've done is I've gone back and with YouTube's editor, you might know this, you
08:05can trim out sections of videos.
08:08I have removed the Honey ads from those videos in the name of not accidentally promoting
08:14Honey any more than I possibly could.
08:16Now, of course, I know not everyone can do this, like there are creators with various
08:20amounts of involvement with Honey.
08:23I think LTT was one of the examples from the Megalag video.
08:26They had like dozens, dozens of videos sponsored by Honey.
08:29So it would be, I mean, it would take longer.
08:31I guess they could do it, but cutting all those ads out is challenging depending on
08:35how the ad was put in the video.
08:37And they also unfortunately paid for a custom video that they could use on their own YouTube
08:41channel to run as an ad.
08:43So I can't remove that one, unfortunately.
08:45So that sucks.
08:46But the lesson learned here definitely is for myself and basically every other creator
08:50who got got with, with working with Honey is to be even more skeptical about the products
08:57and companies that we actually put in front of our audience, especially if they're going
09:01to be sponsors.
09:02Like, I think we can appreciate that it's, it's not super hard to vet these things.
09:06We can dig in and use the products, for example, that we're going to share.
09:09And even with Honey, like I installed it, I did a few things, bought a few things.
09:14It worked.
09:15So it seemed fine to me.
09:16It's a no brainer.
09:17Other creators love working with them.
09:19But clearly nobody had seen the things that they were doing.
09:23Very few people anyway had been aware of all the shady stuff that they were doing, or we
09:27never would have worked with them.
09:28Like there was a few murmurings in some threads from a few years ago.
09:33And there was a hilarious clip of Markiplier from like four years ago, being very suspicious
09:38of them.
09:39But still nothing ever really came of it until this Megalag video surfaced everything.
09:45So shout out to him for actually going in and showing the affiliate code poaching and
09:50for doing the research for all of this.
09:51He says he has more videos coming up on this too.
09:54I think the crazy thing to me is just that it was all happening in plain sight.
09:58Like this Honey was owned by PayPal and this wasn't like some shady thing they were doing
10:02on the side to win some extra revenue that PayPal didn't know about.
10:05No, this is their revenue.
10:09This was this is the thing that they do to make money.
10:13This is their business model.
10:14So uninstall Honey, stop using Honey if you already have it.
10:18Don't install it if you weren't going to.
10:20And yeah, time to get super selective about sponsors on YouTube, especially in 2025.
10:26For me, that basically just looks like being extra committed to the long term channel partners
10:32that I have like dbrand and the collaborations with Ridge and things like that.
10:36Those I know are great.
10:38But yeah, just a little extra food for thought.
10:40And if you don't know, now you know.
10:43Thanks for watching.
10:44Catch you guys in the next one.
10:46Peace.
10:47Watch the regular on Spotify.