Considering how many influencers did and still do sponserships for Better Help, a company that actually gets people killed by failing at its singular purpose, I feel nothing but joy seeing them get scammed by it.
It is sadly worse than just influencers getting scammed.
Anyone using this app is actively getting scammed as it is actually not scouring the internet for the best deals. So it will falsely tell you that there are no coupons/sales available when there actually are coupons/sales available for the product, and those deals are super easy to find. Additionally, they are making money off of every single purchase you make, regardless of whether they even gave you a coupon, as if they were responsible for you making the purchase (effectively acting as an affiliate for everything), and no doubt tracking said purchases to sell your data.
On top of this, it appears they are also performing some sort of scam to the retail side of things too, by applying a coupon fraudulently to a purchase, and strong-arming the retail to apply the discount.
Genuinely, this company should be nuked from orbit.
If they were at the very least, actually trying to search for coupons, I wouldn't have an issue with Honey, at least from a consumer perspective. I'd still never use it, because I can't stand the privacy violations that are virtually guaranteed from this, but I'd view it as the cost of it being a "free" service. It also gobbling up affiliate links (in instances when no one has recommended the product to you, IE you didnt get there via an affiliate link) is....kind of acceptable though I'd say that is very much gaming the system and a bit shady in and of itself. Its acceptable though since there are costs with designing algorithms that properly search and find coupons and deals, so that would offset costs and even allow for profit. And an argument could be made that the person wouldn't have bought the product if a coupon wasn't applied to it.
That said, and reiterating what was said before....they aren't searching through all coupons and thus are painting a false picture. They have for the longest time claimed that they were searching everywhere for the best deals, and I wouldnt be surprised if the overwhelming majority of ads/sponsor-blocks all say as much, as they have certainly NOT taken down any of their old ads/sponsored video sections...which is all painting a very false picture of what the app is actively doing and hell, they were likely lies back then too. Its one thing to accidentally miss a coupon, its a whole different beast when its intentionally doing so.
.they aren't searching through all coupons and thus are painting a false picture.
In this way, I absolutely agree with you it is a scam through a false picture.
But as its also a free program that is kinda doing what it says it will, then I think its simply marketing overhype instead of an outright total falsehood.
Which is still bad, and we should hold them to account on. But that's also like 80% of all ads for any service as well. Most don't have "the lowest prices in town" or "the best pizza" etc. So from a legal standpoint, I don't think its any worse than most advertisements other than being an internet thing (and thereby feeling more new/personal to us).
Its one of those deals where if we were going to hold companies to task for misleading advertisements, we missed the ship a long time ago and now its too normalized to really get the rock moving.
Steve "UrinatingTree" Linkowski was once sponsored by scammers Established Titles.
Once their scam was revealed, he still had one ad obligation left on his contract.
He refused to do it. Thankfully, it doesn't look like he was punished for this.
I say this because of how much it hurt him to learn of the scam. He said that was the most fun he'd ever had in shooting ad spots--walking around with a faux-ermine cape and scepter like he ruled the place. He completely owned how silly it all sounded, but his integrity was more important.
Sorry, had to get that out there, but god damn I love him, even if I don't watch as much American football as I used to and mostly watch soccer and baseball. I heard of that company ages ago but didn't really know what they were until recently, but it seems that this just keeps going along with 2024 being a year of revealing the truth.
Despite what the other guy said, AFL is terrible compared to 20 years ago. Everyone is too fit and there's no restrictions on where players can be on the field. So it means that the entire team just follows the ball all game.
Oh and the rules may as well be made up for how often they're changed and just flat out not called.
Guy, go and watch the best of Australian Rules footy.
Seriously, just get some beverages and watch a whole season of a sport you don't know and try to work out the rules as you pick a team to follow.
Aussie Rules is a dead-set beut game, with lots of the things you like about basketball. There is high mobility with an emphasis on ball handling skills and teamwork.
Pick and choose chronological games from this play list.
For bonus points get a decent aussie meat pie and eat it with tomato sauce. Make yourself some meat pies for the match. You can expand your culinary horizons at the same time you detox from b-ball.
Everyone should watch the video. People are laughing at the influencers getting scammed, but it goes well beyond that. And I'd still rather influencers get the money than PayPal, anyway. But, yeah, they're lying to the customers, costing them money, colluding with businesses...and still costing the businesses money too in some cases.
It's really fucking shady, and totally deserves to be called out, even if it hurts influencers which some people think is funny. This being exposed is a good thing.
LTT being told about it and only responding in a forum post that maybe 1/100,000 of the people they ever advertised shouldn't even be surprising at this point. Page 9 retraction on a front page story, Youtuber shill edition. I'm going to be obnoxiously consistent about bringing that up whenever LTT is mentioned in the future.
Imagine seeking life advice from individuals who gained notoriety by selling out in front of a phone camera in their own homes. It’s quite an intriguing concept.
They aren't scamming the channels that shilled it, they're scamming affiliate advertisers in general. This includes the people advertising Honey, but also includes all kinds of other YouTubers who earn commissions from affiliate links.
I don't particularly care. That thing never passed the sniff test and anyone who wasn't immediately wary of it probably isn't intelligent enough to be on the internet anyway.
I'm afraid I've become a total-advertiser-death accelerationist. It's scams all the way down and I don't care if the whole thing collapses and is replaced with nothing.
Say you wanted to support JonTron, so you signed up using promo code JonTron20 to get 20 percent off your first year free.
If you used Honey, it would stop you at checkout and ask if you wanted to check for better deals. If you checked, they would either: A: give you a better discount code (but doesn't support JonTron) or B: they would say "20% is the best we could find" and switch your discount code to their own ( that doesn't support JonTron).
The outcome is, JonTron loses out on the referral that he earned by his ad and Honey (PayPal) gains a referral that they didn't earn.
I've been avoiding them whenever possible for years, mainly because of their censorship but their shady business practices pop up every now and then too.
Lol. Those that watch tech videos. Nzxt was scamming people with computer rentals with switcheroo and predatory rates. Influencers was pushing it and promoting it. When news broke out on the scam, influencers say its unfair to put blame on influencers rofl.
Considering how many influencers did and still do sponserships for Better Help, a company that actually gets people killed by failing at its singular purpose, I feel nothing but joy seeing them get scammed by it.
It is sadly worse than just influencers getting scammed.
Anyone using this app is actively getting scammed as it is actually not scouring the internet for the best deals. So it will falsely tell you that there are no coupons/sales available when there actually are coupons/sales available for the product, and those deals are super easy to find. Additionally, they are making money off of every single purchase you make, regardless of whether they even gave you a coupon, as if they were responsible for you making the purchase (effectively acting as an affiliate for everything), and no doubt tracking said purchases to sell your data.
On top of this, it appears they are also performing some sort of scam to the retail side of things too, by applying a coupon fraudulently to a purchase, and strong-arming the retail to apply the discount.
Genuinely, this company should be nuked from orbit.
The consumer side is a scam but its also one of those situations where "nothing is ever free and you are a fool for assuming such."
So while bad, its harder to evoke sympathy for that because its obvious they'd be getting paid off you somehow.
If they were at the very least, actually trying to search for coupons, I wouldn't have an issue with Honey, at least from a consumer perspective. I'd still never use it, because I can't stand the privacy violations that are virtually guaranteed from this, but I'd view it as the cost of it being a "free" service. It also gobbling up affiliate links (in instances when no one has recommended the product to you, IE you didnt get there via an affiliate link) is....kind of acceptable though I'd say that is very much gaming the system and a bit shady in and of itself. Its acceptable though since there are costs with designing algorithms that properly search and find coupons and deals, so that would offset costs and even allow for profit. And an argument could be made that the person wouldn't have bought the product if a coupon wasn't applied to it.
That said, and reiterating what was said before....they aren't searching through all coupons and thus are painting a false picture. They have for the longest time claimed that they were searching everywhere for the best deals, and I wouldnt be surprised if the overwhelming majority of ads/sponsor-blocks all say as much, as they have certainly NOT taken down any of their old ads/sponsored video sections...which is all painting a very false picture of what the app is actively doing and hell, they were likely lies back then too. Its one thing to accidentally miss a coupon, its a whole different beast when its intentionally doing so.
In this way, I absolutely agree with you it is a scam through a false picture.
But as its also a free program that is kinda doing what it says it will, then I think its simply marketing overhype instead of an outright total falsehood.
Which is still bad, and we should hold them to account on. But that's also like 80% of all ads for any service as well. Most don't have "the lowest prices in town" or "the best pizza" etc. So from a legal standpoint, I don't think its any worse than most advertisements other than being an internet thing (and thereby feeling more new/personal to us).
Its one of those deals where if we were going to hold companies to task for misleading advertisements, we missed the ship a long time ago and now its too normalized to really get the rock moving.
Steve "UrinatingTree" Linkowski was once sponsored by scammers Established Titles.
Once their scam was revealed, he still had one ad obligation left on his contract.
He refused to do it. Thankfully, it doesn't look like he was punished for this.
I say this because of how much it hurt him to learn of the scam. He said that was the most fun he'd ever had in shooting ad spots--walking around with a faux-ermine cape and scepter like he ruled the place. He completely owned how silly it all sounded, but his integrity was more important.
I know we hate sportsball here, and I get why, but I have a soft spot for the man for this reason. It helps that he agrees with us more often than not.
FUCK YOU, SPANOS!
Sorry, had to get that out there, but god damn I love him, even if I don't watch as much American football as I used to and mostly watch soccer and baseball. I heard of that company ages ago but didn't really know what they were until recently, but it seems that this just keeps going along with 2024 being a year of revealing the truth.
Yeah, he's the only way I keep up with "real" sports at all anymore.
I quit watching the NBA after about 25 years once the game had devolved into nothing but threes--and its fans keep claiming it's evolved.
The last straw was when I watched my hometown Houston Rockets have a big lead over the Golden State Warriors...and kept shooting threes.
Clank. Clank. Clank. Clank. Clank. Clank. Clank. Clank. Clank. Clank. Clank. Clank. Clank. Clank. Clank. Clank. Clank. Clank. Clank. Clank. Clank. Clank. Clank. Clank. Clank. Clank. Clank.
Twenty-seven missed threes in a row.
All because THE ANALYTICS said it was EFFICIENT.
They blew their lead and lost the game. In Game 7. Ending their season.
Here's a great video on that disaster of a game.
The league going woke shortly after, if they weren't already, was just the brown cream on the shit sundae.
By the way, it's only gotten worse since. Have a game where a team's down by two, they have a four-on-one fast break in the final seconds, and...
Despite what the other guy said, AFL is terrible compared to 20 years ago. Everyone is too fit and there's no restrictions on where players can be on the field. So it means that the entire team just follows the ball all game. Oh and the rules may as well be made up for how often they're changed and just flat out not called.
Guy, go and watch the best of Australian Rules footy.
Seriously, just get some beverages and watch a whole season of a sport you don't know and try to work out the rules as you pick a team to follow.
Aussie Rules is a dead-set beut game, with lots of the things you like about basketball. There is high mobility with an emphasis on ball handling skills and teamwork.
Start here.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrSqw-3k7lZke8Ta6f9KjnbJ3zipyCxt0&si=9c4D_CRo-4YdNuxp
Pick and choose chronological games from this play list.
For bonus points get a decent aussie meat pie and eat it with tomato sauce. Make yourself some meat pies for the match. You can expand your culinary horizons at the same time you detox from b-ball.
https://www.recipetineats.com/meat-pie-recipe/
I'll call your Australian football and raise you Finnish baseball.
That's a thing. And it's great.
I'm not wasting hours being a vegetable watching sportsball, even if it's run by a penal colony. I will be stealing that recipe, though.
I heard The Quartering complain on stream last week that people were giving still giving him shit for accepting that sweet, sweet Scottish money.
Which he still isn't apologetic or ashamed in the least. He copes that "people always knew from the beginning that it was a gag gift".
Everyone should watch the video. People are laughing at the influencers getting scammed, but it goes well beyond that. And I'd still rather influencers get the money than PayPal, anyway. But, yeah, they're lying to the customers, costing them money, colluding with businesses...and still costing the businesses money too in some cases.
It's really fucking shady, and totally deserves to be called out, even if it hurts influencers which some people think is funny. This being exposed is a good thing.
LTT being told about it and only responding in a forum post that maybe 1/100,000 of the people they ever advertised shouldn't even be surprising at this point. Page 9 retraction on a front page story, Youtuber shill edition. I'm going to be obnoxiously consistent about bringing that up whenever LTT is mentioned in the future.
Imagine seeking life advice from individuals who gained notoriety by selling out in front of a phone camera in their own homes. It’s quite an intriguing concept.
This thing is naked spyware. If they scammed the channels that shilled this shit, good.
They aren't scamming the channels that shilled it, they're scamming affiliate advertisers in general. This includes the people advertising Honey, but also includes all kinds of other YouTubers who earn commissions from affiliate links.
I don't particularly care. That thing never passed the sniff test and anyone who wasn't immediately wary of it probably isn't intelligent enough to be on the internet anyway.
I'm afraid I've become a total-advertiser-death accelerationist. It's scams all the way down and I don't care if the whole thing collapses and is replaced with nothing.
What's the scam? I'm too busy to watch the video.
Changes the referral code at checkout to PayPal's (honey's owner) cheating people out of their commissions
Say you wanted to support JonTron, so you signed up using promo code JonTron20 to get 20 percent off your first year free.
If you used Honey, it would stop you at checkout and ask if you wanted to check for better deals. If you checked, they would either: A: give you a better discount code (but doesn't support JonTron) or B: they would say "20% is the best we could find" and switch your discount code to their own ( that doesn't support JonTron).
The outcome is, JonTron loses out on the referral that he earned by his ad and Honey (PayPal) gains a referral that they didn't earn.
I'm proud that I only recognize Mr. Beast from the thumbnail.
The white bearded guy over his left shoulder looks familiar but I'm at a loss.
I associate Honey with one of Internet Historian's early comedic ad read compendiums.
I dont recognize any of em! Im not even sure which is that dumbass Mr beast.
Ignorance is bliss.
I watched Jimmy's "I bought an entire grocery store" video back in my more normie YT days.
Paypal strikes again.
I've been avoiding them whenever possible for years, mainly because of their censorship but their shady business practices pop up every now and then too.
Lol. Those that watch tech videos. Nzxt was scamming people with computer rentals with switcheroo and predatory rates. Influencers was pushing it and promoting it. When news broke out on the scam, influencers say its unfair to put blame on influencers rofl.
womp womp