The Honey Scam and the Ridiculous Mess of Affiliate Marketing

[@simonmay1671]

Not me getting ready to watch Hank perform a deep dive on why the bees are lying to us...

[@zezegm3421]

Worship our Bee Overlords!

[@RobinCapper]

The bumble ones tried to have us believe that they couldn't fly!

[@RichP5746]

To be fair, the World Beekeeping Awards have removed the honey prize due to fraud in the honey world

[@jacksonsherman3930]

beez nutz

[@summerlovinxx]

​@@RobinCapper if Bee Movie taught me anything, we're the ones trying to convince ourselves 😂 soon we'll think they can't speak human language or form strange romantic relationships with definitely-normal florists either.

[@elizameeks]

I was skeptical of honey because I figured it was a data mining operation and I wasn't into it, but this took a turn I didn't expect. Thanks for the insights.

[@SherriLyle80s]

Same

[@MarcusTheDorkus]

That's what I figured, and really they probably do that in addition to injecting their referral codes. Shopping habits are an incredibly valuable thing to track, and Honey has incredible access to that info per-item and across stores.

[@hankschannel]

I think this is what most people assumed..."Oh, more stupid money chasing after big data."

[@SirLightfire]

Same here

[@Foundinwonderland]

Whenever there’s something free and shady (as in, I can’t tell where the money is coming from) I assume it’s data mining. Nice of Honey to come up with something new, along with what I assume is also data mining

[@CDCI3]

The biggest issue I see with Honey is that it's even stealing affiliate commissions from people they aren't sponsoring. They get one KZbinr to do the ad, and then pretty much everyone that took that KZbinr's advice to use Honey that then clicks on a different affiliate's link is going to end up giving the commission that affiliate earned to Honey. People who took the sponsorship at least got ad money, and they should have considered who they partner with, but other creators are also paying that price.

[@Narinjas]

Also, think about company employee, healthcare workers, and a specific hidden discount code that should not be available to customers, but honey searches the code and the code history, and applies old but available codes, or apply unavailable codes from the people who are deserved that code , even veteran discounts, or disabled people discount, or cancer patient discount codes, that you get in store with proof, but online, because not all systems have fail safes and have the 2 systems linked... and if the company does not pay honey to show the lower 5%-15% discounts instead of 20%-80% discounts that are not available, and the company loses money, and needs to inflate the prices to meet the loss from honey, and then we drive the sales down because of the inflated price, and make that company bankrupt and lose local businesses... we have such a hekapoo concoction that deserves their own place down there.

[@gigglybeast]

For some reason this isn't emphasized enough in most of the discussions (videos/articles) I've seen about it. Lot's of people end up commenting about whether something is buried in the TOS or in the sponsorship agreement. But people are getting ripped off who have absolutely no affiliation with Honey. It seems this makes the scam (and potential lawsuit), much, much bigger.

[@OrigamiMarie]

Yeah. It's like (to use the metaphor in that video) the KZbinr suggested that you, the viewer, sign up to have some commissioned sales guy to follow you around and interject on _all_ of your shopping expeditions.

[@lazyfoxplays8503]

Coupons always did this though. If you have a coupon, it tells the system at checkout that you were brought here by an ad. Coupons aren’t stealing affiliate money. They inform the company what marketing you came from. When you use a coupon, you tell the company that promotion that got the valid coupon sent you. Honey is “stealing” as much as going to a store to ask questions and then going to a store with better prices is “stealing” that sale.

[@JakeRayTM]

​@@lazyfoxplays8503 You sound like you didn't quite watch the original video exposing Honey. Did you watch it?

[@kayleyhodson7079]

A note on the cookware he mentioned: The company was sued and lost a few years ago for lying about their cookware being ‘non-toxic’. Since then, the company has quietly MADE them non-toxic by changing the materials in their pans (took out PFAS and other related compounds in their coating and switched to ceramic) but still…feels fishy to me. No one seems aware this lawsuit happened and it feels like they only did the right thing because they got caught, and now they’re trying to cover it up. As of Dec 2024 the new pans have not been tested to see if they are what they’re claiming. No hate to Hank here, there is no reason he’d know this. Just putting out a PSA for anyone who’d like to know this information before buying

[@juzoli]

Also, independent testers already showed that HexClad is NOT the best at all. They physically scratched a bunch of similar products, and there were many other products which were taking much less damage, while being non-toxic, more non-stick, and also cheaper. HexClad not bad, but it is ridiculously overpriced for the quality they provide.

[@TeaAndCroissants]

Thank you for this context!

[@khaldrakon]

From what i could find, the toxic/forever chemical they use is PTFE, and they still use it, the only thing that changed is they no longer claim their pans are non-toxic. Couldn't find anything about them switching the coating to ceramic Edit: nevermind, seems like as of this month they are now using ceramic, because there are articles and reviews from only a month or two ago saying they're still using PTFE

[@kayleyhodson7079]

@ PTFE is a type of PFAS-related chemical (PFAS is a family of hundreds of chemicals recently discovered as carcinogenic). If you look at the most recent pans Hexclad is selling, they now claim the pans are made with “ceramic nonstick called TerraBond which is PTFE-free”. Older models of the their pans are not ceramic and don’t make this claim, only that they are “non-toxic and PFAS-free” (which proved untrue). I suppose it’s still taking their word for it…I can’t find any outside source proving that the change was actually made. Just that the language on their website has changed :/

[@bethanysolimine5428]

To be fair, most companies only do things when they get caught or exposed.

[@jacksonforman9560]

hex clad pans: “they still work like new after 3 years” my grandmas 100 year old cast iron skillet: AM I A JOKE TO YOU!?!?

[@brkatimachor]

Also, and this is not to detract at all from your excellent and well-made point, I bought a stainless steel pan about 20 years ago and it hasn't noticeably aged or changed in any way.

[@Jaker788]

Hex clad is just a Teflon pan too. The same wear and tear can happen as with any Teflon pan. Dishwashers are the worst for them, but just every heat cycle weakens the bone and it flakes off bit by bit.

[@notimportant1060]

@@Jaker788 Dishwashers are also terrible for cast iron and carbon steel pans. Honestly its best to hand wash all pans.

[@Jaker788]

@notimportant1060 I just do stainless steel for the most part, with 1 Teflon pan that gets hand washed. But yeah, cast iron for a different reason shouldn't be put in a dishwasher. Automatic dishwasher soap is highly alkaline and mildly abrasive, not great for some metals, not great for some coatings that are fragile.

[@jacksonforman9560]

@ stainless steel is also a great option that will last forever if treated properly!

[@Raiaka]

Markiplier's thoughts on not knowing where Honey was making their money instantly turned me off from them years ago. The whole thing just felt incredibly shady when I though about those concerns in the context of, "If you're not paying for the product, you're probably the product."

[@ElpSmith]

I watch SOG and remember that phrase when I see that anything is free

[@Tytoalba777]

It's also why I'm so super skeptical of apps like Upside. Like, I absolutely need to know, where the hell are they making their money?

[@Veronicz]

Yeah I was always skeptical of Honey bc I wasn’t sure how they were generating revenue. But I think they claimed they were getting money from the businesses, which ig is similar to credit cards. Though credit cards also get a lot of revenue from APR when ppl don’t pay their statement in full. And still sketchy bc they didn’t really explain how they were getting money from businesses

[@genericname8727]

@@Veronicz I believe they said business would pay to be part of the group they worked with because working with Honey increased the likelihood of some people shopping with the business. Because Honey increased business the companies signed up with them, so that’s supposedly where the profits came from

[@yetiinmyspaghetti5174]

the youtubers are the ones getting screwed im just getting a slight discount on 1/10 items

[@beakling1]

Side not: i cant wait for the ten second markiplier video with a non-referential title or description in which he makes direct eye contact with the camera and just says "i was right. I was right." And nothing else.

[@flamefriends3842]

He already made the tweet XD

[@iron_pickaxe]

Someone uploaded a clip of markiplier talking about this. Look up "new markiplier on honey (members only stream)"

[@danialyousaf6456]

​@@flamefriends3842 and also commented on a video of him talking about honey lol.

[@jordanleighton6893]

Did he already say he wasn’t a fan of Honey?

[@Muszy]

@@jordanleighton6893 there’s a clip of him from 2020 on stream where he sees a honey ad and goes off topic to say how he doesn’t trust honey and didn’t accept a sponsorship from them because he thought it was a scam

[@MattRoszak]

A good rule of thumb is that if you see a product being shilled by many influencers, there's a very high chance it's either a scam, or just not very good value.

[@DaniGamerWarrior]

I don't know if I'd go that far, but my rule is it is Definitely worth a good google search or two before committing to it.

[@JosephDavies]

That's the inherent irony in sponsorships these days. If I see an ad on many creators all at once, it massively devalues the product in my eyes.

[@Americanbadashh]

@@JosephDavies I feel this way with games. If I see a game getting a ton of creators to play it. I'm assuming it's trash.

[@GSBarlev]

There are a few exceptions: Kiwi Crates were legit awesome for my kid; I don't use it, but people I know in the flesh say Ground News is worth it. But I really do wonder about Brilliant...

[@Utreshimon]

How dare you besmirch our lord and saviour: Raid Shadow Legends! /s

[@PabloEdvardo]

what hank and most of these reacts are all missing is that the worst part of honey isn't that it's replacing an existing affiliate, it's that it often will insert its affiliate into purchases where there wasn't any original affiliate at all. meaning if you're on amazon and browsing and about to buy something, and it pops up and says "hey we checked and found nothing!" and you dismiss the prompt, honey just captured affiliate referral money even though they did NOTHING. this is what ultimately poisons the internet... because it means there are thousands/millions of purchases out there that never should have paid out an affiliate cut in the first place. that revenue goes to honey instead of the storefront. making storefronts pay out unnecessary affiliate revenue means they have less overall money to pay for affiliate revenue, or could impact the cost of the price overall, to regular consumers who aren't even using honey. you want the storefront to only have to pay out affiliate revenue for someone who actually referred them to the item/store, because the whole point is that they're spending what is marketing money to help gain sales. if they're paying out affiliate revenue for almost every sale, regardless of if it actually was a referral or not, they're losing money for no reason!

[@rinzor]

Good point. What I don't get is how noone noticed this was happening for years. Like, how did creators not notice a significant drop in affiliate revenue? How did storefronts not notice a disproportionate increase in affiliate payouts to honey? I wonder if that's what motivated Amazon's move to discounts via clicking a box to apply a coupon (that and trying to obfuscate true pricing from pricing aggregators like camelcamelcamel).

[@DeathnoteBB]

⁠@@rinzorBecause there’s no drop, Honey just steals what they would have gotten. It’s potential income lost, so it’s invisible. Major companies say “lost revenue” but they mean “We speculated we’d get this much and didn’t”. KZbinrs don’t have entire accounting firms to speculate for them, so they can’t tell.

[@littlevivz1684]

​@@rinzor what are they going to compare to? They don't know how much they should be getting because they don't know how many who will click on the link and actually buy before the cookie expires or is replaced by another. So that's the first problem. Furthermore, not everyone use honey, from it is created more and more will begin to use it over time so it wouldn't happen suddently. Still there are people not using it so it's not like everything just dissapeared over night. An influencer who started growing during this will have seen their earnings grow just because overall clicks were growing. An influencer who appeared lets say 2-3 years ago have never been in the game before honey was taking their money, so how would they know they should be earning more? An influencer who was big maybe 7 years ago don't know why earnings from these links have been going down over the last 7 years, and they probably haven't been earning money the exact same way for all those years either. Lastly, this doesn't nececcarily have any direct consequenses for the influencer promoting honey. The influencer who got you to download honey might not be the same influencer who's links you click next. You might download honey and then go to a completely different channel and decide to buy the product they promote there. So since this affect the earnings to literally everyone, i.e. the whole content creater economy, they can’t compare to each other either, because everyones earning goes down. So the collective expectation of what can be earned from these links has slowly decreased over time. And economy is compelicated, and few talk about it openly, how should they know why they earn what they do and if it could be even more?

[@littlevivz1684]

@PabloEdvardo Exactly! The more you think about the consequenses the more sick it gets.. first that they can overtake affiliates to creators who may not even know honey excist at all, but then you think.. what happens if you got there on your own and then click on it... they will always steal money from someone. And the seller will never know if the affiliate was there the whole time or not

[@jackdoyle7453]

These "creators" endorsed a product that they knew was going to data mine their viewers, and now they are salty because it also burned them? Karma's a bitch

[@m4rt_]

6:00 One thing that I remember Tom Scot once mentioned, is that when someone is doing a sponsorship for a product that isn't within their expertise, they should not be held to the same scrutiny as someone who is doing a sponsorship for something that is within their expertise. For example, if someone who does programming gets a sponsorship for a programming thing, they should be expected to understand if it's something that makes sense to advertise, but if it's about something completely different, they shouldn't be held to the same standard. Though they should still be expected to not advertise a blatant scam, and people should also understand that hindsight is 20/20, so things that seam clear now may not have been so clear in the past. He mentioned this in his VPN video.

[@yyzhed]

I think if it's outside your expertise and you don't understand it, you shouldn't advocate for it in the form of a brand deal. And if they do, they should be held responsible for it. I strongly disagree with Tom Scott on this one.

[@ColossusBall]

@@yyzhed Yea this just sounds like content creator sweeping. Don't look at ME guys, we're all the victim here!

[@andrewjgrimm]

I loved his video on VPNs, about why you may or may not want a VPN.

[@JesterQueenAnne]

​@@ColossusBallthat wasn't the message though. The message wasn't you can't hold creators accountable they didn't know better. The message was you can't judge with the same scrutiny people who have no reason to know better and people who absolutely should know better.

[@erebusvonmori8050]

@@ColossusBall I would point out 1) that the video in question was made years ago and 2) Tom Scott doesn't do sponsorships.

[@RCPlanes59]

me 5 minutes ago: Oh cool Hank made a succinct explanation of this Honey drama me now: Am I watching an ad for cookware?

[@Bee-of9uu]

And then he was singing and playing a game??? Like wtf is this

[@GinnyDi]

@@Bee-of9uu ...new around here?

[@mattymattffs]

For really bad cookware

[@mkhpsyco]

Clicked the affiliate link... Saw the price... Yeah, I'm not ready for hexclad.

[@ferretyluv]

So my sister got those hexclad pans on sale for a deep discount and she adores it.

[@FlyntofRWBY]

I can't wait to see LegalEagle's review on this entire situation. It's gonna be a good one I'm sure!

[@cyberpsycho9250]

That’s what I’m waiting for as well. See how this holds up legally. There will be some loophole, I bet anything.

[@leaf111]

he's very biased sometimes so idk, his mrbeast video was atrocious and i lost all faith in him after that (which had already crumbled at some points before that). though that was clearly because he was friends with him and i dont know if he has any connection to honey, if he does it probably wont be a good one lol

[@EarthboundX]

I am curious if this is even illegal. It might not legally be considered a scam. But ethically and morally it feels like one, literally pouching other's people's commissions and lying about how big of a discount you can get.

[@jordannoell4222]

​@leaf111 Legal Eagle has no personal affiliation with Mr. Beast. He only covered what Mr. Beast could be liable for legally, which is a possible violation of Gerogia's sweepstakes laws. As for the allegations from that one disgruntled employee and his questionable associations there isn't really anything to talk about legally speaking. That is just drama and up to individuals to believe whether or not their claims hold water in the sphere of public opinion.

[@jordannoell4222]

I'm not sure any law is being broken unless Honey's claims about finding the best deal, while objectively not giving the best deal through backchannel deal with the storefront, constitutes a false advertising or fraud claim. That being said those taglines often always have some clause in the terms of service that free them of responsibility if they do not find the best deal.

[@lancepharker]

just a reminder that the makers of Honey are now making an extension to steal ad revenue as well, called Pie.

[@emilymacdougall184]

Yes! Honestly surprised more people aren’t mentioning this. My KZbin has been swamped with ads and before I even knew there was stuff going on with honey I was suspicious of an ad blocker advertising so heavily

[@mitchellclendening7682]

They also ruthlessly advertise. With really shitty and annoying ads, where they hire people that sell their soul to literally any company for money. So aggravating.

[@dillonsmith3633]

Thank you for saying this

[@moniquebear4544]

Yeah, I've blocked SO MANY Pie ads but they still keep popping up, Google really should let you block the specific advertisers not just individual ads

[@rocketsummer]

AND they're really banking hard on the fact that youtube now sidesteps ad blockers

[@will4not]

First, this is a great video on Honey. However, are we gonna gloss over the fact that the review at 4:50 seems to be fake? No one starts a real review with "I don't care what you have heard." Which in its own way gets back into part of the theme of this video--can we trust the sponsors? Or can we trust KZbinrs to know what the sponsors are actually doing?

[@Telomerase9]

Everything you buy today is the result of a constant advertising war. What shows up in Google search results, what you see people talk about on social media, what products get shelf space at stores, all of it is fought for hard between different advertising agencies. Just like how there's no ethical consumption, there's no uninfluenced consumption. You will never have perfect information of every product out there, and even if you were aware of all the tricks behind the scene, that would still inform your opinion and be a form of influence. Until we completely get rid of profit motive and restructure society, the perception of every good will be the result of biased advertising.

[@alexanderdickens2517]

Yeah the correct response to this situation would have been for a complete overhaul of how content creators interact with affiliate marketing. In a just world, this would have been the end to that entire system, a cultural overhaul of how we pay people and derive ad money from KZbin. Instead: more shilling until the NEXT inevitable scam! For that reason I don't really agree at all with Hank that the creators arent liable. given the monetary incentives, this is going to happen eventually, and KZbin is one of few websites where ad buys are PERMANENT. They're in that video forever. If the ad itself is still tied to their reputation via the video staying up, then why should they get a free pass? Everyone who took sponsorship from this video has a moral imperative to delete and reupload, and people aren't doing that.

[@crazydragy4233]

​@@alexanderdickens2517 Hank's point really boils down to "You can't judge creators for shilling complete lies if they didn't do research and just read the words blindly..." If you have integrity this shouldn't be an issue. Like such a position is Criticized by Hank when it comes to general misinformation but advertising gets a pass? 😅

[@FullElvenLLC]

This was a rare time in which that I felt this video was clearly marked by his own bias, but he doesn't challenge his own bias at any point during this. People who have an Affiliateship have a responsibility to their followers to be honest about the things that they want to advertise. I say that as someone as a cosplayer has been sponsored by different craft places. I use the product first, and if I don't like it, I don't promote it. I've always been given a trial/gift package to try it myself (and to make videos of). A lot of the agreements have a "Don't say anything if you don't have anything nice to say." But there are ways to be honest about a product without being negative. If you think a product has only a niche use, you can frame it as "If you are someone who 'insert niche use' this is the product for you" rather than saying "This is pretty markedly useless for the general population." ^^; But again, if you want those big affiliate bucks, you have to ignore the moral compass and throw your integrity out, and convince people they need multi-hundred dollar pans and apps that solve a problem you could remedy by manage your bank account manually.

[@victoriasterling.]

I appreciate this video! Admittedly, I am/was a big fan of and frequently used Honey. I've had it as an extension on my personal PC, used the app, and I used it *frequently* when I worked as a personal assistant. I was just telling my mom about it last month, because I've enjoyed the product for so long. So the news coming out was a surprise and disappointment to me, for sure. And a stark, necessary, reminder that I need to be more cautious and critical.

[@avryantoinette]

Same boat lol. It really came through for me on amazon especially -- I never would have found any of the coupons it suggested to me (I don't even know where to go to look for amazon coupons). I assumed I was trading my data and shopping habits in exchange for coupons, and I was okay with that deal. All the comments saying that Honey threw up obvious red flags for them are making me go "....oh" haha.

[@GoVocaloider]

Well, don't beat yourselves up too much, alright? After all, scams are supposed to work by tricking people. Also keep in mind that the internet exploded after one person talked about it, meaning that no one was talking about it before. It's so easy to look back and say "I saw the red flags" when it's confirmed, if you didn't happen to use the thing. I'm fortunate enough that I was one of those people who didn't like Honey enough to use it. But looking back, I realize it's because after using it 4 or 5 times, and it not giving me any discounts despite saying it was applying codes, it felt useless so I uninstalled it. Admittedly, if it had saved me money, I might have not thought at all about it and kept it installed. Critical thinking is good, learning about how this stuff works is good, but it's also good to recognize you are only one person, and that honey (and other scams) are teams of people with many resources and tactics working in bad faith against you. So don't be too hard on yourselves!

[@Sandreline]

I always assumed it was just data gathering. Which made me suspicious, because there has to be some crazy sh*t they're doing with the data if they can have the level of sponsorships that they do.

[@swimgirl24]

Big same

[@swimgirl24]

Never downloaded it because I also thought they had to be doing something crazy with data harvesting to generate enough money for their marketing. I didn’t see the stealing of affiliate commissions though.

[@JosephDavies]

The fact that it was *undisclosed* data gathering told me everything I needed to know about the ethics of the company and whether it was safe to install.

[@danilooliveira6580]

I never looked into it because I always assumed it was a subscription service that helped you save money with coupons, so as someone that don't buy a lot of stuff on the internet, it wasn't interesting for me. so it made too much sense that it was actually a scam when I found out it was free.

[@fumaczi]

i m sure they do profile ppl base of spending habits and would not be surprised if they had some deal whit advertisers to recommend adds based of past transactions but i wonder how many different unethical things they did in reality

[@SomeoneBeginingWithI]

Honey themselves were also lying in the actual ads they were paying for as prerolls and midrolls on youtube. They weren't just paying creators to lie for them. They specifically said in the youtube ads that honey will search the internet for you and find the best possible coupon code. That is a lie. If they had just claimed "we will save you the effort of searching for coupon codes" then I wouldn't have minded. That is a service that would save some people time, and it's also a service to the companies making the products. Tbh I'm relieved that it's not a data harvesting/tracking scam. It still sounds like one, and I wouldn't be shocked if they were also tracking and collecting user data, but it's nice to know it's at least possible for them to make money without doing that.

[@gresh1134]

Never trust something if you can't see where it keeps its money-making mechanism

[@jjuniper479]

...if it's a for profit cooperation. I don't think you should assume everything is capitalistic by default. People *choose* to be capitalistic and prioritize money over people. It's not normal.

[@aimemaggie]

@@jjuniper479if something is non profit, they will tell you

[@Cr3zant]

@@jjuniper479 All companies must make money in some way in order to keep existing. Doesn't matter if it's for-profit or not, there are employees, those employees to be paid for their time, and business expenses must be paid. If you don't know where the money to maintain its existence is coming from, you have to be cautious about it.

[@beakling1]

​@jjuniper479 I'd argue that it applies to non-profits, too. Sure, not everything is a capitalist venture, but the culture is still there, and a buck is a buck. Nonprofits are regularly outed for dishonest handling of finances, services, people, or other resources, only to remain functional because they have the public opinion that they're doing more good than bad. Honey poured into looking like a nonprofit business model. Thats why they got away with it for so long.

[@xant8344]

Even for plenty where you can see, you shouldn't trust that they're not doing anything else too (like Microsoft charging you for the operating system but still selling your data)

[@coetzee8522]

6:25 "Most creators aren't savvy enough or have the time to do that work" Regarding brand endorsements, like any other brand, it's literally part of a creator's job to take make the time and effort for this if they wanted to sponsor and recommend to their audience. Even if it's just for the sake of their own reputation.

[@GCAT01Living]

THIS. Not looking into it is like telling your viewers "I know a guy" when the guy is some dude whose number you got in a parking lot one day. It's their job to know what they're promoting.

[@soldiaz7261]

Sure, but that doesn't necessarily mean they have the *ability* (which is why Hank mentioned savviness and not just time). That's why there's a question here--Honey directly benefits from the fact that the average KZbinr does not have the ability to understand that their business model is harmful, or even the context necessary to ask that question. It's not like KZbinrs are taught how to do this stuff! A lot of them are twenty-somethings trying to make ends meet with art or comedy sketches, not long-time science educators.

[@wkeezz]

@@soldiaz7261you are in a position of authority. It is your job, if you are pushing something, to study it. Can you imagine what would happen if a government leader starts telling everyone to drink mercury?

[@SineN0mine3]

​@@soldiaz7261that's a fair and measured response, however I think that accepting dodgy sponsors should still cost the reputation of the creators who promote them, they should be criticised for their mistakes by their fans and they should apologise for misleading them. I think if they seem to be genuine about it then it's a forgivable mistake, but it's certainly not something that we should be condoning or accepting of. I think we're far too quick to pass the buck especially when we know that the people profiting from Honey won't be made to feel guilty or held accountable. It's about time we stopped excusing people for their ignorance of assisting to make the world a worse place. Maybe then next time they will think twice before doing business with suspicious companies without properly investigating. Maybe, eventually, the next scam company to come along won't get any sponsors at all and they'll stop getting away with this sort of thing. Otherwise we ought to just agree that it's legal to steal money so long as you only do it a bit at a time and let everyone do it. There's probably more than enough cash just laying around in other people's sock drawers and wallets to provide some real stimulus to the economy once it's liberated...

[@CreativeC13]

Mind you that expose video was a result of YEARS of research

[@sssf55]

Honestly hank, I don't even know what your point was in this video

[@bubblesnopemporium5880]

i did not expect this to turn into a cookware ad 5 minutes in 😂

[@lalaurlalala]

Yeah I did not appreciate the hard shift

[@MediumDeviation]

Doubly ironic because Hexclad is kind of a scam - they claim to be more durable while also being non stick, a claim that doesn't hold up in testing. You're better off getting a cheap non-stick and replace it regularly.

[@bryanlewis5233]

And go figure, it's for an overpriced marketing-forward product like Hexclad. Honestly it's extremely disappointing that Hank basically clickbaited off of a viral video and decided to use the opportunity to shill. I get that creators gotta eat, but between this and the bad "but it's just hustle culture" takes throughout this video I'm unsubscribing.

[@travis_approved]

@@lalaurlalalait was clearly illustrative of his point and not an actual ad lol

[@travis_approved]

@@bryanlewis5233it was to illustrate his point it wasn’t a legitimate sponsor slot, he was just showing how creator commission links work so he could talk about them more thoroughly

[@valhicks19]

I work in beekeeping and clicked in anticipation of a very different video 😂

[@fantasion_voidv.4412]

The beekeeper cult shivered in their timbers seeing the title lmaoo

[@koivunen2489]

I read about how big of a problem faking honey is, and I've been hoping someone who's good at talking would talk about it.

[@misharumkittum]

My parents started keeping bees around the time they retired. Same thing here. I also wasn't looking at the screen at first so missed the splash with their brand icon. Took me a hot minute to figure out what this was about!

[@Hullyeah]

What I like about this is the title was informative for people like me who are chronically online but inadvertent clickbait for beekeepers :)

[@jolttsp]

OP was wanting in on the scam 🤣

[@VarroTigurius-u1f]

I wonder if honey is now liable for false advertising because it’s found that it actually wasn’t always applying the best deal either… the set up where companies pairing with honey to limit coupons that honey applied.

[@marinus86]

I will be surprised if there is no class action lawsuit from this. But maybe their fineprint was really tight?

[@GGsquared]

It’s so dumb because it would’ve been so easy to say “Honey gives you good deals” instead of “Honey gives you the BEST deal”. They decided blatant lying was better than being slightly misleading, and now they’ll (hopefully) pay the price for it.

[@alexandrac6177]

@@GGsquaredI suppose they could argue that it WAS the best deal… for them lol

[@georgeshapiro301]

Not just false advertising. Massive, blatant theft. If the execs (and probably more) aren't arrested, well I won't be surprised because we're in the timeline we're in, but Jesus H Christ...

[@TysonJensen]

Sure, but get in line. At one point more than 50% of honey (like, the actual stuff made by bees) sold in the US contained... no honey. The US Government won't sue a large wealthy company or charge a rich person with a crime. False advertising is very hard for an ordinary person to get to court and win, the main way it was enforced in the past was the FTC taking direct action.

[@maxaslagolis]

Hank, can I say that you playing connections or other games at the end of your videos genuinely help save my day. If you discuss something upsetting it can leave me feeling doomed and angry and horrible. But by going to connections it's something to take my brain off and focus on.

[@ivytarablair]

this! absolutely this! ❤❤❤

[@Jdjdbdheb7]

I agree. Do you know the first game he’s playing? I couldn’t understand when he said it.

[@etrain8885]

Hank poorly summarizing another creator’s video and then trying to sell me Hexclad just feels bad

[@californicationbabe]

Agreed, very strange choice.

[@TheeGrumpy]

How noble of Hank. He deserves a lairdship. Let's all pitch in and buy 1 square foot of Scotland!

[@chinkasuyaro8983]

Let's check Honey to find out if there are any deals for that.

[@SamTheMan666]

That'll help establish a respectable title. I wish there were a company that would help us do this.

[@adventureisntfar]

I forgot about those sponsorships until I read this comment 😅 the fact that youtube ads and sponsorships go through cycles is something I just dont ever think about. E.g. raidshadow legends, Lootcrates, etc

[@chanux]

Doesn't Laphroaig whisky give you one? 😃

[@DaniGamerWarrior]

That was the first thing I remembered when listening to this! lol!

[@AZealousRetort]

Honestly I would have appreciated if Honey was just an honest "you let us record your shopping habits across different stores on the internet and we give you coupons so you consent to the spyware"

[@vikramkr382]

Definitely also what I originally thought they were doing - but now I wonder - where exactly is the money in that? Paypal's not even owned by ebay anymore so what's the point of collecting that data? They don't control a platform where they can show you ads. The folks who own the platforms that show you ads have much better data on you. If you sell the data you're in a low margin business (why would you pay top dollar for data anyone else can pay for? No competitive advantage). Compared to that, taking the affiliate money is a few *percent* on the dollar value of the transaction rivaling or dramatically exceeding the transaction fees you collect with e.g. pay with paypal. Not even close.

[@Goodgu3963]

@@vikramkr382 PIE. The people who made honey are making a new platform that is supposed to do the same thing except with ads. Block ads, show you ads, make money off of you, pay you a tiny tiny percentage of that money.

[@Zariel_999]

@@vikramkr382 paypal has jumped on the AI train, so that's what they're doing with all your data.

[@JosephDavies]

And yet that was already more than they were willing to admit.

[@Yoshi_206]

Except that's not what was making Honey it's money. It was stealing commissions (even when no discount was 'found') and making deals with stores to hide the best coupons and taking a cut for themselves.

[@krank23]

It took me a while to realize Hank was talking about "pans" and not "pants"

[@yarondavidson6434]

It's really hard to find good non-stick pants that can survive high heat, last for a long time, and not cost too much. 😀

[@vwertix1662]

​@@yarondavidson6434Yeah and hexclad arent them.

[@mangojules5736]

“I just bought a little one first” wdym a little pair of pants???

[@stuntmonkey00]

@@yarondavidson6434 And not to yuck Hank's Yum, but that's not Hexclad. One of he things about sponsorships is that YT'bers are rarely experts about the things they are being sponosred by (which makes LTT a hyper point of focus...) You know who instantly gave Hexclad a thumbs down after trying it? Kenji Lopez Alt, the dean of food science himself. And he had some pointed things to say about chefs liek Ramsey being paid to promote it.

[@yarondavidson6434]

@@mangojules5736 Hey, if Hank wants to wear short shorts, then Hank can wear short shorts.

[@PlagueHush]

The point you make about having to trust the people working for you to make good decisions about sponsors, is exactly the relationship viewers have to content creators. We choose people to follow who we trust - either trust to entertain us, or trust to give us accurate or insightful information. It's a parasocial relationship where the content representative has a responsiblity to their viewers to vet the people they lend their infleunce and viewership to. It's an endorsement. The alternative is that we (as viewers) treat all advertisments and sponsorships as potential scams, and don't trust any form of sponsorship or endorsement. In this case two things happen: 1. Your ability as an influencer to move your audience to action is massively reduced, and 2. Eventually those sponsorships go away because they're ineffective for the sponsor, because the audience doesn't follow the links.

[@DBRCustoms]

"When there is no price for the product, you are the product" i always assumed honey was selling all your shopping data, didn't realize they were doing the swap job and the misdirection. Anything free isn't free and never will be.

[@duncanfromunderthebridge]

I mean it is free from the consumer’s perspective. They aren’t ripping off users, but rather anyone with an affiliate link.

[@DBRCustoms]

@duncanfromunderthebridge well that's half true, they are ripping off the customer if they're claiming to find the best coupons and aren't. As well as they're ripping of the spirit of the customer supporting a content creator by using the affiliate links.

[@marcantony5110]

This is why I am LESS likely to try goods/services that a KZbinr promotes 99.99% of the time.

[@Imjustkendall]

But what about raid shadow legends??

[@CarlosMagikarpiano]

how about Brilliant? I don't think a learning website can be anything this shady

[@jordannoell4222]

​@@CarlosMagikarpianoThe edutainment sphere of things like masterclass and brilliant are there own can of worms when they make claims about increasing your job prospects and skillets when 90% of their coursework is introductory level knowledge that is often freely avaliable elsewhere. It is basically a less egregious version of the non accredited college scams that don't provide a quality education or viable trade skillset.

[@unholierthanthou7748]

The only thing I'd consider is nebula since it seems to be more of just a different platform like Patreon but you get access to multiple creators with one fee

[@silith7027]

I've looked up Brilliant and Raycon in the past, both had pretty terrible reviews back then.

[@bubblesnopemporium5880]

in the next few days, we are going to see creators who already signed a contract be sponsored by honey and get obliterated in the comments 😭

[@LaPoubelle42]

honestly, those creators are the real victims here. Or rather, any creators with affiliate links are potential victims to honey.

[@beakling1]

​@@LaPoubelle42this! I have a feeling many of the creators that smelled something off were too late in the process to be able to say something free of retaliation. The ones that have turned around publicly are either long past their contractual speech agreements or don't know theyre still under contract. Hopefully, it's the prior.

[@elin1379]

@@LaPoubelle42except LinusTechTips, who knew and did not tell others. thats pretty messed up, especially for a tech-based channel. they had a responsibility to take accountability since they were the 3rd most sponsored by Honey.

[@rapdactyl]

In the past when bombshell reports like this have come up (see that one irish title scam) incomplete deals were canceled. I'm not even sure Honey could penalize creators who pull out because they could argue that they were mislead about what the product is and does.

[@Sugarman96]

@@LaPoubelle42 I don't think we've seen the biggest victims yet, his teasers imply there are worse victims than people losing their commissions.

[@toreole]

1:40 TRUE if it actually was good at saving you money, the product would advertise itself with word of mouth. There is no way people wouldnt freely recommend it on their own. The fact that millions of dollars flow to advertisers to promote it is already weird!

[@aprilclucks]

Very middling contrarian take. you seem to be refusing to give due respect to megalag for making the effort of bringing this issue to the mainstream and keep sounding like you're about to make a point but instead shill a pan company(?). very out of touch vibe here

[@PhantomFuego]

The hard advert in the middle of a video discussing the gross way money moves around the internet is not how I expected Hank to respond

[@rapdactyl]

>Mentions brand deal and encourages viewing the link >Doesn't actually include link That is so Hank-coded Quick edit: turn off adblock and expand the description, sponsor link will show up

[@chashahjohnson]

Right I'm like..... I'd like the pans lol

[@Gulyus]

I see it on the top of the description now. Either he saw the comments and fixed it, or its not available in your area if you don't see it now. Just expand the description once to see it.

[@chashahjohnson]

All that's showing in my description is the Original video link

[@arenomusic]

My cast iron is nice but it can't take the abuse I give it

[@chashahjohnson]

Ah! It's in the KZbin product commission section but not in the description. I think I have an extension blocking that function on my desktop, but it shows right up on mobile!

[@SidMajors]

The more marketing I see about something, the less I trust it.

[@chrisrubin6445]

This will get buried in the comments but its gold!

[@georgelionon9050]

Best health diet I ever heard. Don't eat anything that is advertised.

[@GCAT01Living]

BIG SAME!

[@TheRealE.B.]

My advice to understanding how stuff like this takes so long to surface is to imagine the world as a classroom full of 7 billion high school students who are all copying answers off of each other with no teacher to check their work.

[@vanessa-mar-ie]

This is so real, though

[@TheDragonOfWhi]

No lie. My first exposure to Mr Beast was a Honey Ad that was a pre roll on a video i wanted to watch, and I thought and thought 'this sounds like a scam'. And that coloured my view of Mr Beast for all these years.

[@SineN0mine3]

Not incorrectly i might add. As a children's entertainer he should be held to the highest of standards that KZbin personalities can realistically be expected to adhere to. He seems to be a very unscrupulous person, I can't imagine why else you'd spend such enormous amounts of money to convince people that you're not a scumbag, except that it's clearly inventivised by the market. I don't think he's evil (at least I've not seen anything to suggest it, having seen as little of his stuff as possible) just really greedy and the fact that people just eat it up makes it feel gross. He's made a generation of poor kids think that reaching out to social media stars is a valid and safe thing to do, so i guess that's our problem to deal with now.

[@mitchellclendening7682]

​@@SineN0mine3idk, evil might not be a bad way to describe it. He basically hooks kids on gambling and lies constantly in his vids. He just seems like a bad person.

[@wouldntyaliktono]

Hank, we gotta convince you to give stainless cookware a shot. It's an adjustment in the way you think about heat, but it's transformed my food into something I'd pay for in a restaurant. And as an added bonus, you can use ceramic or metal kitchen tools without worrying about the non-stick finish ending up in your stomach.

[@timothyshoup5044]

I admit I didn't understand the particular nature of the particular scam, but no matter how many times people told me about Honey, I wasn't gonna touch it. Free money? Might as well be a neon sign with the word "scam".

[@Waldohasaskit210]

The more people that advertise a product like Honey, the more suspicious I am. Ad money comes from somewhere and even if it's not an outright scam, you're paying for the advertisements in a higher price or worse product. There are no free lunches.

[@faithgrins]

Their new "pie" adblocker was giving me similar vibes. Now I'm wondering if it's legit malware; kinda the only place to go from a scam.

[@anonimushbosh]

If it had operated the way they sold it it’d still save all consumers money. They probably saw an opportunity to steal affiliate commissions and turn it into a totally different kind of enterprise. I bet they couldn’t believe their luck when no one added up what was going on for so long.

[@EdEddnEddyReference]

I came to the same conclusion markiplier did when honey first started advertising. Coupon codes on the internet have always felt like a weird hold over from radio/tv anyway.

[@xant8344]

They make sense from an analytics perspective. It lets the seller track the source of sales

[@beakling1]

Coupon codes are a pretty integral part of our economy, so I don't fault them for still existing. A crux of capitalism is finding a way to charge people the most you can get away with charging, and coupons play into that by allowing people to still afford certain things for a lower price ONLY if they are under enough pressure to do so. Someone with $500 to throw away on a paycheck wont blink twice at their $20 fast food meal. Someone who has to feed two kids on their single parent income will only take that time and effort because it benefits them to do so. That means the provider still gets to make that sale with minimal effort, as the bartering is done automatically by the consumer.

[@bryanlewis5233]

Ding ding ding. Discounts are a tried and true marketing tactic that has only become more optimized as we've moved from commerce to e-commerce. Clearance sales used to be a legitimate win-win discount for sellers and consumers. Now logistics has been abstracted away to contractors, brick and mortar is left to the big companies that can afford to snuff out their competition, and on-demand production proliferates. So the need to clear inventory has essentially become a thing of the past and the only discounts we're left with are just priced-in marketing for consumers that like to feel "savvy". It's basically a law of physics: the parasitic marketing industry will always find a way to make individualistic rubes of all consumers.

[@emilyk5003]

@@beakling1this used to be the entire business model for Domino’s Australia. A delivery could be more than double the price of a pick up order and they had perpetual 40% off coupons and a range of basic pizzas with a fixed, low price. One person could spend $7, one could spend $12 and another could spend $30 for the same pizza.

[@Diana-mu7pc]

Unrelated but I love your username and profile pic lol

[@kyleglendinning9414]

The funny thing is, KZbinrs had no problem taking the sponsorship money when everyone just thought that honey was stealing your data / selling marketing information or whatever, it only suddenly became this horrible thing when they found out that it did that, AND took their money

[@crypticentomologist3634]

i mean everything is taking data and selling it

[@rizizum]

Because every single app/site/company already does that, so nobody cares anymore. Can't be mad about getting a bucket of water in your head if you're already in a pool

[@lostmycat5671]

^ exactly, I don't think people in general really care about data being sold as much anymore, and while it most certainly affects people who use affiliate marketing more than anyone, it actually mostly damages smaller creators trying to make a living. on top of this, it also just doesn't get you deals you want, not even close and can even be intentionally obfuscated by certain sellers, literally only and solely creates a worse experience for everyone including the customers

[@auberry8613]

People just aren't ready to accept that essentially every ad on youtube, even moreso than regular ads, are predatory. Why do you think there's so many "1 month free trials"? They all require you to enter your credit card information in the hopes you forget about it and start having another subscription drain you for a service you either don't use (audible) or don't need (vpns).

[@ferretsmiles]

You are not understanding the situation. The data mining was expected and agreed to by anyone that has been online for more than a minute. The affiliate stealing is annoying for creators but can make sense and doesn't impact the consumer. The issue is honey partnering with stores to give fake coupon codes that are worse than what is available elsewhere and then lying about that in their paid promotions. It is that last part that is illegal and unethical.

[@inscrutablemungus4143]

It probably sounds paranoid, but at this point, if a youtuber runs a sponsor segment for something, my brain defaults to "potential scam". Manscaped is basically the pink tax rebranded for men. Athletic Greens is overpriced and not something you need to be healthy (but this is standard for the wellness industry). I don't currently know what's wrong with Magic Spoon, but I won't be surprised if they're shady too. EDIT: It's also interesting that the actual time-tested 'best' products for things never run sponsor segments. I'm sure that hexclad pan is great, but the $15 cast iron pan I got 5 years ago is more nonstick than the one nonstick pan I have for cooking eggs. If I take care of it well, I'll probably see my grandkids cook with it.

[@dynomar11]

Magic spoon just tastes like shit, also tried and tested doesn't need advertised.

[@ClumsyToast]

9:30 I look away for 10 seconds, and suddenly I have no idea what's going on.

[@Meanslicer43]

One of the things about this that ticked me off is that the Linus Tech Tips team (LTT) knew about what honey was doing. And said nothing openly. They ought to of made videos or other notices of what was going on. They let it happen for years to MANY creators. They had a channel where they could of made a noticable video commentary. It would of spread enough to keep more damage from happening

[@genericplantlife]

Yeah the whole LTT situation is weird. I know they have no issue badmouthing/criticizing companies they've associated with before because I have literally seen them do it, so quietly detaching from Honey but not saying anything about it was sketchy.

[@timelinemc]

I’m looking forward to seeing how Linus/LTT address this in Friday’s WAN show. It’s not really clear to me how much LMG actually knew about Honey’s antics beyond “they’re screwing up our affiliate revenue,” and it’s not clear to what extent Honey’s behavior was as egregious as it now is at the time LMG stopped working with them, as that disassociation occurred around the same time as the PayPal acquisition.

[@TheMk114]

From what other people have said, they did talk about it on the Wan show ages ago. Though they will talk about it on Friday as well. I suspect they did not know about all the other stuff that honey did. As for the affiliate links, it was on the faq on the webpage of honey.

[@UTeewb]

I am curious what percentage of creators knew. I'm just some guy and was a little confused by the resonance of the video because I assumed that's how Honey works. Because that's how all affiliate extension/websites work. E.g. if you use Rakuten who shares a portion of the affiliate commission to you, it clearly overwrites any other commission links you previously clicked. I get the average person who doesn't use cash back websites like Rakuten may not make the connection of how honey works, but if I worked at LTT it wouldn't even phase me as a story worth sharing.

[@gabrielmazza7923]

There are videos on KZbin from years ago talking about Honey being a scam. It wasn't a secret, and I hardly believe other creators didn't know. It might be convenient for them to say that now though. Point is, it never was a secret, it just never went viral. Regardgin LTT, they shared that on their community forum, which is where THEIR community is located. Again, I am sure a lot of other creators were aware of it.

[@vituperation]

Isn't trusting your team to have done the research into a brand the same trust people _tend_ to put in some KZbinrs? ESPECIALLY educators. That's not to say it's entirely or even mostly on content creators. It's more that this relationship is exactly what marketing is trying to exploit.

[@travcollier]

Affiliate links do get abused, but they also encourage of some of the most legit "here is something you might actually find useful" sort of good marketing. For any commercial transaction, the question should always be "how is this a win-win"? Because if it isn't a win-win, someone is getting screwed

[@Aidan8et]

As a reminder, the BBB is not a government agency. It is an independent non-profit that companies choose to associate with. In the US, the case with Honey & PayPal should be reported to the CFPB (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) & FTC (Federal Trade Commission). Both have oversight in terms of advertising, though it does get tricky when dealing with affiliate- or endorsement-based ads.

[@hovesssharedspace8490]

11:22 I think he forgot about the "Inner Monologue" perk that people have

[@JDSileo]

Some people's outer monologue and inner monologue are able to dialogue with each other for faster problem solving.

[@SkylarLee643]

He’s talked about not having one. Not everyone does.

[@hovesssharedspace8490]

@@SkylarLee643 yes, that's the thing being referenced. good job.

[@zezegm3421]

Paypal Doing something sketchy and borderline illegal? Noo waayy i couldn't have thought this was possible 😮(420 Likes let's goo get high)

[@exeggcutertimur6091]

Honestly this. Paypal should have been nationalized and its assets siezed long ago for villianous crap like this.

[@BlackCanary87]

But but but how could Peter Thiel, the billionaire Gawker-killing literal vampire, be a bad person???

[@georgeshapiro301]

Way, waaaay past borderline. So par for the course for Paypal.

[@fujinshu]

@@BlackCanary87Speaking of which, he got Trump into the White House again, no way is Trump going to actually nationalise PayPal, unless it means Trump and his cronies control all of the USA.

[@colin-nekritz]

Peter Theil? An evil scammer? And ex-PayPal Space Karen who bought and bullied his way into that company before buying and bullying his way into Tesla and SpaceX? Both lying scammers? No way! /s

[@DrinknStitch]

1:14 "tell me you're a boomer without telling me ..." I rolled in here to find out what you had against bees. LOL But I'll stick around for the rest, jic.

[@lorenabpv]

it's hankmas and today we're exploring the questionable ethics of coupon "secret deals" culture in ecommerce. thanks, as always, for helping me understand a messy internet thing, hank

[@kevinwalsh9194]

Hank incidentally made the most seamless affiliate ad break I've ever seen on youtube, for non-stick pans.

[@JeffreyFlory]

LegalEagle has filed a class action lawsuit (as of today) against Honey PayPal on behalf of content creators and wants to give any money they win money back to content creators.

[@DeathlyTired]

'Disruptor': another way to concentrate all the worlds wealth into the fewest possible hands, but make it seem iconoclastically cool, and just an exercise in 'freedom'.

[@jasonbaker2126]

A lot of technological innovation is elegant theft of your time, money, and resources. Most tech businesses are only concerned with extracting as much money from you as possible with no regard for the quality of the product or ethics. They create the shittiest thing they think they can get away with and hope you don’t notice or complain.

[@familiarevil565]

pausing the video halfway through to go play connections before Hank, then coming back and watching him struggle through the same leaps of logic I did was fun

[@saffodils]

real!

[@dathes]

In addition to the predictable class action lawsuits, what action is Amazon going to take against Honey for violating article 5.1 of their affiliate program operating policies?

[@MrAmadeus1998]

Hank that was the best ad read I’ve ever heard.

[@foglebr]

Merry Christmas. 🎄 🎅🏻 Thanks for giving us the gift of a good deep dive conversation.

[@Oh_Nanners]

You should know what the followup to that video is. Once Honey has inserted itself into the value chain, they start taking a bigger cut from the merchant. So if Honey channels a large enough part of a merchant's sales, the merchant will raise prices for everybody. It's exactly like cashback and reward cards (except payment card providers actually add something to the payment process obvs), once enough people participate in them, shops raise prices, and the only winner is the leech in the middle.

[@JosephDavies]

This is a big danger of for-profit middle-men. I don't think people realize how bad it is to fund all of those "we erase your online presence" companies that advertise on KZbin, either. In the absolute best case, they do what they say they do and then go out of business. So the best case is probably not what's happening, or at the very least their partnerships will "evolve" and who gets priority will change as their success leads to a need to maintain the _need_ for their business. After all, being effective means building relationships with the data brokers, and those data brokers will *always* have more money than you do.

[@phoneywheeze]

where do you think the referral codes come from? merchant partners with honey to give them referral codes

[@burchified]

But Hank, how could it be stealing and lying if we told you that we were gonna steal from and lie to you on page 55 of 180 in our legal agreement?

[@danielm.9818]

YES! Finally a KZbinr/Educator adding actual context to this story and explaining it all so well!

[@geneticjen9312]

What's wrong with the MegaLag video? I thought he explained it perfectly

[@callaco3176]

​@@geneticjen9312 he likely didn't see it. That video was excessively good. I ignored it the first time it was recommended as I didn't know who MegaLag was, but 2nd time around it had 300K views and holy fucking tits.

[@RoeBoats]

finally starting to watch Hanks longer form content after he’s been fed to my shorts algorithm so many times 😭 and i’m so hooked. i really be lookin forward to doin the connections with him lmaooo

[@skateata1]

LegalEagle just announced he is suing Honey. They pissed off a lawyer channel. Big No No.

[@Lfuboi]

If creators are small businesses, and they have customers, they have to provide good products (their content) and good service (the information about their processes or the products they push to their customers through brand deals). If a creator cannot find time to vet the validity or safety of what they're pushing, they should not accept brand deals. If they can't produce content without brand deal funding, they must find a way to vet the companies they push.

[@hive_indicator318]

So much this! Especially for the channels that are about reviewing things. They don't look into something before talking about it, but only when paid to

[@allisonfortkamp5877]

In relation to your recent video about internal monologues, I picked up on "bees, jays, use" without saying them aloud, because I said them in my head as I read them!

[@pathoesr7872]

Rule of the Internet: If it's free, you are the product.

[@Katosepe]

Honestly, I thought Honey was making money through relatively innocuous data harvesting/trend analysis and partner deals. Obviously I was wrong about that but I don't think it's a situation where KZbinrs who took those brand deals just didn't think it through. Many companies make money legitimately through methods invisible to end users these days. I don't think it's fair to say Markiplier predicted this was problematic so therefore everyone should have, especially considering this was a commonly used product and very very few people seemed to be aware there was a problem.

[@m.streicher8286]

People have been calling honey a scam for a long long time and most just ignored it.

[@samwalker2367]

At the end of the day it still achieves the users goal of saving them money, they prefer not to think about the other side of it. It happens with so much stuff in our lives, think Shein and other child labour cases, we chose to ignore it because we like the outcome. Humans are kinda shitty

[@MichaelRainey]

It feels like the Temu app to me, too. I don't have it but co-workers were trying to get me referred which immediately sounds like a pyramid scam. The whole thing just seems off.

[@ineednochannelyoutube2651]

But when they said it there wasn't any evidence for it, just people figuring that things can't be free and assuming there was data mining, but now there is evidence of Honey doing things that are so much worse.

[@Rihardololz]

in hindsight due 2 year investigation.

[@Krigalishnikov]

Same thing with plagiarism and the Hbomberguuy video, plenty of accusations all the time but it takes a very well made and, most importantly, very entertaining, video essay for people to create the awareness on it.

[@elliottmcollins]

I had the exact same reaction to "Lions Tigers Bears". I just could not believe they'd do that.

[@laiika511]

Same here. Also as I’m sitting in my nfl jersey doing the game, I very nearly made the “bills lions tigers bears” mistake without thinking, because who thinks of the bengals? Nearly got the purple but I don’t know the bills bills bills song

[@eklectiktoni]

@@laiika511 Destiny's Child (the group Beyonce came from)

[@AdamMarr]

The best part is they were literally lined up on row 1, in order, when he opened connections

[@MadisonSwartzendruber]

@@AdamMarrthey all start in the exact same order for everyone, so everyone started with them lined up, so logically I also thought they wouldn’t give us the answer 🫠

[@DactylyDactyl]

​@@AdamMarrI giggled at it lined up like that on mine, then proceeded to solve the others and it was my last category because there was no way they did that

[@IcarusRuthven]

"This is why it's good to play this game out loud" is rich considering you've talked about not having an internal monologue. At least some of the people quietly working out the puzzle *are* hearing the words, Hank!

[@ElijahCem]

Yeah, im hearing the words inside my own head. No need to say them out loud!

[@AKHMallory]

The “meta ad” genre is kinda a dystopian experience as a former affiliate marketer, former marketing Major, and long time Internet Denizen.

[@dumdumpopsypop5181]

I really like this take on the whole honey scheme. Since the video came out, I've been watching similar reaction videos to gauge info and yours by far is the most informative! I equally learned something too! Thank you for sharing your take (youre probably sick of this news being shoved down our throats lmao). You def earned a new subscriber

[@phrebh]

Hexclad pans are awful. Not non-stick at all. And utensils get stuck on the shapes. And they've convinced all of the other companies to steal their terrible design, so it's hard to get good non-stick pans at all now.

[@sunnyevening]

It’s also toxic Teflon, I’m really surprised he’s working with them

[@ZEFsidepaintball]

Yeah.. cast iron is the only way. I have stainless but they are harder to clean.

[@xant8344]

@@phrebh All nonstick pans are crap. Use stainless steel or cast iron or carbon steel. Just make sure to thoroughly dry them and never soak them.

[@-gf-]

they use ceramic not teflon​@@sunnyevening

[@linguinelabs]

@@sunnyeveningthere was a minutefood episode about how the science says teflon is actually low risk to humans, unless you go to very very high temperatures. Still toxic to the environment, but that is not what I think of when I label something as toxic

[@Thetangibletim]

5:59 I think the size of the channel dictates that. Bigger channels have more resources to vet them as well as more advertising opportunities. Where the smaller channels don’t have as much freedom to be picky or the ability to take on that proper research

[@Bonsho]

If you can't profit without scamming your customers, then you shouldn't have a business. This applies to creators, too. It doesn't matter how big or small a creator is when they are pushing scams onto people who trust them. You don't need a team to google "is blank a scam". This whole "make that bag" culture is baffling to me. Forgoing morality for the sake of profit will always exist, but it should never be the socially acceptable norm.

[@AngryMax]

@@Bonsho the customers/viewers weren't the ones who got scammed with the whole honey situation. In general, yes, creators should (in my opinion) look into the brands before they accept sponsorships-- but what honey is doing is very sneaky and required an above average literacy about web cookies to even have a chance to be noticed. you simply cannot expect creators(in general) to do journalistic levels of research on every brand deal they take, especially coming from a brand that's been doing creator sponsorship deals for years; there's going to be a level of trust there. all of this as a creator who hasn't taken sponsorships deals, but could.

[@Thetangibletim]

@ I agree with your initial point but I think it’s unfair to put the onus on some of these subscribers to be able to snuff out this kind of scamming. I mean it took some digging and some content creators aren’t capable of that. At least as far as advertisers. With their own business then they have the full responsibility

[@Thetangibletim]

To clarify a bit I think making sure your advertisers don’t run scams is different then running it yourselves I think the distinction matters

[@Thetangibletim]

@@AngryMax thank you. You articulated what I was trying to say better

[@samsummer5392]

I don't know about influencer sponsorships but in Australia, whatever the salesperson of a particular product says about that product, is legally binding. So if someone said this pan will last 100 years in Australia and it didn't then you would be entitled to a refund

[@samsummer5392]

And if the store advertised it ad last 100 years they would be fined

[@kashiichan]

Only if the person making that claim has some legitimate connection to the company. If a random person in a review said it, it doesn't matter; if Hank was an official affiliate and said it, then people could interpret it as an official claim and therefore it would count (the opposite of what Hank claimed in the video; presumably because US and Aus consumer protection laws are vastly different).

[@MetallicAlmonds]

I'll have you know, watching your random videos like this is becoming a part of my morning routine, in addition to playing connections. And I think it's a good thing.

[@broomguy7]

Honestly? When KZbinrs are making $30 commissions on each VPN purchase, selling a worthless product, they deserve the punishment. Shilling fake therapy, false intermet security, wasteful food delivery scams, and other endless crap and finally getting bitten in the ass by it is very funny. The scams only matter now that it hurts the parasocial salesmen.

[@cookie8162]

Why are you even here then?

[@brickguts]

i always get so excited at "lets play connections"

[@the-girl-of-her-dreams]

Maturing is realizing the brands that youtubers gett sponsored by are corrupt. First it was betterhelp, then that one that makes the water have flavor, then the one that sends you daily meals and now honey

[@BryanLu0]

AirUp and the meal kits aren't scams per se, but you don't really need them

[@thoughtfulconundrum]

@@BryanLu0way expensive if you know how to grocery store.

[@jordannoell4222]

​@@thoughtfulconundrumwhich definitionaly isn't a scam. Overpriced with healthy profit margins? Yes, but you actually receive a product that you paid for at the end of the day.

[@cdp181]

Its capitalism baby, they're all out to get your money one way or another.

[@eggi4443]

leaky bottle that makes you swallow air with overpriced disgustingly artificial aromas in a pod while making the most misofphonia triggering sound possible. It's somehow even more unpleasant than those 0 nic vapes and it's a hard thing to beat

[@fakjbf3129]

13:15 You were probably thinking of the Cincinnati Bengals. So you were close, it was a city in Ohio that begins with a C and the team mascot is a type of tiger.

[@Finvaara]

I love cast iron cookware, and I like nonstick cookware. I've also watched a decent video on why the benefits of those things are diminished in hexclad cookware. I'm glad you like your pans, though, and I hope you enjoy them. Do be careful of teflon delamination, it's a bigger danger with those pans than other nonstick products if you use them more roughly than you would with a standard non-stick pan.

[@vincenttavani6380]

Hexclad, hexagons, hives, honey. This goes derp.

[@terrisilva8756]

I had honey and I honestly just never even used it because the majority of the time it DID pop up saying it would check for a deal, it came back with nothing, so I just got tired of it not doing even remotely the job it was supposed to do.

[@AThirstyPhilosopher]

I assumed Honey collected and sold data about people’s shopping habits. I didn’t know they undercut existing discount code. But this method makes sense. Pretty shady if they’re not transparent about it. So if you install Honey and it finds you a 10% discount, you know that’s the minimum you could find if you looked around yourself? I guess it depends on what your time is worth to you and if you care who receives the affiliate kickback. I’m curious if Honey loses users now. Interesting explanation. Thanks, Hank!

[@colleenmarin8907]

Them: Download this for free! Me: Nothing is free, what's the catch? Them: Someone will research this and leak it YEARS later

[@r.cobrehernandez5923]

🙏🏼 ty for doing connections with us! i’ve actually learned a lot from your technique and i got my first reverse rainbow today! in the 1%! baby!

[@synthwav_]

so nice to see you covering this!

[@AKB-ce8sv]

I was unaware of the context leading to this video, and spent the first few worried minutes worrying that there was some conspiracy that meant I should stop buying delicious bee-created sugar. Glad it's not that 😅

[@michaelteegarden4116]

1. I thought Hank was going to talk about most big-store honey being not actual honey because of over-filtration. 2. I, too, saw the Connections "Lions, tigers, and bears, oh my!" right off the bat. But I kept it and eliminated the yellows and blues, too. I also found the purples by process of elimination. I just had no idea at all what those 4 songs were. (music ain't my thing)

[@lukask2597]

Didn’t know that about point 1

[@magpielark]

The purples are the only one I could find, I was so sure the obvious one wasn't real that I ran out of lives hunting for sports teams 😭

[@kylechalve]

The last time I went to the store I couldn't even find filtered honey. It was all raw honey. This was at Walmart.

[@ATM648]

Megalag is a wicked underrated channel. Huge props to his investigative journalism

[@threeleggedcat]

love that you got the connections reference immediately and then didn't even consider that might be it (I didn't know it but I saw a thread I think about lol)

[@stormwatcheagle5448]

That was the smoothest ad transition in the history of KZbin.

[@bismarchiavelli]

Hexclad pans are overpriced garbage, coated in a type of PFAS/forever chemical called PTFE. You can look up the side effects. Instead, buy a carbon steel pan that remains nonstick through bonding oil to the surface of the pan. This is what actual chefs in actual restaurants use. Come on Hank, you’re usually good at googling this stuff.

[@triprichert423]

I've read several places that hexclad recently changed their nonstick to ceramic? On their website, they say their ceramic nonstick does not contain PTFE. But, their FAQ says that many of their products contain PTFE. I don't know how to figure out which products contain it or if the FAQ is out of date. It's possible that their newer pans are safer than the ones they used to make? But, it's not what I want to spend money on right now anyway.

[@fuzzychops8710]

I also thought it was weird to see them get Hank's support. I think he's mainly using it to make a point about sponsorships which is important for the video but it's not a great product

[@eklectiktoni]

They're enamel coated actually. I literally just looked at the site. I never considered them because I thought they were PTFE too. But when the site said they're compatible with metal utensils, I knew they couldn't be PTFE. Metal scratches it off. I still wouldn't buy them though. Cast iron is fine if seasoned properly and it's way cheaper.

[@BryanLu0]

It seems like they recently changed to ceramic.

[@Boeing_hitsquad]

Wrong

[@PinkwaveGamer]

I watched MegaLag's vid on Honey, so it's great to hear your perspective on it. It's kind of like a lot is not in the black or white, but a grey area, somewhere in-between. Some sponsors are terrible but are also a way to make content creation work as a viable career.

[@Aterhallsam]

What disturbs me the most is that they say your are guaranteed the best deal but are withholding coupon codes with the best deals if that’s what they company wants.

[@crystalestey7601]

I love playing connections with you. I happen to actually get this one in one, but most of the time I can't do it. I love listening to your thought process while you're playing.

[@nienke7713]

I've also encountered websites that claim they have coupons, and when you try to get those coupons they typically open the site the coupon is for, but the coupons they purport to have often don't work. I wouldn't be surprised if they're using a similar business model of putting their affiliate cookie in at that point trying to be the last and claim those affiliate bucks

[@peter65zzfdfh]

Yes, this is always how all of the, have worked, there’s no shocking revelation here, it takes 30 seconds to verify. People know. No one cares except creators, who couldn’t be bothered verifying.

[@helenjohnston3178]

UK person who likes Abba. I do know Gimme Gimme Gimme and I don't know US sports team. Got it in one. Happy Christmas to Hank & the whole Nerdfiteria crew.