YouTuber: "Working with Honey was very easy"
Following criticism of the "Honey" shopping plugin, more influencers who had advertised it are distancing themselves. The references remain in many old videos.
The friendly coin of the Honey plugin conceals the fact that an affiliate cookie has just been replaced – The YouTuber may not receive anything from an affiliate deal.
(Image: Screenshot heise online)
At the end of December, the YouTube channel "Megalag" uncovered a suspected major scam involving the browser add-on "Honey". As previously reported, the add-on not only replaces affiliate links with supposedly cheaper offers, but also with offers from which Honey itself earns more. YouTubers, who massively advertised the plugin years ago in return for payment, are also likely to be harmed by this. It is therefore not surprising that some influencers are now distancing themselves from it.
One of the most prominent figures in the scene, Marques "MKBHD" Brownlee, explains in a video published on New Year's Eve why Honey was so attractive as an advertising partner around three years ago. According to Brownlee, this was not due to particularly high remuneration, but primarily to the fact that Honey did not place any major demands on the placements. The YouTubers largely had a free hand and "working with Honey was very easy", says Brownlee.
Honey ads are only deleted from some videos
Word got around in the scene, so that there were eventually several hundred creators who were sponsored by Honey. According to Brownlee, there are still around 5000 videos with Honey advertising online. He himself removed the advertising for the controversial plugin from three videos that appeared in 2020.
This is possible for some major YouTubers; the platform offers its own function that can be used to remove segments from videos without having to re-upload or change the number of views. However, YouTube had already pointed out in previous cases that this should only be done in exceptional cases and with a note – The function is only available to some YouTube partners for a reason.
Other creators do not want to go to this trouble because advertising is a constant feature in some formats and people also talk about Honey itself. Linus Sebastian (Linus Tech Tips), for example, said this in his weekly live podcast "WAN Show". In the current edition, he explained that even the older WAN shows in which Honey appears remain as they are. Like Brownlee, however, Sebastian now also advises users to uninstall the Honey plugin.
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Class action lawsuit by prominent YouTube lawyer
As with all suspected cases of million-fold fraud, the number of Honey installations is said to be around 20 million browsers. The lawyers are of course not far behind with the typical US class action lawsuits, because they make money from it. And those with large YouTube channels even more so. Consequently, Devin James Stone has also announced on his channel LeagalEagle that he is filing a class action lawsuit against Honey. According to Stone, this has already been filed and they are now looking for potentially injured parties to join.
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