Marques Brownlee - The Honey Scam: Explained

Short Summary

Main recommendation: Uninstall Honey, the browser extension that claims to find the best coupon codes at checkout, and do not install it if you have not already. The video argues Honey was secretly replacing creators' affiliate codes with its own at checkout and was letting retailers suppress the best coupon codes from its users. Creators are urged to be far more selective about sponsors.

Key Points

• Honey is pitched as a free browser extension that applies the best coupon codes at checkout, and it reportedly has about 17 million Chrome Web Store users.
• The alleged affiliate scheme: Honey replaced a creator's affiliate code with its own at checkout on nearly every purchase, collecting the commission even when a creator referred the sale.
• The alleged coupon scheme: Honey let retailers choose which coupon codes appeared in its database, so higher discounts could be hidden from users while retailers got a commission.
• Honey sponsored a very large number of YouTube videos, reportedly over 5,000 videos with nearly 8 billion views, so many creators were unknowingly involved.
• The speaker says the behavior was exposed by the creator MegaLag, and that Honey was owned by PayPal, meaning the practices were core to its business model rather than hidden side activity.

Details Worth Noting

• Concrete instructions: Uninstall Honey if it is installed; if it was never installed, avoid installing it and warn others, since it takes revenue from creators and blogs you might otherwise support.
• Concrete instructions: Creators who worked with Honey can use YouTube's editor to trim out Honey ad segments from older videos, though the speaker notes this is harder if the ad was woven into the video and that some custom Honey ads cannot be removed.
• The speaker personally had three sponsored smartphone reviews from 2020 (Poco M3, Moto Edge Plus, Galaxy S20 Fan Edition) and says he has removed the Honey segments from them.
• The speaker says he had only installed Honey, bought a few things, and found it working, which is why he did not suspect the wrongdoing.
• A few earlier forum threads and a Markiplier clip from about four years earlier raised suspicion, but nothing significant happened until the MegaLag video.

Bottom Line

Honey's sponsor appeal masked a business model that undercut both creators and shoppers, so creators and viewers should vet sponsors and products more carefully before endorsing or using them.