The Code Sewist

Today I learned that there is an extension called Honey that applies coupons for you when you shop with your browser, and that YouTube personalities have been promoting it for years. Somehow I’ve been living under a rock until now, but I kept seeing it mentioned over the last week and finally decided to dive in and see what everyone was fussing about.

If you need a quick explainer, I recommended either the wikipedia article, which is a short read (scroll down to “controversies”) or this Marques video which explains it pretty well on a high level.

I realise this is going to sound like I think that I’m smarter than anyone else (I’m not), but what the hell were people thinking? Markiplier apparently used common sense way back in 2020 to explain why this most likely was a scam. And no, he is not smarter than anyone else either. He just happened to be critical and ask the right questions. Why didn’t anyone else?

Just for the record, I’m not saying anyone could have guessed the scope or depth of this scam in advance, but at the very least, everyone—especially content creators—should at the very least have asked themselves the following question:

1. If the users are getting coupon codes for free
2. And the content creators are getting sweet advertising deals
3. Then how does Honey make any money?

It really is that simple.

A few classic quotes comes to mind:

“No such thing as a free lunch”

And

“If you're not paying for the product, you are the product”

Add on top of that the technical privacy issues of having a browser extension that listens in on all your online shopping.

To be fair, I don’t think the content creators are stupid. This is just a case of YouTubers having a business to run. If an advertiser contacts you with a deal that has the following criteria:

• Let’s you advertise however you want using your own style
• Pays really well
• You viewers directly benefits from a product that gives out free coupons
• Other YouTubers are already advertising for the same product

Naturally, it makes sense to just take the deal. You need to put bread on the table after all. The mistakes made where the following:

• Everyone assumed everyone else did due diligence
• No one thought critically about the business like Markiplier did

But they should have. If you brand is about being trustworthy about product reviews, but at the same time, you don’t even question your own sponsors, your brand will eventually suffer. Or maybe not. What do I know. I am living under a rock after all.

Where to go from there?

I love this comment from the markiplier-clip linked earlier:

@KissyKaede
It's simple pattern recognition. Once you learn this, you never forget it and you start seeing scams everywhere and most of the time your gut instinct is correct.

I also highly recommend just cutting all ads from your life. This includes:

• Using Firefox with ublock origin (not a scam) and other open source and privacy focused extensions.
• Filter out scams, adware, malware and the like on the DNS level. I personally use NextDNS on all my devices, but more advanced users could run their own pi-hole if they wanted to.

I’m not saying content creators shouldn’t be paid, but your should favor those who do it the “patreon way” or make their income in other ways. And always do your own research on the products you use, which I realize is much easier said than done, but that is a post for another time.

#honey #paypal #scam #youtube #coupon #privacy #firefox #nextdns