The Honey Scam: Influencers Accuse PayPal Extension of Cheating Shoppers
See how The Honey Scam is impacting influencers and shoppers. Big names like Mr. Beast and Marques Brownlee accuse Honey of stealing affiliate commissions.
A new scam is fooling people online, and it’s called The Honey Scam. Right now, lots of people are talking about it. Some YouTubers say that Honey, a tool made by PayPal, is cheating both shoppers and influencers. They’re accusing it of scamming them, and many are upset about it.
YouTuber MegaLab made the first video about the Honey Scam, calling it Exposing the Honey Influencer Scam. Later, Marques Brownlee, a popular tech YouTuber, also made a video about it, who already promoted this web browser extension four years ago.
This browser extension has been advertised by many famous influencers. Big names like Mr. Beast, Marques Brownlee, and many big social media and YouTube influencers like them.
What is Honey?
Honey is a web browser extension designed to help you get the shopping coupons while browsing online. If you’ve ever done online shopping, you’ll quickly get how it works. When you’re ready to check out and move toward the final payment step, Honey steps in to give you access to available coupons, and claims for helping you save money effortlessly.
Honey web browser extension helps you save money by finding the best discount coupons for you. It was started in 2012 and became super popular after PayPal bought it in 2020 for $4 billion. Since then, even more people have been using this extension to save on online shopping.
What are the Honey controversies?
YouTubers claim that this extension is cheating people in a different way. First, it secretly changes the special codes in creators’ affiliate links with its own code. The affiliate links are the links through which creators make money, so this is a big problem for them.
If you buy something using an affiliate link we share, influencers earn a little money or commission from it. These links have a tiny code that helps influencers get the commission. But Honey extension, a tool used by many people, changes that code to its own. Because of this, Honey takes the money that was supposed to go to the creators or the influencers.
The Honey company also claimed it would give users the cheapest coupons. But here’s the truth, Honey works with sellers. The sellers get to pick which coupons show up for Honey users. That means if you didn’t use Honey, you might have found an even better deal on your own.
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