Exposing the Honey Influencer Scam

[LINK] For context, this all started about 2 weeks ago with one of the best pieces of investigative journalism I've seen on youtube: [VIDEO] And it's spiraling from there into lawsuits etc. I'm kinda glad PayPal bought them as they can't just shut down and file bankruptcy. Hopefully some of these creators will get paid out for lost revenue.

Good video I watched recently on how the Honey scam works: [VIDEO] *Edit: Oh I see you mention it in the video on your project! Nice work.

For anyone else outside the loop, MegaLag released a video [1] yesterday exposing the shady practices by Honey 1: [VIDEO]

If any software ever deserved being sued into non-existence it is the Honey browser extension, and any other scam software they turn out (Pie Adblock in this case). [VIDEO]

Super high level TLDW for those not aware of what's going on: Honey (allegedly, but there's video documentation of this happening by MegaLag) overrode affiliate tags and claimed affiliate commissions for themselves even in cases where honey added no value to a sale or to a merchant whatsoever. They also claimed to find consumers the best discounts even though the platform also had paid plans for merchants allowed paying merchants to suppress certain discount codes. Related: * MegaLag breaking the story of Honey swapping affiliate attribution as well as withholding functional coupon codes from customers. This video goes into technical depth, showing the actual process via browser dev tools where attribution is swapped - [VIDEO] * MKBHD commenting on it - [LINK] * Linus commenting on it - [LINK] * Past discussion on HN that was cited by MegaLag - [LINK]

Oh, I guess you haven't been keeping up with the news? You're a star now. [VIDEO] As soon as people saw this, they started filing class action lawsuits. [LINK] So I guess we'll see!

This is also worth considering, thanks. We would need to be careful to avoid overwriting any pre-existing affiliate tags set on a user provided URL like Honey was doing [0]. I’m curious why you stopped pursuing the idea if you don’t mind sharing. [0]: [VIDEO]

The youtuber MegaLag released part 1 of his investigation roughly 1 year ago: [VIDEO] Recently, he released 2 more parts with more new information that paints Honey in a pretty bad light: [LINK] [LINK]