Honey was replacing their affliate links with it's own. So these tech tubers were only really upset that Honey was stealing from /them/, they don't give a fuck about their viewers.
Anyone who flogs ball shavers, ass wipes or fuckin microwave dinners don't give a shit about their viewers, and only care about their bottom lines and will shill whatever they can for the right price.
> So these tech tubers were only really upset that Honey was stealing from /them/, they don't give a fuck about their viewers.
Ironically, this is the reason LinusTechTips never did an expose video on this back when they originally learned about Honey doing this years ago - they thought "this only affects us, if we do a video on it the viewers will be like - who cares about your bottom line?"
And now on the contrary, LTT viewers are FURIOUS that they didn't expose it and flaming them in the comments of every tangentially related video...
Yes, but Honey was also stealing from them. Most youtubers make a significant portion of their income via affiliate links.
So, consider the following scenario. I made up these numbers, I don't know if these are accurate:
Honey pays a youtuber $1k for a single ad spot. Due to that ad, many of the youtuber's audience installs the Honey extension. Afterwards, the youtuber's affiliate link income goes down by $2k/month, because all of those affiliate referrals are being stolen by Honey.
Also, Honey never disclosed that they were doing this.
So, of course, you can understand why the youtubers would have grievance. Pretty much nobody would ever agree to give up $2k/month of income forever to get $1k right now. (And it's probably not right now, it's probably more like 90 days when they settle their payables).
YouTubers have no idea how much money they are losing due to last click attribution. They're mad that it could be a lot but in reality it is more likely very little.
MegaLag posted a VPN example, which was an edge case, but it was enough to spark outrage. Ironically, there are many YouTubers who have only Amazon affiliate links which Honey never touches.
Many YouTubers that Honey sponsored also didn't have conflicting affiliate links at the time of promotion.
Also, if you work with affiliate links, you should probably know how they work. IMO it'd be condescending if Honey tried to explain to every YouTuber how last click attribution worked.
> MegaLag posted a VPN example, which was an edge case, but it was enough
Ah, the modern day equivalent to snake oil, where you buy a product that gives your data to a random company in a tax haven over your publicly accountable ISP.
The VPN example really made me to take view that these affiliate cuts are scamming me... Without them I could get stuff significantly cheaper. So faster whole system is brought down the better.
Yes, now this I wholeheartedly agree. The system itself is not right and you can definitely credit MegaLag to drawing industry-wide attention to this issue.
People are hating the player when really the majority of the outrage should be pointed towards hating the game.
Damn Youtubers really make alot from affil links? I think I've only like once or twice used a link in the description.
I usually don't bother, because nearly always the links in the description arn't relevant to the video. Just an ad link, and generic, my camera xyz links to some amazon page which usually out of stock/gone.
I always thought Youtubers made the bulk of their money with brand deals (like Honey), and some from youtube ads + light sprinkling on top from afill links.
LinusTechTips recently did a video on their revenue sources: 55% from merch, 21% from video sponsors, 12% from YouTube AdSense, 7% from their own video platform, and only 3% from affiliate links.
I guess for creators with a much smaller merch business, affiliate links would be twice as big a portion.
Paying them initially, but then if they used any affiliate links themselves, honey would rewrite those so honey would get the affiliate $$ instead of the tubers. Get paid once, then they'll steal from you indefinitely.
> Anyone who flogs ball shavers, ass wipes or fuckin microwave dinners don't give a shit about their viewers
I mean what’s wrong with selling ball shavers, ass wipes, and fuckin’ microwave dinners? These aren’t really harmful things and they provide actual value to people.
Those I have less of a problem with. What I actually have a problem with is the supplement sales, VPN sales, and gambling sales. "Here's a magic multivitamin that will make you feel 1000% better!". "You are so unsafe by not using a VPN, here use our service which also gets to peak at everything you send through it". "Wanna bet on this Ping-Pong championship? Well, grab some crypto and go to this 'not legal in the US but who's watching' website where you can bet on anything!"
Those can actually be harmful things, and a LOT of media producers will advertise them as being the best thing since sliced bread (Usually having personal endorsements required in the copy).
What's wrong with VPNs? Seems like the tamest thing to sell in terms of ethical impact. any security middleman can be skewed negatively if you phrase it as "they get to peek at everything". That's what a security app needs to properly protect you, and why these apps live and die on credibility (see: Crowdstrike).
Fortunately none of the youtubers I watched ever went full dark horse and pawned off gambling and scams, though. Closest to a scam was probably those "become a lord" sites that let you "buy a small plot of land in Ireland" or something and a tree gets planted. When the reality is you don't actually own the land through technicalities and it's questionable if the tree is even planted.
> What's wrong with VPNs? Seems like the tamest thing to sell in terms of ethical impact.
Well, for starters the actual "security" that is often promised from these services is WAY overblown. You are already very secure browsing the internet using https. The TLS standard grants a huge amount of security that doesn't allow for snooping from a MITM.
So, when they start saying "everyone needs to do this to be safe". That's simply a boldface lie.
Your security when going through a VPN is from using https. If you are unfortunate and get a less than scrupulous VPN you might end up with them adding themselves as CAs (yes, some VPNs do that). That allows them to crack and access data within the secure stream.
Most of these VPN services are also trying to get you to do DNS with their DNS servers. Again, a major potential privacy leak problem.
> That's what a security app needs to properly protect you
VPNs aren't anti-virus software and any VPN selling that should be EXTREMELY mistrusted. You are right, they can only provide that sort of service by decrypting your secure payloads. That is where all the scamminess comes into play.
Certainly not every VPN service is bad, but I'd have an inherent mistrust in one that has both a cheap fee and the seemingly endless budget to advertise everywhere on youtube. They are getting money from somewhere and I doubt it's from grandmas signing up for the service.
> Most of these VPN services are also trying to get you to do DNS with their DNS servers. Again, a major potential privacy leak problem.
The privacy problem is most people using Google's DNS servers in the first place. A VPN is unlikely to keep your browsing history out of Google's hands when you're sending them a record of every ___domain you visit, when, and how often.
A VPN service is basically saying "Trust us more than you trust Google/your ISP" and that by necessity means giving them your DNS traffic as well.
> I'd have an inherent mistrust in one that has both a cheap fee and the seemingly endless budget to advertise everywhere on youtube. They are getting money from somewhere and I doubt it's from grandmas signing up for the service.
They make a lot of their money from file sharers (some of which are also grandmas). The VPN will keep your ISP off your back and the MPA/RIAA at bay.
I assume most VPNs like that are being monitored (if not outright operated) by the NSA or some other three letter agency. It's fine if you're just using the VPN for regular browsing or to torrent TV shows though because they're not going to spoil their honeypot over something so trivial and the VPN's success at keeping pirates safe builds their reputation as a secure service.
Also these services used to call themselves proxies, which is what they are. At some point they co-opted the term VPN because "Private Network" makes for a good soundbite, even though it has nothing to do with what VPNs are actually used for (a network disconnected from the internet except via the VPN gateway). Of course they'll counter by saying they use VPN tech under the hood (OpenVPN, WireGuard).
>VPNs aren't anti-virus software and any VPN selling that should be EXTREMELY mistrusted.
My impression is that it makes browsing wifi networks you don't trust safer. I just let it happen, but I have a few friends who really hate having to connect to any public wifi. That seems to track with how most of the marketing goes when it's focused more on interceptions while traveling instead of on your home network. (And yes. I'm aware this is more equivalent to adding a door lock when a competent hacker has a crowbar and a window right next to it. Sometimes it's about preventing the incompetent ones).
I didn't mean to liken it to ant-virus per se. But the concepts are the same. Anything you choose that needs elevated permissions better be something you go through a fine-toothed comb with and have a stellar reputation. But without naming names, it seems a bit overly alarmist to name all VPNs that dare advertise as scams.
>They are getting money from somewhere and I doubt it's from grandmas signing up for the service.
it may very well be that. It's the same old subscription service virtually every company in the world does. "sign on for this super cheap fee!". Then you keep it around and then normal ratea happen after X months. Then you just keep using it or even forget about it and that's easy steady revenue.
It's dishonest, but in an apathetic sort of way. Not a malicious one. The solution is simply for a consumer to actually watch their banking statements.
Nothing is inherently wrong but I trust my ISP a lot more than some random guys in Switzerland or Israel or whatever tax haven islands they operate from. They lie about what they’re good for which is just hiding things from my ISP. The rest of the benefits are fake
Because a secret you should know about your ISPs is they really don't care (or want to care) about what you are doing with their service. They don't want to add the hardware/software it'd take to spy on your data, that's a huge cost to them with nothing but downsides.
I might distrust a large ISP more just because they have the extra cache to burn. But a smaller more regional ISP will not try and invade your privacy.
Yeah this! The day that casey neistat started advertising nordvpn, I lost a lot of interest in his content.
I personally don't mind creators advertising VPNs, but just be honest about it. Don't pretend like it's your favourite VPN you've always used, and it's the bestest, most secure, will make you super safe..
If they'd say like, I've been paid to advertise xyz VPN, I've tried it for a few days, works as advertised. I can watch my US Netflex while traveling out of the US, or whatever. But keep in mind, instead of just your ISP knowing where you browse, now the VPN providers knows, and is probably selling your data.
Like, cut the bs.
Is that really how people view HackerNews? I've always felt the connection to YCombinator to be largely superficial, with the site being mostly for people looking to get news on technology itself, rather than the business thereof.
Given some of the perspectives here, especially with tech fads, absolutely. They are definitely prolific users here who have that feeling that they support or defend certain ideas in tech as they work on their next project in that area.
As well as just some general sentiments you see from browsing here:
- Strongly anti-copyright and seem fine completely abolishing the idea. One that would remove regulations when it comes to selliing ideas.
- Often defends the idea of private marketplaces and their cuts on developers. Which seems odd on the surface. but it makes sense when you consider it is easier to minmax for one monoplistic storefront than develop endpoints to support multiple stores. Why disrupt something you make steady income from as is?
- There's definietly underlying sentiments towards in work-related topics that come from those leading/managing companies. a stronger skew towards employee productivity and a need to aggressively weed out "low performers". A slight skew supporting business decisions like mass layoffs, even suggesting those laid off were low performers or otherwise just freeloading.
little things you catch here and there as you browse a community for years.
Anyone who has been in a YC batch gets a special magic "Orange" name tag on HN that anyone else with an orange name tag can see, and we, the proles, cannot.
This site is an advertisement for YC, and was built primarily for mindshare. "Growth hacker" types that started YC and built HN and spun off Reddit don't build things "for fun" if there is profit to be made.
The ones I subscribe to sure aren't sales professionals. They just want to talk about or interact with media. But some do do it for a living, so it's no surprise they look at what works and what doesn't and adjusts their content for their audience.
It was honestly surprising when one of my subcibed creators (around 400k subs on Youtube) talked a bit about financials and that half their revenue came from sponsors. And this was one who avoids all the typical ads. I imagine the numbers to sell out to yet another RAID ad must easily double that.
I didn't even think about how they could be making money before this came out (I wasn't a user), but I would have put my money on them harvesting your browser history and selling it to advertisers, which seems shady but is kind of normal for the web today. Affiliate link manipulation and coercing websites into paying protection money to hide lucrative coupons would have been low on my list of guesses.
I wasn't sure exactly what they were doing, and didn't care enough to look into it, but the fact that it wasn't obvious made me assume it was something shady that I wouldn't like. When I saw that they were doing, it validated my spidey-senses. A similar thing happened with Robinhood.
If it's not obvious how a company is making money, and they don't explain it somewhere... I'm not interested.
I thought it gathered data and did some affiliate stuff.
An honest extension could have still made piles of cash. They did not need to be so aggressive about taking affiliate revenue and they definitely did not need to lie about coupons.
Yeah I'm torn. I do get that more income means they can invest more and thus grow, leading to more and better content.
But promoting products which have such a high likelihood of being shady like this...
Another one was the app or similar where you scanned your receipts and got some discounts or whatever. Obviously they only make money by selling your data, but they mention none of that during the promotion, just how easily you can save some bucks.
The YouTubers acting shocked they were promoting that and that it was taking their affiliate revenue was bizarre, said more about them and their lack of morals and responsibility than it did Honey. Maybe take some responsibility for what you promote instead of pretending you're just a leaf at the whim of the river currents.
pre-paypal when I used it, I thought they were simply cutting deals with the vendors as a middleman for their own affiliate links, like any other influencer would. If you can automate that process of delivering the affiliate links, then it's a big win for that plugin.
I suppose post pay that they dug into darker arts, sadly.
I think a lot of these YouTubers are pretending to be shocked or caught out.