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I absolutely love how fired up the average YouTube commenter was about Honey... for about 72 hours. People completely unaffected in any way were demanding class

I absolutely love how fired up the average YouTube commenter was about Honey... for about 72 hours. People completely unaffected in any way were demanding class action lawsuits, etc with seemingly no clue why they were even upset. Then the subject completely left their minds. This observation is of course entirely anecdotal, but manufactured outrage is so fascinating, even if it currently eroding the very foundations of society.

thinkingemote 2y ago
Where a lot of online content to be consumed is about dopamine, a lot of other stuff is about spiking cortisol. There's people on every forum (and regularly here) that suggest, sometimes explicitly, that we must have elevated anxiety and stress levels in response to specific presented content as a moral imperative. I think cortisol makes the "content" feel more "important" or relevant at the present moment in time. 72 hours later assuming no other exploits our body systems adjust and the content isn't important. It's weird when we notice it, but most of the time our cortisol is being directed to another topic so we don't notice. There's a ton written about our dopamine addiction and how it's exploited but not much about cortisol and our negative emotions are being exploited.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- caseyy 2y ago
  Many people say that overthinking, anxiety, and stress are moral imperatives as a response to something they don't like: content, political ideas, celebrities, technology companies, and many other things. It is a completely ineffective method of making a change. I wish they'd stop spreading their anxieties online. I know it makes them feel like they're doing something, but one phone call to a relevant decision-maker is 100x more effective and 100x less destructive to those around them.
  - lukan 2y ago
    "but one phone call to a relevant decision-maker is 100x more effective and 100x less destructive to those around them." I don't think, the relevant decision makers are open for incoming calls from the internet, but I agree that panic and anxiety solves nothing, but creates just more problems.
    - caseyy 2y ago
      You'd be surprised. Almost all government organizations have receptions you can call, and many private companies (who are not using client support to insulate themselves from feedback) will have executives you can speak to if you ask. There are also many activists you can talk to. The change might not come from them doing something for you, too. They may teach you something you don't know, which can reduce your friction in some situations, too. For example, people commonly complain about poor consumer protection around the world. But usually, there are already laws against mistreating consumers, and if they were to report the incident to the right organization/inspector, they would get the remedy they want. The solution is often the two right people getting on a call or talking in a room. In the EU, there are even some summer camps for teens aged 14-18 to learn how to approach government decision-makers. It is doable. I think you may have some learned helplessness everyone here talks about. But if you give it an earnest try and approach a problem you see from various angles, you'll make some progress on it. Usually, this will be done by talking to a decision-maker.
      - conartist6 2y ago
        Ah, yeah. I live in the US so it's a bit of a different situation here. Political polarization in a two-party system means that the decision makers are rarely actually listening. We rely on the EU to regulate our technology, so generally the same situation makes us feel disempowered because, well, we are. The people who make the rules don't represent us.
        caseyy 2y ago
        I hope you don't take it as an offense, but this seems like learned hopelessness. Have you earnestly tried to speak to a decision-maker? Not everyone in the EU will listen to you, either. There is a bit of a learning curve. Sometimes, you have to apply pressure through specific channels in specific ways, such as influencing stakeholders. Sometimes, you even have to form an organization for your cause. But not always. Sometimes, it just takes time to find someone who will listen. But effort it does take.
- RataNova 2y ago
  The weird part is how natural it feels in the moment, like our brains are convinced it must be important
- card_zero 2y ago
  Yes, it's concerning how prevalent scare stories are. They needlessly raise everybody's stress levels. This disease of modern times is a serious issue that can only get worse, and we should all be very worried about it.
caseyy 2y ago
I suppose as long as YouTubers and popular media can band together and talk about a thing, that will create a trend and give them all clicks and watch time. There are definitely many things to be said about the irresponsible use of this power.
MattGaiser 2y ago
The problem with sustained outrage against Honey is that the victims are not the users and the users give up actual cash savings to not use Honey.
- kibibu 2y ago
  Not totally true. Honey deliberately only included a subset of coupons (at the seller's discretion), and in many cases better discounts were available elsewhere.
- Hamuko 2y ago
  No, Honey scammed both the users and the creators. If a store partnered up with Honey, the store could decide which discount codes the users got with Honey and it didn't have to be the best one. This directly contradicts Honey's advertising ("If we find working codes, we'll automatically apply the best savings we find to your cart.") that is still somehow on joinhoney.com.
flessner 2y ago
It's just the social media process - find drama, blow it up to a ridiculous scale, profit. In this particular case the creators were also harmed the most - the users didn't strictly get the "best" deals with Honey, but something is still better than nothing.
- error_logic 2y ago
  Harm to the creators is eventual harm to the users if it results in some of the creators they enjoyed watching no longer being sustainable.
garbagewoman 2y ago
i think you're misapplying the term - how do you feel that this outrage was manufactured?
- decremental 2y ago
  [dead]
RataNova 2y ago
Yeah, the internet outrage cycle is wild. One minute, it's the biggest scandal ever, and the next, everyone's moved on like it never happened. It's like collective amnesia, but with more yelling
mrtksn 2y ago
I feel like the internet is turning into TV. There are not that many things going on, instead, there's a firehose that directs all the rage or all the love to something for some period of time. Almost like the legacy media picking topics and directing the narrative. I'm particularly annoyed by Twitter lately because I can no longer share anything with my GF because she have already seen it. Our timelines are largely similar, it doesn't matter much who do you follow. Also, the algorithmic discovery being the default is very effective to create this channels(Technology Connections recently made a video about it). On Twitter it appears like there are few talking points, or "channels", are being pushed based on location and few other things maybe and apparently to get exposure you have to say something that fits the narrative. Maybe its not intentional, maybe its the result of the algo dividing people in cohorts or something but I'm very annoyed by the potentially destructive effect of the firehose. Everyone being very outraged of something for short period of time or being very excited for short period of time can't be healthy because it lacks depth and continuation.
- xg15 2y ago
  > and apparently to get exposure you have to say the something that fits the narrative. I think we should really be aware that, if tech companies weren't already able to build something like this anyway, with LLMs they are definitely able now. There is lots of talk about the generative powers of LLMs, but they also have unprecedented analysis powers: You can now easily build something that automatically checks whether a tweet expresses a certain opinion or narrative and automatically upranks or downranks it based on the results. So if you're the owner of a platform, you can now fully control the appearance of what "people are saying" on the platform, without even having to use bots or fake messages. (Of course you could use those as well, in addition, if the opinion you want to push is so bad there aren't enough real users to uprank in the first place)
  - mrtksn 2y ago
    Definitely. AFAIK they previously used to do sentiment analysis and Facebook faced some backslash for experimenting over the mood of their users by manipulating their timelines but today it must be possible to do %100 editorial moderation using LLMs and pretend that whatever you want is the general public sentiment. I also notice that "influencers" are also influenced by this. They pick the talking points from real time media like Twitter and then make coherent videos over this stuff and it gets legitimized. People rarely revisit their past works once the firehose is spraying at some other direction and the fake public sentiment becomes the real public sentiment.
parasti 2y ago
It's not manufactured. The people affected were social media influencers who used affiliate links. So the incident affected a very small and specific segment of society that incidentally could broadcast this to a lot of people.
- silvanocerza 2y ago
  Not really, it was pretty clear from the investigation that some youtuber that I can't remember the name of that it wasn't just that. One of the big claim from Honey is that it finds for you the coupons with that make you spend the least amount of money, but that's false if they have an agreement with the seller to only show you certain coupons. So no, it doesn't affect just influencers, it affects also customers and vendors.
  - rzzzt 2y ago
    Is it MegaLag's video that you are referring to? https://youtu.be/vc4yL3YTwWk https://youtu.be/vc4yL3YTwWk
    - silvanocerza 2y ago
      Yup yup, him.
  - oliwarner 2y ago
    LTT certainly talked about Honey replacing other discount codes in baskets potentially making a basket more expensive, and injecting their own affiliate code when no discount was available. It was all thoroughly scummy and against the spirit of an affiliate referral. But I don't understand why YouTubers were so surprised. This thing is clearly generating revenue to pay off all the top shelf YouTubers and it's clearly doing that by inserting affiliate codes to generate revenue. There's no ethical explanation as to where this extra saving and Honey's revenue comes from.
    - ziml77 2y ago
      How was it clearly doing that? I always assumed Honey's model was to sell detailed shopping information of users.
namaria 2y ago
> it currently eroding the very foundations of society Greed has always led people astray. But the whirlwind has no power on those who are content. It's a tragedy but a fateful one.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
perching_aix 2y ago
> manufactured outrage is so fascinating There's no reason to believe that this wasn't just people being impulsive as normal. The Honey debacle left my mind all the same, because life goes on. If you have any evidence of this having been a manufactured outrage, please do post it. Otherwise, this is just a conspiracy theory, and I'm getting awfully tired of those.
rob_c 2y ago
They took ar jaabz...
dartos 2y ago
Well… iirc LegalEagle started a lawsuit against them. What more would you want? Average viewers are largely unaffected, so it’s not a topic that makes for great content.
tremarley 2y ago
Agreed. The outrage was larger than I expected it to be. The Honey business model was the same as every other coupon website that has launched over the last two decades. Providing coupons in return for affiliate cookies Before the media outrage how did people assume they made money?
conartist6 2y ago
I wasn't affected, but the outrage seemed real. People understand theft. If you're going to cozy up to a group of people and then pick all their pockets, you better be ready to be an enemy to that group of people.
- jahsome 2y ago
  Fine, but why don't they care anymore? I watch an embarrassing amount of YouTube and it was virtually all I heard about for 72 hours and then any mention at all vanished.
imiric 2y ago
The amount of information flooding our minds on a daily basis is staggering. We barely have enough time to process how we feel about a topic, when there are dozens of others craving for our attention. The software we use is built precisely to deliver as much information as possible in the shortest amount of time. So can you really blame people for moving on to other things?
ants_everywhere 2y ago
It's because it's easy to whip up an angry crowd. Anger is a temporary motivator so bad actors use it as a way to increase the likelihood of swarm behavior like brigading. There are also some people who enjoy being part of brigades because it makes them feel like they have a social group that does important things. That's why the same people often go from cause to cause without ever making a noticeable change beyond complaining. It kind of sucks because they feel like they're special and march to their own tune but often they're being played by whichever piper is in town.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

thinkingemote 2y ago

Where a lot of online content to be consumed is about dopamine, a lot of other stuff is about spiking cortisol. There's people on every forum (and regularly here) that suggest, sometimes explicitly, that we must have elevated anxiety and stress levels in response to specific presented content as a moral imperative. I think cortisol makes the "content" feel more "important" or relevant at the present moment in time. 72 hours later assuming no other exploits our body systems adjust and the content isn't important. It's weird when we notice it, but most of the time our cortisol is being directed to another topic so we don't notice. There's a ton written about our dopamine addiction and how it's exploited but not much about cortisol and our negative emotions are being exploited.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
caseyy 2y ago
Many people say that overthinking, anxiety, and stress are moral imperatives as a response to something they don't like: content, political ideas, celebrities, technology companies, and many other things. It is a completely ineffective method of making a change. I wish they'd stop spreading their anxieties online. I know it makes them feel like they're doing something, but one phone call to a relevant decision-maker is 100x more effective and 100x less destructive to those around them.
- lukan 2y ago
  "but one phone call to a relevant decision-maker is 100x more effective and 100x less destructive to those around them." I don't think, the relevant decision makers are open for incoming calls from the internet, but I agree that panic and anxiety solves nothing, but creates just more problems.
  - caseyy 2y ago
    You'd be surprised. Almost all government organizations have receptions you can call, and many private companies (who are not using client support to insulate themselves from feedback) will have executives you can speak to if you ask. There are also many activists you can talk to. The change might not come from them doing something for you, too. They may teach you something you don't know, which can reduce your friction in some situations, too. For example, people commonly complain about poor consumer protection around the world. But usually, there are already laws against mistreating consumers, and if they were to report the incident to the right organization/inspector, they would get the remedy they want. The solution is often the two right people getting on a call or talking in a room. In the EU, there are even some summer camps for teens aged 14-18 to learn how to approach government decision-makers. It is doable. I think you may have some learned helplessness everyone here talks about. But if you give it an earnest try and approach a problem you see from various angles, you'll make some progress on it. Usually, this will be done by talking to a decision-maker.
    - conartist6 2y ago
      Ah, yeah. I live in the US so it's a bit of a different situation here. Political polarization in a two-party system means that the decision makers are rarely actually listening. We rely on the EU to regulate our technology, so generally the same situation makes us feel disempowered because, well, we are. The people who make the rules don't represent us.
      - caseyy 2y ago
        I hope you don't take it as an offense, but this seems like learned hopelessness. Have you earnestly tried to speak to a decision-maker? Not everyone in the EU will listen to you, either. There is a bit of a learning curve. Sometimes, you have to apply pressure through specific channels in specific ways, such as influencing stakeholders. Sometimes, you even have to form an organization for your cause. But not always. Sometimes, it just takes time to find someone who will listen. But effort it does take.
RataNova 2y ago
The weird part is how natural it feels in the moment, like our brains are convinced it must be important
card_zero 2y ago
Yes, it's concerning how prevalent scare stories are. They needlessly raise everybody's stress levels. This disease of modern times is a serious issue that can only get worse, and we should all be very worried about it.

caseyy 2y ago

I suppose as long as YouTubers and popular media can band together and talk about a thing, that will create a trend and give them all clicks and watch time. There are definitely many things to be said about the irresponsible use of this power.

MattGaiser 2y ago

The problem with sustained outrage against Honey is that the victims are not the users and the users give up actual cash savings to not use Honey.

kibibu 2y ago
Not totally true. Honey deliberately only included a subset of coupons (at the seller's discretion), and in many cases better discounts were available elsewhere.
Hamuko 2y ago
No, Honey scammed both the users and the creators. If a store partnered up with Honey, the store could decide which discount codes the users got with Honey and it didn't have to be the best one. This directly contradicts Honey's advertising ("If we find working codes, we'll automatically apply the best savings we find to your cart.") that is still somehow on joinhoney.com.

flessner 2y ago

It's just the social media process - find drama, blow it up to a ridiculous scale, profit. In this particular case the creators were also harmed the most - the users didn't strictly get the "best" deals with Honey, but something is still better than nothing.

error_logic 2y ago
Harm to the creators is eventual harm to the users if it results in some of the creators they enjoyed watching no longer being sustainable.

garbagewoman 2y ago

i think you're misapplying the term - how do you feel that this outrage was manufactured?

decremental 2y ago
[dead]

RataNova 2y ago

Yeah, the internet outrage cycle is wild. One minute, it's the biggest scandal ever, and the next, everyone's moved on like it never happened. It's like collective amnesia, but with more yelling

mrtksn 2y ago

I feel like the internet is turning into TV. There are not that many things going on, instead, there's a firehose that directs all the rage or all the love to something for some period of time. Almost like the legacy media picking topics and directing the narrative. I'm particularly annoyed by Twitter lately because I can no longer share anything with my GF because she have already seen it. Our timelines are largely similar, it doesn't matter much who do you follow. Also, the algorithmic discovery being the default is very effective to create this channels(Technology Connections recently made a video about it). On Twitter it appears like there are few talking points, or "channels", are being pushed based on location and few other things maybe and apparently to get exposure you have to say something that fits the narrative. Maybe its not intentional, maybe its the result of the algo dividing people in cohorts or something but I'm very annoyed by the potentially destructive effect of the firehose. Everyone being very outraged of something for short period of time or being very excited for short period of time can't be healthy because it lacks depth and continuation.

xg15 2y ago
> and apparently to get exposure you have to say the something that fits the narrative. I think we should really be aware that, if tech companies weren't already able to build something like this anyway, with LLMs they are definitely able now. There is lots of talk about the generative powers of LLMs, but they also have unprecedented analysis powers: You can now easily build something that automatically checks whether a tweet expresses a certain opinion or narrative and automatically upranks or downranks it based on the results. So if you're the owner of a platform, you can now fully control the appearance of what "people are saying" on the platform, without even having to use bots or fake messages. (Of course you could use those as well, in addition, if the opinion you want to push is so bad there aren't enough real users to uprank in the first place)
- mrtksn 2y ago
  Definitely. AFAIK they previously used to do sentiment analysis and Facebook faced some backslash for experimenting over the mood of their users by manipulating their timelines but today it must be possible to do %100 editorial moderation using LLMs and pretend that whatever you want is the general public sentiment. I also notice that "influencers" are also influenced by this. They pick the talking points from real time media like Twitter and then make coherent videos over this stuff and it gets legitimized. People rarely revisit their past works once the firehose is spraying at some other direction and the fake public sentiment becomes the real public sentiment.

parasti 2y ago

It's not manufactured. The people affected were social media influencers who used affiliate links. So the incident affected a very small and specific segment of society that incidentally could broadcast this to a lot of people.

silvanocerza 2y ago
Not really, it was pretty clear from the investigation that some youtuber that I can't remember the name of that it wasn't just that. One of the big claim from Honey is that it finds for you the coupons with that make you spend the least amount of money, but that's false if they have an agreement with the seller to only show you certain coupons. So no, it doesn't affect just influencers, it affects also customers and vendors.
- rzzzt 2y ago
  Is it MegaLag's video that you are referring to? https://youtu.be/vc4yL3YTwWk https://youtu.be/vc4yL3YTwWk
  - silvanocerza 2y ago
    Yup yup, him.
- oliwarner 2y ago
  LTT certainly talked about Honey replacing other discount codes in baskets potentially making a basket more expensive, and injecting their own affiliate code when no discount was available. It was all thoroughly scummy and against the spirit of an affiliate referral. But I don't understand why YouTubers were so surprised. This thing is clearly generating revenue to pay off all the top shelf YouTubers and it's clearly doing that by inserting affiliate codes to generate revenue. There's no ethical explanation as to where this extra saving and Honey's revenue comes from.
  - ziml77 2y ago
    How was it clearly doing that? I always assumed Honey's model was to sell detailed shopping information of users.

namaria 2y ago

> it currently eroding the very foundations of society Greed has always led people astray. But the whirlwind has no power on those who are content. It's a tragedy but a fateful one.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

perching_aix 2y ago

> manufactured outrage is so fascinating There's no reason to believe that this wasn't just people being impulsive as normal. The Honey debacle left my mind all the same, because life goes on. If you have any evidence of this having been a manufactured outrage, please do post it. Otherwise, this is just a conspiracy theory, and I'm getting awfully tired of those.

rob_c 2y ago

They took ar jaabz...

dartos 2y ago

Well… iirc LegalEagle started a lawsuit against them. What more would you want? Average viewers are largely unaffected, so it’s not a topic that makes for great content.

tremarley 2y ago

Agreed. The outrage was larger than I expected it to be. The Honey business model was the same as every other coupon website that has launched over the last two decades. Providing coupons in return for affiliate cookies Before the media outrage how did people assume they made money?

conartist6 2y ago

I wasn't affected, but the outrage seemed real. People understand theft. If you're going to cozy up to a group of people and then pick all their pockets, you better be ready to be an enemy to that group of people.

jahsome 2y ago
Fine, but why don't they care anymore? I watch an embarrassing amount of YouTube and it was virtually all I heard about for 72 hours and then any mention at all vanished.

imiric 2y ago

The amount of information flooding our minds on a daily basis is staggering. We barely have enough time to process how we feel about a topic, when there are dozens of others craving for our attention. The software we use is built precisely to deliver as much information as possible in the shortest amount of time. So can you really blame people for moving on to other things?

ants_everywhere 2y ago

It's because it's easy to whip up an angry crowd. Anger is a temporary motivator so bad actors use it as a way to increase the likelihood of swarm behavior like brigading. There are also some people who enjoy being part of brigades because it makes them feel like they have a social group that does important things. That's why the same people often go from cause to cause without ever making a noticeable change beyond complaining. It kind of sucks because they feel like they're special and march to their own tune but often they're being played by whichever piper is in town.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]