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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

by beAbU 2y ago

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.

ChocolateGod 2y ago
> tech tubers were only really upset that Honey was stealing from /them/ But wasn't Honey paying them?
- QuercusMax 2y ago
  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.
- dleary 2y ago
  > But wasn't Honey paying them? 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).
  - wingworks 2y ago
    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. Maybe I'm not the typical user.
    - kalleboo 2y ago
      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.
  - kin 2y ago
    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.
    - ChocolateGod 2y ago
      > 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.
    - Ekaros 2y ago
      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.
      - kin 2y ago
        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.
jrflowers 2y ago
Seems like a lot of people get value from ball shavers and ass wipes though
- thombat 2y ago
  It's too late to enter the market now. Let's try for the first mover advantage in influencer-favourite ball wipes and ass shavers.
  - jrflowers 2y ago
    No what we need to aim for at things that soil the balls and fluff up the asses. Synergy.
LPisGood 2y ago
> 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. Are you just opposed to advertising as a concept?
- cogman10 2y ago
  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).
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    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.
    - cogman10 2y ago
      > 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.
johnnyanmac 2y ago
So this perspective boils down to "entrepreneurs are evil"? An interesting take to put on a site dedicated to funding entrepreneurs.
- luckylion 2y ago
  I'd read it more as "influencers are dishonest and pretend to not be sales professionals".
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    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.
- barbecue_sauce 2y ago
  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.
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    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.
kalleboo 2y ago
> 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...

by beAbU 2y ago

ChocolateGod 2y ago

> tech tubers were only really upset that Honey was stealing from /them/ But wasn't Honey paying them?

QuercusMax 2y ago
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.
dleary 2y ago
> But wasn't Honey paying them? 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).
- wingworks 2y ago
  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. Maybe I'm not the typical user.
  - kalleboo 2y ago
    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.
- kin 2y ago
  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.
  - ChocolateGod 2y ago
    > 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.
  - Ekaros 2y ago
    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.
    - kin 2y ago
      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.

jrflowers 2y ago

Seems like a lot of people get value from ball shavers and ass wipes though

thombat 2y ago
It's too late to enter the market now. Let's try for the first mover advantage in influencer-favourite ball wipes and ass shavers.
- jrflowers 2y ago
  No what we need to aim for at things that soil the balls and fluff up the asses. Synergy.

LPisGood 2y ago

> 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. Are you just opposed to advertising as a concept?

cogman10 2y ago
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).
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  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.
  - cogman10 2y ago
    > 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.

johnnyanmac 2y ago

So this perspective boils down to "entrepreneurs are evil"? An interesting take to put on a site dedicated to funding entrepreneurs.

luckylion 2y ago
I'd read it more as "influencers are dishonest and pretend to not be sales professionals".
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  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.
barbecue_sauce 2y ago
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.
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  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.

kalleboo 2y ago

> 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...