Exposing the Honey Influencer Scam
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN treats it as top-tier investigative journalism on YouTube and the video that triggered lawsuits against Honey.
What it is
MegaLag investigates PayPal's Honey browser extension, showing how it swaps affiliate attribution and was promoted by large YouTube influencers. It includes technical demonstrations of the affiliate tag replacement in browser dev tools.
Recommended by 2 HN commenters across 2 different months, 2024 to 2026.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec aunty_helen · 2025-01 · on “uBlock Origin GPL code being stolen by team behind Honey browser extension”
[LINK] For context, this all started about 2 weeks ago with one of the best pieces of investigative journalism I've seen on youtube: [this 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.
Recommends smcleod · 2024-12 · on “Show HN: Open-source and transparent alternative to Honey”
Good video I watched recently on how the Honey scam works: [this video] *Edit: Oh I see you mention it in the video on your project! Nice work.
Cites d3vr · 2024-12 · on “I built a platform for discovering and sharing Chrome extension collections”
For anyone else outside the loop, MegaLag released a video [1] yesterday exposing the shady practices by Honey 1: [this video]
Cites slowmovintarget · 2025-01 · on “uBlock Origin GPL code being stolen by team behind Honey browser extension”
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). [this video]
Cites bryant · 2025-01 · on “LegalEagle is suing Honey [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 wh
Cites rideontime · 2025-01 · on “I am rich and have no idea what to do”
Oh, I guess you haven't been keeping up with the news? You're a star now. [this video] As soon as people saw this, they started filing class action lawsuits. [LINK] So I guess we'll see!
Cites sameline · 2025-02 · on “Show HN: Get an email when the price drops on any product's URL. No spam”
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]: [this video]
Cites AkshatJ27 · 2025-12 · on “Honey's Dieselgate: Detecting and Tricking Testers”
The youtuber MegaLag released part 1 of his investigation roughly 1 year ago: [this video] Recently, he released 2 more parts with more new information that paints Honey in a pretty bad light: [LINK] [LINK]