MegaLag
2 HN recommenders · recommended in 5 months, 2024–2026
23:11 · 20M views · Dec 21, 2024
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.
HN treats it as top-tier investigative journalism on YouTube and the video that triggered lawsuits against Honey.
10 comments from Hacker News
[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.
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.
While I tend to agree with you, to the point that I've never willingly clicked on an ad, this isn't how most people that I've seen operate. I actively skip over ads in search results, skip whenever possible in video, and pay to remove them completely if it's offered (subscribing to Kagi and YouTube Premium). If I do end up seeing an ad for something that looks interesting/useful, I don't click on it. I search for it separately. I treat ads the same way I would a random text claiming to be my bank. I don't click the link, I go there on my own so I know I'm in the right place free of any funny business. The side effect of this is the merchant loses context on how effective their ad was. In contrast, when I see almost anyone else using Google, they actively look at the ads first. They treat the ads as if they were the top organic search results. If they search for "Microsoft" and Microsoft paid for a top ranked ad to their homepage, they will click on the ad link instead of the real organic result a few lines down. This makes these people very susceptible to advertisements posing at legitimate websites, yet their behavior never changes. I've said something to multiple people about skipping down to the actual results, and they claim to like the ads, or don't see a difference and just pick the first link that seems like what they want. Many of these people are otherwise tech savvy, some of whom spent decades working in the tech sector. It seems we are the weird ones for avoiding t
While there is a lot of low-effort content, there is also some pretty involved stuff. The investigation into Honey’s shenanigans[0] was investigated and presented first on YouTube (to the best of my knowledge). The fraud in Minnesota was also broken by a YouTuber who just testified to Congress[1]. There are people doing original work on there, you just have to end up in an algorithm that surfaces it… or seek it out. In other cases people are presenting stuff I wouldn’t otherwise know about, and getting access to see it at levels I wouldn’t otherwise be able to see, like Cleo Abram’s[0] latest video about LIGO[1]. Yes, it’s a mostly entertaining overview of what’s going on, not a white paper on the equipment, but this is probably more in depth than what a science program on TV in the 80s or 90s would have been… at least on par. There are also full class lectures, which people can access without being enrolled in a school. While YouTube isn’t the original source, it is still shared in full, not summarized or changed for entertainment purposes. [0] this video (part 1 of 3) [1] [LINK] [2] [LINK] [3] [LINK]
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 - this video * MKBHD commenting on it - [LINK] * Linus commenting on it - [LINK] * Past discussion on HN that was cited by MegaLag - [LINK]