Steve vs Linus, round 2

Maybe people should channel their hatred towards the actual crux of the issue at hand here; HONEY.
It should not be put on Linus for not doing a big reveal of said scam. It's not on him to do so. He quietly left that stable as he should have done when they found out, and carried on with life. Yet Steve wants to punish him for not bringing enough drama to the table on youtube, something he and seemingly lots of others revel in, when they can try to disrupt LMG. Pretty sad. Linus sat back on things in the past, but now is fairly professionally on the defence. Can't blame him for that.
 
Yes, this nothing drama is pathetic.

I can't watch Gamers Nexus as he bores me to death. I tried to watch a full video of his years ago and could only make it to the 10ish minute mark he is that tedious to me. Come on man, invest in a little bit of a personality.

I'll watch LTT depending on the video but I don't think I've ever bought anything because Linus liked it. I tend to watch the WAN Show on a Saturday morning whilst on the computer doing other stuff but I usually look at the, viewer generated, time stamps and skip topics I'm not interested about. The one channel I watched every episode of was scrapped a year or so ago, Carpool Critics/They're Just Movies.
 
Honeys only a scam because it took influencer affiliate money after they promoted it...

none of these influencers would care if it were their viewers losing out getting data farmed or whatever
 
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arknor said:
Honeys only a scam because it took influencer affiliate money after they promoted it...

none of these influencers would care if it were their viewers losing out getting data farmed or whatever
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You are missing quite a lot to the story here.

When LTT dropped Honey - this was all that was known (the affiliate link stealing). His position was not to make a big song and dance about it, because it may be seen as him whining he is losing his cut and the Consumer should take the "L" and not get a better price to protect his revenue.

When GN did the Honey video, he filled it with hyperbole and rage bait and it was hard to decipher what he was even saying (see the thread where the usual suspects ganged up on me but they were unable to explain what they were actually mad about - so resorted to being mad that I wouldn't watch the video). The difference now is that people are mad Honey allowed retailers to filter out codes they didn't want to be made available on there site. Ergo Honey "may not be the best discount code available".

The odd thing about all of this is that Honey is an optional plug-in that people use to see if they can "steal" a discount despite not being the audience for those discounts in the first place. It is like bruteforcing a password, essentially. Rewarding commission to people who did no work to get that commission, and giving an incentive to buy to people who were already as far as the checkout lol.

We have a lot of members that subscribe to circlejerking though, so it got a lot of posts.
 
StriderX said:
I'm confused...

So Linus endorses a product to millions, finds out it's a scam and opts to not to warn anyone it is... but he's a good person for that?
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Context, ah yes, don’t worry about that.

Back in 2021, it was only known that they were taking affiliate revenue. Scam is also a strong word given the consumer wasn’t harmed or a better description, known to be harmed.

No one said he was a good person for not making a video about it, that doesn’t make them a bad person either.

It was also reported at the time by others. They don’t make videos every time they drop a sponsor either, hardly anyone does, they just get ditched.
 
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StriderX said:
I'm confused...

So Linus endorses a product to millions, finds out it's a scam and opts to not to warn anyone it is... but he's a good person for that?
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It is OK to be confused --

Linus was sponsored by Honey a while back. He learnt they rewrote affiliate links so he was losing revenue, alongside other YouTube'ers for their affiliate links. He decided to drop them as a sponsor and mentioned this on one of his shows. At the time, no other controversy was known.

----END---
 
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Also unclear why Honey was a "scam". You are getting something you weren't entitled "for free" with minimal effort.
 
GravyMonster said:
Because they were outright lying about the service they provided. Entitlement has nothing to do with that.
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What is the very specific thing you are saying they lie about?

(remembering BMW call themselves the "Ultimate Driving Machine" and Airbnb say "belong anywhere")
 
dlockers said:
What is the very specific thing you are saying they lie about?

(remembering BMW call themselves the "Ultimate Driving Machine" and Airbnb say "belong anywhere")
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stealing revenue from affiliates and harvesting peoples data.
but assuming you can read there is something else you are getting at here, what is it exactly ?
 
I believe also the discount codes where fixed and not searched as better prices could be found if properly searched for.

Don't like either of them to be honest, Linus is always trying to sell me something in every of his videos, GN rambles on, though at lest GN I can skip and get the jist of things.
 
dlockers said:
What is the very specific thing you are saying they lie about?

(remembering BMW call themselves the "Ultimate Driving Machine" and Airbnb say "belong anywhere")
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You watched the vid yet?

MassiveJim said:
stealing revenue from affiliates and harvesting peoples data.
but assuming you can read there is something else you are getting at here, what is it exactly ?
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Go back and read all his posts in the first few pages, he's deliberately avoiding the vid we all got the facts from and is now asking questions that were all answered in said vid and making himself look a tit.

I'm thoroughly enjoying it :D
 
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MassiveJim said:
stealing revenue from affiliates and harvesting peoples data.
but assuming you can read there is something else you are getting at here, what is it exactly ?
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Well I'd say neither of those are "scams" - dishonest to the creators who use affiliate links, but no harm to us as consumers.

Diddums said:
You watched the vid yet?



Go back and read all his posts in the first few pages, he's deliberately avoiding the vid we all got the facts from and is now asking questions that were all answered in said vid and making himself look a tit.

I'm thoroughly enjoying it :D
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Still only able to attack me but not actually summarise what you were outraged about huh :)
 
MassiveJim said:
stealing revenue from affiliates and harvesting peoples data.
but assuming you can read there is something else you are getting at here, what is it exactly ?
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Whether the affiliate steal is a scam or not is a grey area and I’m not sure it meets all the hallmarks of a ‘scam’.

There is an argument that honey is doing actual work in the process of your purchase via their discount code search. The way that affiliate revenue works is the last person to do some work to market/refer/influence your purchase wins the revenue. It also only takes it from people using an affiliate link, the overwhelmingly majority do not.

Most people don’t even realise they are clicking an affiliate link and the person who’s link you clicked is getting a kickback, few people actually go out of their way to use an affiliate link to ‘support’ their favourite internet celebrity. That’s not that different to what honey has done.

The harvesting people’s data point isn’t relevant, it’s obvious that’s part of what it’s doing and it’s listed in the terms and conditions. Most people don’t care.

cu3ed said:
I believe also the discount codes where fixed and not searched as better prices could be found if properly searched for.
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The voucher code thing is less gray, and has the hallmarks of a scam because of the way it plays users against outlets, the claims for both can’t be true. It’s certainly misleading.


cu3ed said:
Don't like either of them to be honest, Linus is always trying to sell me something in every of his videos, GN rambles on, though at lest GN I can skip and get the jist of things.
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Everyone who makes money from YouTube is trying to sell you something, that’s how they make money, particularly in the tech bubble. Whether it’s a built in add, merch store, product or just the YouTube add on the top of the video.

There is a reason everyone has a baked in add, product placement, affiliate links and a merch store. I’m pretty sure you could buy over priced average chocolate from MrBeat in Asda at some point.

They need you to give them ad impressions or to buy something to make money, that’s the only way these big YouTube houses can even exist.
 
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