LegalEagle is suing Honey [video]

This story is tailor-made for Brian Dunning of Skeptoid to follow up on. He did jail time for something similar (apps he wrote for customers directed the add revenue to him instead of the customer)

https://skepchick.org/2014/08/brian-dunning-sentenced-to-15-...

I'm a big fan of his podcast and I'm sure he understands what happened better than most. skeptoid dot com

Ryan Hudson, the founder of Honey, launched a new company that's already under scrutiny for similar practices:

Pie.org (despite being for-profit).

Founded in March 2024, it already hit 1M downloads and has 20+ employees/10+ Engineers.

LegalEagle's video on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4H4sScCB1cY

I wonder if there is a case for the users who purchased items thinking they were supporting creators but instead were not. Doesn't look like this specific class action is that.

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 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc4yL3YTwWk

* MKBHD commenting on it - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAx_RtMKPm8

* Linus commenting on it - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16gHC1AQNJY

* Past discussion on HN that was cited by MegaLag - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21589352

Is there a plugin I can use to remove affiliate links altogether for privacy purposes?

Warranted. Congrats.-

I would be on the YouTubers' side except they are the ones who have been shilling Honey non-stop for years to begin with. You don't get to cry "I've been scammed" after happily accepting money to perpetuate the scam to your users.