Now this will not be the greatest post given I am only just looking at this situation. I like many others have been advertised at by others mostly influencers to use honey. If you don’t know Honey is a free browser extension that looks for coupon codes for you. On paper that sounds amazing except by using it you could hurt the people recommending it. The way Honey works is by replacing affiliate links with their own so when a purchase through a partner is made they don’t pay their partner, because when you use honey the affiliate link disappears and doesn’t show the influencer who recommended the product in the first place. If Honey can’t find a coupon for you the same thing happens it doesn’t revert back to the influencer recommending the product it goes to Honey.

PIE is an advertisement organization that claims to block ads on things like google and Youtube created by the same people behind honey. Then claims to pay people to watch the ads. Does Influencers ad revenue go somewhere else now because a lot of influencers make money off their ads? Rather than sponsorship it can be detrimental to them. It did this stuff once and that worked I would not be surprised if they did the same. Both of these companies made money off influencers then proceeded to scam them out of their own hard work.

Honey and PIE is also now experiencing the downsides of working with influencers unlike big businesses that simply do not care they will make money regardless, honey worked with independent creators many of which have rights to call them out and will talk about how they suffered or will pass the story along to other influencers. Most of which they worked with are larger and get upwards of millions of views and subscribers and these guys scammed essentially their marketing team out of their paycheck.

People have wondered where Honey and PIE got their money and now it is clear off the backbones of people who have tons more talent than them. I am planning to follow this story and cover it if Honey responds to all this though I do wonder how this is legal and what a lawyer would say. Further the literal hundreds of influencers effected may have grounds to sue.

Edit: Legal Eagle is now involved and suing on behalf of creators. So depending on how this goes is one of two ways Paypal gets away with everything only to never get sponsors again or they need to pay back the creators they “worked” with.

Sources:

“Exposing the Honey Influencer Scam.” Youtube, Uploaded By Megalag, Dec 21, 2024, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc4yL3YTwWk

“Exposing the “PIE” Influencer Disaster – (Same Developers as HONEY).” Youtube, Uploaded By Upper Echelon, Dec 23, 2024, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTxnM3J0I0k&t=886s

“I’m Suing Honey.” Youtube, Uploaded By LegalEagle, Jan 2, 2025, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4H4sScCB1cY