Before I even clicked it I knew there would be no real journalism involved. It’s just parroting the video the LegalEagle put out, so if you’d rather give your click to the creator, just watch the Youtube video, and don’t bother with the techcrunch “article”.
This article credits Legal Eagle, embeds the original, is much shorter to read than an 8-minute video and doesn’t require me to wear headphones. Lemmy is a text based social media so it makes sense to favour text sources. Definitely better than linking to some overloaded Invidious instance which seems to be the norm.
Lemmy is a text based social media
No it is not. It is a link aggregator. Can be text, can be images, can be video, can be news, etc. etc.
There’s plenty of core social components to Lemmy. It’s a platform for self-organising communities that curate, rank and discuss content. Without that I’d be using RSS reader only.
There’s plenty of core social components to Lemmy.
Nothing requires the social components of lemmy to be text only though. Many images, gifs, and videos are shared in comment sections as well. Claiming text only or text-based is incorrect when all media types are available in every facet of lemmy.
Edit: I will add, I do appreciate a text source though… I can get through pages of text faster than I can watch a youtube video at 2x speed. But there are times where the imagery help to clear up some topics as well.
It’s a spectrum like most things but to give some extreme examples - Lemmy can work without embedding media files but it can’t work without text. Instagram could work with just video, ability to scroll and a like button.
I don’t understand what any of that has to do with what you or I said.
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I believe in the right to quote which is also the law in most of the world because of Berne Convention.
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If YouTube videos are what “modern journalism” has to offer, modern journalism is trash.
I have absolutely zero interest in watching an eight minute video to gain what I could have read in two minutes.
I don’t need to see anybody 's face or hear any stupid music or, even worse, watch them talk over another video as they present the information. 90% of what these people do would be more effective presented textually, and the rest is ads, vamping, and narcissism.
YouTube is great for spreading misinformation and propaganda, and wasting people’s time. Let’s move on.
You’re so angry lol. Just don’t watch it jeez.
I don’t like watching videos.
Me either, and Im glad for text summaries.
Exhausting. Like the people who used to yell at us for using straws. Your anger is misplaced at individuals.
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The very first time I saw an ad for Honey I knew there had to be a catch. Nothing is ever free.
It wasn’t immediately obvious how they were going to make money, though. I figured they’d just sell gather and sell user data. I had completely forgotten about affiliate links. But they probably also sell your data for good measure.
The only thing truly free are those little pencils at IKEA.
Those are priced into the products IKEA sells.
I only go there for the free pencils and make my furniture out of the pencils. Checkmate
You can cut down on your pencil quota by also adding free FedEx boxes to your furniture.
Edit: Remembered why I thought of this: http://web.archive.org/web/20060821064958/http://www.fedexfurniture.com/pictures.html
No purchase required, though. You can just take all the pencils and paper rulers you want!
That just means the actual customers are paying for you.
Heh, sucker’s more free pencils for me
Do they still exist? In China and Malaysia where I’ve been living for the last 10 years there are only QR codes at the items that you can scan with the IKEA app.
If you don’t want to install the app, all you can do is take photos of the labels, or bring your own pens.
Still exist in UK as of last year, short wooden pencils stacked in a plastic cube, free for as many as you can take before security gets angy
Yeah that’s what I’m used to from Germany as well, but seems like they either never implemented it in Asia, or got rid of it a long time ago.
They certainly exist in Ikea here in the Philippines. I’ve been there a few months ago and the free pencils and paper tape measures (rulers?) are still there and being used.
There are plenty of free things on the Internet. You’re commenting on a free social network.
I pay $100/month for internet access.
Lemmy may be free to access, but certainly not free to host. Am I paying for it personally? No, but someone is.
You also don’t see Lemmy paying hundreds of YouTubers and influencers for ad spots.
Lemmy may be free to access, but certainly not free to host. Am I paying for it personally? No, but someone is.
Kind reminder to donate to whoever is hosting your instance. Covering a share of costs increases the chances they will continue running it.
I pay $100/month for internet access.
Which you’d also pay if you used Honey.
Lemmy may be free to access, but certainly not free to host. Am I paying for it personally? No, but someone is.
You also wouldn’t have paid to use Honey.
You also don’t see Lemmy paying hundreds of YouTubers and influencers for ad spots.
That one, that’s a valid argument.
You also wouldn’t have paid to use Honey.
That’s my point? Nothing is ever truly free?
But how does that statement contribute to anything?
I pay $100/month for internet access.
Irrelevant to the point, but damn that feels so high. I pay something like 30 or 40 euros per month for symmetric 500 megabit, in one of the countries with the highest internet prices in Europe.
Lemmy may be free to access, but certainly not free to host. Am I paying for it personally? No, but someone is.
Well yes, someone is, but my point was, there are loads of examples on the Internet where something truly is free to use and hosted by someone who doesn’t ask for anything. There is real altruism to be found here.
You also don’t see Lemmy paying hundreds of YouTubers and influencers for ad spots.
Yes, this is where the difference comes in. When something is free AND the people running it have ridiculous amounts of money to spend on sponsorships and ads… Then you can be sure there’s a catch.
Wow, internet is expensive where you are. I pay £28 (about $35) a month for 1gig up/down in the UK.
internet in the states and canada can be so expensive :( i’m lucky that my provider has a program for ppl on disability where we pay $10-$20 CAD/mo. I can’t remember the exact amount, nor what up/down we get right now, but it’s pretty decent!
Capitalists hate competition, and ISPs have it down to a science.
It’s more expensive in remote areas and areas without competition.
Lemmy may be free to access, but certainly not free to host. Am I paying for it personally? No, but someone is.
“Someone” is paying to host every website. The point is it’s free to you.
What lemmy bad?
The catch about Lemmy is that degenerates like me are here
It’s not, my point was more that you see a lot of things being hosted on the Internet for free just out of people’s goodness and curiosity.
Honey is not one of them. But it’s not the fact that Honey is free to use that’s the suspicious part. It’s the fact that they had an awful lot of money to spend on sponsor spots for a free product/service.
I help pay for my instance to run, nothing is free but there is freeloading. Otherwise someone is else pays for the electricity that powers my server requests as I shitpost on lemmy
It’s definitely not 2005 any more.
It’s not, but go look on github. There are so many projects out there that aren’t monetized. People just built them for the fun of it.
Hell, the entire KDE software suite is not monetized to the best of my knowledge. They ask for donations, but they don’t make a buck off you in any way unless you voluntarily donate.
Lemmy isn’t paying out the nose for influencers to hook their stuff. I haven’t seen any Lemmy instances advertise at all, much less to the extent that Honey has.
Yes, that’s the major difference, but the original comment pointed out you can’t have free things without getting assfucked one way or another. You can, but those free things don’t spend millions on advertising themselves.
The icing on the cake was lying about the best deals when partnered stores paid them to do so.
There are so many online companies that do this, like Glassdoor. They are willing to share any information they have about a place until they’re paid to remove it. Goes for bad reviews and salary info as much as it does for coupon codes.
Tanstaafl
I’ve never seen an ad for honey, not heard of it’s existence before this video.
Ad blocking is the way
Hmm ad blocking is not enough, because many YouTubers sponsor Honey inside of their videos. Maybe you also use Sponsorblock.
I use Sponsorblock, but still hear ads sometimes because it’s not applied to downloads.
No I didn’t use sponsor block, I often manually skip sponsored sections.
But none of the channels I follow shill for honey, apparently, and that’s a big plus.
Nothing is ever free.
TANSTAAFL comrade!
So you don‘t use extensions at all then because you‘re already sniffing the uBlock Origin scandal?
There was a video years and years ago where they explained their business model and it has either since changed or they lied. Back then it was that they offered deals through sponsorships or something. I don’t remember. It was years ago. What’s frustrating is that I remember seeing that video and it definitely made me think it wasn’t a scam. Probably had the same effect on a lot of other people too.
Frankly I’m surprised it took this long for anyone to notice they were swapping referral codes. I always assumed that was what was in it for them. Perhaps the extent to which they’ve done it is greater than we knew, but if you have ever heard of referral codes, it seems obvious that this is how such an extension would monetize.
Saved you a click
Among other accusations, MegaLag said that if a YouTuber or other creator promotes a product through an affiliate link, if the viewer has installed Honey, the extension will surreptitiously substitute its own link when the viewer makes a purchase — even if Honey didn’t provide any discounts. That means Honey, not the creator, receives the affiliate revenue for the transaction.
If they’d just been a little less greedy, and only inserted their affiliate link for purchases where none was originally present, and actually provided the service they advertised rather than ‘partnering’ with merchants to provide worse coupons, they’d probably never have gotten caught and if they had, nobody would have cared. Could have skimmed a significant but lesser amount forever. But no, they had to go full on villain, and here we are.
Having a pressure point against the shops by letting them control what kind of coupons would be shown was probably a big reason they weren’t just kicked out of at least some of those affiliate programmes.
That’s a fair point, but they could have been up front about it, or at least adjusted their advertising some. They basically told consumers “We’ll get you the best deal, and if we don’t find one, it doesn’t exist”, which is a spurious claim anyway, but it surely misled people. They could have just said “We’ll see if we have any coupon codes available” or something less committal. There still would have been a lot of value for regular consumers… if you weren’t using a coupon code, 5% off is better than nothing and if they weren’t being dicks about the referral links, nobody likely would have cared in the slightest.
I mean, yeah, they suck. But honestly, a crowdsourced database of coupons feels like it isn’t a good fit for a for-profit company anyway.
Saved me a watch too, thanks!
Also worth noting that they don’t actually find you the best coupons available. They partner with retailers to get an approved list of coupon codes that they will allow. So claims of always finding you the best price are just false.
You left out the part about Honey charging sellers to hide coupons.
As much as I enjoy watching LTT content, I have to speak out about how they realized Honey was fucking them and then said NOTHING to their audience or to other YouTubers. I think that is just plain shitty of them and has put a sour taste in mouth with their content now. If they did say something, I apologize. I just haven’t seen it since the only “social media” I use is this singular one, Lemmy.
I don’t enjoy watching ltt anymore since a good few years, but I’m still going to come to their defence :)
They discussed dropping Honey on their forum in march 2022: "We ended the partnership with Honey due to the way their service interacted with affiliate links. Essentially, if someone clicked on a affiliate link (For example, one of ours below in the video description on YouTube), and then if they “use honey” and search for a deal, Honey will override that tracking link even if they don’t find you a deal. ".
https://linustechtips.com/topic/1415146-weekly-sponsorship-suggestioncomplaint-thread-feb-28-2022/
When they defended themselves against the recent accusations, that they didn’t make enough noise when dropping Honey in 2022, their defence was that they thought that only creators were disadvantaged (a few 100 people?). They claim to have been unaware that the users of Honey (the hundreds of thousands of LTT viewers) were being disadvantaged as well. They also seemed to be unaware that Honey’s behaviour is likely illegal, at least LTT made no mention on the legality of it. https://therecenttimes.com/news/linustechtips-addresses-megalags-honey-allegations-defends-transparency Which checks out with their 2022 post.
If they had known that the users of Honey were being bamboozled as well, I’m sure that they would have made a video about it. But making a complaint video to basically say that an ex sponsor was stealing some of their marbles, might have given a bad look. + given more publicity to Honey, which LTT probably didn’t want to happen.
While I see your point, I have to say posting about it on their own forums, where a lot of people that normally see their videos will not see it (since I’m sure that not everyone who subscribes to their main channel also would go to their forums…) I still think it’s pretty shitty to not inform your coworkers (other YouTubers) and especially their viewers who only tune in for videos they find interesting (like me). If they’re screwing over content creators, why would you not assume they’re also doubly screwing the regular joes?
Also, look at GamersNexus. They have no issues letting the people who respect them know when a company is up to no good, which in turn garners them even more respect and adoration.
“Hmm. Point out foul play, but lose out on some of that sweet sweet moolah? Nah. Can’t do that. That might make me look advertiser unfriendly!” Is basically what you’re getting at. I think that is a shitty mindset to have when shilling for companies.
Of course, no disrespect towards you, and I absolutely thank you for bringing this to the conversation. I was not aware of it because I am not that deep in the Linus Tech Tips community, I just find some of their videos fun/interesting.
LTT is entertainment, I wouldn’t expect in depth reporting from them. They don’t have that anal retentive attention to details/all angles that Gamer’s Nexus or Louis Rossman have. If LTT made videos where they attack stuff that they think is wrong, then I’d expect them to go on their face more often than not. And attacking large companies with a poorly constructed case, would always come back to bite them in the ass.
Very few people can do the kind of repeated reporting that Gamer’s Nexus and Louis Rossman do + stay in business. I can’t blame LTT for sticking to what they’re good at (superficial entertainment).
"That might make me look advertiser unfriendly!” Not what I was saying at all. I said that in the context of the time it might have made them look unnecessarily greedy to the public + provide free advertising + extra users for Honey.
So the scenario is that they know Honey is losing them money, but it’s saving user’s money by finding them great deals (since that part of the controversy wasn’t known at the time).
And you are proposing they make a video complaining about it. A big YouTuber millionaire telling people “hey, I know this extension is making you money, but please consider not using it because we are profiting off of our affiliate links less when you do and our profits are more important than your savings”.
How do you think that would go? We all know how such a video would be received.
You would simply tell your side of the story, and give caution to users of the extension that shady behavior like that is always accompanied by even more shady stuff.
Not really that hard to do, and you gave the info out to people who will dedicate their time (as MegaLag did) into looking into it either for their own interests or to see how deep the rabbit hole goes.
Except it wasn’t saving people money. It actually was hiding coupons from users.
But like they wrote, that wasn’t known at the time.