Honey and the Importance of Attribution

This site talks about both copyright and plagiarism issues.

Though the two issues share a great deal of overlap, they are, ultimately, very different concepts. Plagiarism deals with the ethics of attribution and citation. These social norms vary wildly based on media types, cultures and other factors.

Copyright, on the other hand, is a set of commercial rights granted to the creator of a creative work. Outside of moral rights (and possibly copyright management information), attribution isn’t much of a factor in determining what is or is not a copyright infringement. As such, though many acts of plagiarism are also copyright infringements, many are just one or the other.

Because of this, it’s rare for an issue over attribution to become a legal case by itself. However, that is what happened this past week as several creators banded together to file a class action complaint against PayPal over the Honey extension. According to the complaint, Honey would strip their affiliate information and substitute it with their own.

For this, the creators are suing for intentional interference with contract relations, intentional interference with prospective economic relations, unjust enrichment, unfair competition and conversion.

To understand why this is important, we must first look at the lawsuit and how we got to this point.

Background of the Case

Honey is a browser extension that claims to help users save money by finding coupon codes for various shopping sites. The idea is relatively simple. Users install Honey in their browser and, as they check out, the extension searches for and tries multiple coupon codes, finding the best one.

Prominent YouTubers have widely promoted the extension. These include Mr. Beast, Linus Tech Tips, Marques Brownlee and many more. On this day in 2020, PayPal purchased Honey for $4 billion in cash.

However, things took a turn on December 21, 2024. YouTuber MegaLag uploaded a video entitled Exposing the Honey Influencer Scam, highlighting several questionable practices by the extension.

For consumers, the video highlighted how Honey forges partnerships with online stores. These deals limit the coupons that Honey offers to users, often resulting in worse deals. This is in sharp contrast to Honey’s marketing.

However, the more significant issue impacted creators, including many YouTubers who previously promoted Honey. Creators often provide affiliate links to their audience. This way, if someone clicks from their page to the store, the store knows who sent the customer and can give the creator a commission.

But when a user has the Honey extension installed, Honey will overwrite that affiliate tracking information and replace it with its own. This happens even if Honey doesn’t find a coupon code. In short, the creator who sent the customer to the site does not get credit for doing so, and Honey reaps the rewards, regardless of whether they helped or not.

That, in turn, prompted the lawsuit, which is currently seeking class-action status to represent all creators impacted by this system.

When Attribution IS Commercial

Normally, one doesn’t sue for plagiarism. Plagiarism, by itself, is not something that you can sue over. Instead, one typically sues over an economic or other harm attached to the plagiarism. The most common is copyright infringement (since most plagiarism involves some copying), but there are others.

For example, if you plagiarize a book you were paid to write, you could face a lawsuit over breach of contract or fraud. Likewise, if plagiarism harms the victim’s reputation, it could raise defamation issues.

However, in this case, attribution is the commercial issue. The affiliate information is how these creators get paid. By removing these tags, Honey was directly interfering with their ability to earn money from their audience.

Though it is easy to argue that removing attribution almost always causes some economic harm, that harm is usually indirect. Here, it is very direct. It’s an unusual situation where one’s financial benefit is solely tied to attribution.

As such, even though Honey did nothing more than alter attribution, it created significant and direct economic harm to creators. Whether that is illegal or not is an open question. However, it may ultimately not matter at all.

The Crowd Has Spoken

The lawsuit is literally days old, so we don’t know what the courts will say. However, Honey has much more pressing issues. According to multiple reports, the extension has lost over 3 million users since Megalag’s video was posted.

While it’s unclear if users are uninstalling the extension due to its affiliate hijacking or how it allegedly misled consumers, the pushback is apparent. It also isn’t likely to stop at Honey. Competing coupon aggregation services are likely to feel the pressure, too.

Regardless of legality, there is a strong indication that this behavior is unethical. In an industry based on trust, that could be a crippling blow.

Ultimately, it’s going to be the entire affiliate marketing industry that needs to change.

Right now, most of the industry operates on the last-click attribution model. This means that whoever gets the last affiliate click is the one who receives the reward. So, if you read about a product on Site A, click through but don’t buy immediately, and then do the same on Site B, Site B gets 100% of the commission.

This model is why Honey and others can swoop in at the last second and claim the commission. Since they are run at the time of checkout, they are guaranteed to be the last click, even if that “click” is done without the user’s knowledge.

Other models are available and can reward affiliates who received clicks earlier in the buying process. While this won’t solve the last-minute affiliate injection problem, it ensures those creators are not wholly shut out.

Bottom Line

Though it will be interesting to see this case go to trial, the ongoing user pushback is likely the bigger and more immediate problem for Honey and its competitors. Though coupon aggregators have long been treated somewhat skeptically, their dubious behavior is now on full display.

However, the issue isn’t Honey but the entire affiliate marketing industry. Though there’s nothing inherently unethical about last-click attribution, it’s an easy system to exploit and abuse.

Determining who should receive credit for something is difficult, even when billions of dollars aren’t at stake. Last-click attribution may be simple to operate, but that simplicity is a weakness.

While I’m happy that Honey is being sued and that users are revolting, the industry needs to take a moment and reflect on how it enabled Honey for all these years. Finding ways to prevent bad actors from inserting themselves into the process should be a top priority.

Even if Honey shuts down, someone will try to take its place. As long as the system provides an obvious exploit, someone will try to take advantage of it.

The only solution is to fix the system. However, that’s much more difficult than filing a lawsuit or uninstalling an extension. Hopefully, this saga will motivate retailers to make this change.