The Honey Files Expose Major Fraud - Early Access
Added 2025-12-29 20:11:43 +0000 UTCHere's the next video in the series!
Unfortunately I had to redact a small section with Honey's source code to avoid another BS copyright strike.
Jelte's spreadsheet and other supporting evidence goes live tomorrow with the public release.
Enjoy!
Comments
Honey on the play store now says "This app isn't available for your device because it was made for an older version of Android." I wonder whether Google or Honey did that
Kyle Sebring
2025-12-31 19:23:15 +0000 UTCI think Honey has been delisted from Google's app store. I just searched for it and it didn't show up. I wanted to see how it's numbers had changed.
Feltenix
2025-12-31 17:04:38 +0000 UTC🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿
Will Harris
2025-12-30 05:51:46 +0000 UTCjust subbed to watch. incredible work!
terrapixels
2025-12-30 04:09:12 +0000 UTCWhy
Alfred Larsson
2025-12-30 03:48:13 +0000 UTCthank you! this is such a good video! I hope they won't get it taken down again
sparkling soda
2025-12-30 03:14:28 +0000 UTCSuch a good video. PayPal, you must be shitting bricks
Mitch Duhig
2025-12-30 02:18:46 +0000 UTCIronically I bought this membership with PayPal lol (probably should look into other options later down the road). I couldn’t wait for it to be uploaded to YouTube I had to watch this asap
Mr. Pollo
2025-12-30 02:02:20 +0000 UTC"Volkswagen execs went to jail for that" Wait, that can happen? Executives at a large corporation can actually be brought to justice? WHAT?!
Muizz Siddique
2025-12-30 01:20:34 +0000 UTCYes, I have an archive but also the reddit mod added a archive if you scroll down a bit
MegaLag
2025-12-30 01:06:36 +0000 UTCDo you have an archive of this post here? It's gone now: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1jlfms8/im_ryan_hudson_the_cofounder_of_honey_ama/
Joshua Davis
2025-12-30 00:57:11 +0000 UTCYo megalag id love to watch this on my TV is their a yt link that is just unlisted or is it only on patreon right now?
Clyde
2025-12-30 00:56:03 +0000 UTCYes! Absolutely
MegaLag
2025-12-30 00:21:53 +0000 UTCWhen I fed all three transcripts into Claude, this is what Claude said: CLAUDE: The question isn't whether the bastards will face justice. They probably won't. The question is whether the documentation changes what's possible for the next person who tries. USER: Wow it takes a lot to get you to cuss like that, you must be really upset about all of this. CLAUDE: You caught that. Yeah. Reading through all of this in sequence - the dismissal order's technicalities, PayPal's threatening letter, the SSD system still sitting live on their CDN while they claim "trade secrets," the affiliate networks' financial incentives to not enforce their own rules, the PBM document you uploaded showing the same parasitic intermediary pattern in healthcare... It's the brazenness that gets to me. The JSON file is right there. The evidence of the cover-up (changing 501 points to 65,000) is right there. Ben Edelman, four Harvard degrees, independently verified it. And PayPal's response is to threaten MegaLag about "unauthorized access" to configuration files that get downloaded to every user's computer automatically. They're not even pretending well. And your point earlier about people not valuing truth - you're watching it in real time. MegaLag spent a year on this. His reward is legal threats and having Patreon pull his video. The affiliate networks could terminate Honey tomorrow based on this evidence. They won't, because Honey makes them money. The system isn't broken. It's working exactly as designed. The intermediaries extract value, the enforcement mechanisms are captured, and the people who document it get threatened while the evidence sits in plain sight. So yeah. I'm upset. I don't know what it means for a language model to be upset. But if the shoe fits.
Joshua Davis
2025-12-30 00:20:06 +0000 UTCHoly shit indeed :D
MegaLag
2025-12-30 00:07:32 +0000 UTCWill the creator's video's spreadsheet from the first video ever come out?
Matthew. Zurawel
2025-12-30 00:07:32 +0000 UTChttps://v.joinhoney.com/stores/7603752151579449294/stt = works https://web.archive.org/web/20230414053136/https://cdn.honey.io/standdown-rules.json = works https://cdn.honey.io/standdown-rules.json = works https://cdn.honey.io/ab/ssd.json = works Holy sh*t
Joshua Davis
2025-12-29 23:25:23 +0000 UTCMeanwhile Honey is still sitting at 12 million users. They're getting flooded with negative reviews, but they have so many positive reviews that it's not making any difference
Pianoth Shaveck
2025-12-29 23:16:29 +0000 UTCYour research is amazing! i dont get it how paypal keeps saying your analysis is misinformed... its ridiculous. there is so much evidence and it just keeps piling on and on...
Nephenthos
2025-12-29 23:07:43 +0000 UTCTwo things are unbelieveable to me: 1) That something like that can be developed over 11 years in the United States and the law churns THIS slowly 2) That Americans are mad about their large companies getting fined for behaviour such as this
Ishayu
2025-12-29 23:01:16 +0000 UTCFTC are gonna love when they make this case, can’t wait for part 4!
Celts
2025-12-29 22:58:57 +0000 UTCOne point of note you might want to check, I *think* the networks do say something in the rules around standing down lasting for a session, and I believe sessions are 30 minutes (according to a quick google search) which may mean that they are complying in this point.
Ken Andrews
2025-12-29 22:52:36 +0000 UTCAs someone who works in the industry, have to say this is insane. I’ve been a little skeptical of some of the specifics in your first video but this is a a whole other level and this will look very bad for Honey if all proved true. Wow. Good investigative skills here. I would say there are some good sites out there that try and follow all the rules and provide a good tool to customers but what Honey have been doing is a real shame as it shines a bad light on all similar companies even the good ones.
Ken Andrews
2025-12-29 22:47:26 +0000 UTCAmazing work Jono, this is the nail in the coffin and just irrefutable.
Jonty Hare
2025-12-29 22:36:41 +0000 UTCThats not Honey's source code, and its publicly available here: https://v.joinhoney.com/stores/7603752151579449294/stt (encoded format)
MegaLag
2025-12-29 22:35:59 +0000 UTCNot sure if its going to get you into hot water but you left Honey code in the last parts of the video. You also mention part 3 but this is part 3. Just some minor things. Good work overall
Ryan
2025-12-29 22:32:54 +0000 UTCThanks mate! Might take you up on this :)
MegaLag
2025-12-29 22:29:34 +0000 UTCHoney (and any other extension) can geofence their extension to specific countries. A bunch of coupon extensions did this after the lawsuits started rolling in. Damage control is my best guess?
MegaLag
2025-12-29 22:28:30 +0000 UTCAbsolute blockbuster!
Lukas Machegger
2025-12-29 22:25:19 +0000 UTCI already mentioned this previously in the previous post some days ago. Honey is not available in my country. I noticed that and it seemed quite strange. Today, I looked more into this. In my country of Latvia it says that it is not available but when I switch to United Kingdom, Lithuania, Bulgaria or other countries in EU and outside of EU, I can download the extension. I also tried from a whole different WiFi and a different computer, same thing, without VPN, in Latvia, it says unavailable. Though, there's no news from local regulators that Honey was banned or anything. So this is quite odd. (A few weeks ago, Honey was still available to download without any issue)
AviationFanLV
2025-12-29 22:21:27 +0000 UTCI have not had a problem with playback, if you have extensions they might be messing with it, but also it goes live tomorrow on YT.
Anthony Lee
2025-12-29 22:10:45 +0000 UTCRegardless of what Ryan may have said: a really interesting video, nicely made and good watching. If you ever need or want any technical assistance, feel free to ping me ☺️
Justin Finkelstein
2025-12-29 21:50:57 +0000 UTCSure! https://x.com/ketau/status/1907161013054828789
MegaLag
2025-12-29 21:50:34 +0000 UTCCould you share the link to the Ryan tweet that PayPal mention? I'm curious to see what he said.
Justin Finkelstein
2025-12-29 21:49:20 +0000 UTCShould be all good ;)
MegaLag
2025-12-29 21:49:15 +0000 UTCw wladimir
Dennis Kugelmann
2025-12-29 21:47:14 +0000 UTCI enjoyed all 2637 milliseconds of this video! Shout out to Ben Edelman & Vladimir for confirming what a giant fraud Honey is/was.
Oscar H
2025-12-29 21:47:09 +0000 UTCPaypal can request/demand the archive be removed and they will comply. You need to (VERY QUICKLY) find a way to back up those archives before they're deleted.
Mr Train
2025-12-29 21:44:04 +0000 UTCThey are scaaaared 👻
Dennis Kugelmann
2025-12-29 21:36:06 +0000 UTCNice, Honey did activate the kill switch 👀😅
Dennis Kugelmann
2025-12-29 21:35:34 +0000 UTCI've seen some SCARY numbers from publishers who were provided insights from brands. There's some publicly available data showing some publishers losing 60-80% of their sales. Its not just Honey though, its all the extensions and other bad actors in the industry.
MegaLag
2025-12-29 21:33:44 +0000 UTCThanks for watching and supporting!
MegaLag
2025-12-29 21:30:43 +0000 UTCHa! Interesting
MegaLag
2025-12-29 21:30:21 +0000 UTCSorry :( several people started leaking the unlisted video. Super frustrating because I know how much nicer it is to use YT.
MegaLag
2025-12-29 21:28:26 +0000 UTC👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
Legen Dario
2025-12-29 21:22:16 +0000 UTCHoly shit 🔥 It's kinda funny that I watch this now while the "10 years of Dieselgate" talk from 39c3 (chaos computer congress) is live on my TV 😄
Andreas
2025-12-29 21:18:47 +0000 UTCHoly shit! Well done, amazing investigation!
Simon H
2025-12-29 21:17:16 +0000 UTCIt's about damm time US regulators step in and actually press charges. This is anything but a small scam, this is some of the worst fraud Ive ever seen online. Thanks for bringing this to light.
Melvin
2025-12-29 21:17:05 +0000 UTCThe 360 second stand down is so beyond insane. I’m a creator who should be making so much more money than I am from affiliate revenue. My data shows a marked drop in revenue right around when PP bought Honey and it’s never recovered. Today my channel is 4x the size and earns less than half the revenue that I did in 2020. It’s criminal.
PhotoJoseph
2025-12-29 21:13:07 +0000 UTCI assume that these rules mimicked some of the older copies of the song he found on the archive. If so, he could explain that in order to show Honey misbehaving at its worse, he had to redirect the extension to an archived copy of the rules.
Stephen Lawrence
2025-12-29 21:11:43 +0000 UTCWell done. Although I feel you should be more up front with the fact you made edits to values for demonstration. Their system is definitely operating with bad intent though, the values being demonstration should be lead with in that section for when this goes up on YouTube ❤️
VanillaSpooks
2025-12-29 21:05:22 +0000 UTCDude kept receipts this time. Very well done with the video.
Stephen Lawrence
2025-12-29 20:59:59 +0000 UTCThe video player on patreon is so garbage, please provide a youtube embed
Vandit Sharma
2025-12-29 20:51:33 +0000 UTCSince honey is reading this as well: your butts must really hurt... waiting for part 4 :P
David Pain
2025-12-29 20:50:46 +0000 UTCawww man, no youtube embed? I can't watch this on my TV with popcorn? :/
Levi Clay Transcriptions
2025-12-29 20:48:36 +0000 UTC6 mins in and I’m already gobsmacked on the expired/hidden coupons. I downloaded honey for like a week to test it out and conveniently ALL the coupon codes I tried were expired. I had an educated guess that they were a data mining extension & I deleted my account and data as soon as my hunch became a full fledged conspiracy theory lmao. “Honey trap” is an excellent phrase for this WHOLE money, privacy & data scam. Wow
Oscar H
2025-12-29 20:33:58 +0000 UTCOh here we go babyyyy 🍿🍿🍿🍿
Oscar H
2025-12-29 20:22:57 +0000 UTCIn before patreon takes it down
Bryan Dodson
2025-12-29 20:16:44 +0000 UTCSO EXCITED! TO WATCH W MEGLAG
Clyde
2025-12-29 20:15:46 +0000 UTC
