LinusTechTips discussed MegaLag’s Honey exposé at length on the WAN show, his weekly live broadcast, and pushed back on the idea that he concealed why LTT cut ties with the company.
MegaLag’s video claims that Honey purposely altered affiliate links and curated deals they made behind closed doors with business partners, in effect taking money out of creators’ pockets and lining their own while giving the end user a worse deal at the same time.
These allegations have yet to be addressed by Honey, and it’s worth noting the company hasn’t been investigated by the authorities at the time of writing. Currently, these are just accusations from MegaLag. Or, at least partially from him.
According to Linus, the company allegedly swapping out affiliate links to their own was something he and many other creators knew at the time, and was the main reason why LTT severed their partnership.
Though Linus commended MegaLag’s research and applauded him for putting together a video on the topic, he vehemently pushed back against the notion that he was purposely hiding this information from the public.
LinusTechTips tells his side of the Honey story
Linus’ defense began with him stating and showing that there were some videos released years ago claiming Honey was a scam, and that the idea he was the only one who knew is false.
“MegaLag did reach out to us for comment, and my general position on it was, ‘Yeah, we dropped these guys three years ago, this all came out – all the affiliate ripping stuff, everything we know about – came out years ago. Very interested to see the video and all the other stuff, I don’t really know what exactly it has to do with us.’ I’m a little confused still at what it has to do with us.”
Linus explained that he set up a call with Honey’s team, claiming that he ended his sponsorship with the company after they, by his account, refused to stop ripping affiliate codes.
“If we’d known about any of the more end-user centric issues discussed in MegaLag’s video, such as purposely not giving users the best deal possible because of behind-the-scenes partnerships with companies, we very probably would have raised more alarm bells,” Linus explained.
“We have no reason at that time to believe Honey was anything other than what it claimed to be, which was a coupon finding service that took an affiliate cut.”
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He followed this by pushing back on the characterization that he knew and purposely didn’t tell anyone, with co-host Luke elaborating by saying they were publicly tipped off on the topic of Honey’s practices and chose to act on it.
“I don’t know what people are expecting us to say about it other than, yeah, we heard about it in the news, same as apparently everyone else given how many folks stopped working with them in the 2020-2021 time frame, so… yeah.”
One of Linus’ chatters argued that Linus was the biggest creator backing Honey, to which Linus fired back that MrBeast’s 300 million subscriber channel also worked with Honey in the past and called that chatter a “f**king idiot”. Linus also said that he doesn’t understand why the emphasis was placed so heavily on them instead of other creators.
"I am a victim here."LinusTechTips addressed MegaLag's accusations from his Honey video, saying he found it "bizarre" he was called out so directly pic.twitter.com/tfCg4CPd5f
— Dexerto (@Dexerto) December 28, 2024
“This situation’s bizarre, dude. I am a victim here. I don’t know if people noticed that. As a creator for whom affiliate revenue from Amazon was, in 2020, 7% of our business team’s revenue, like… This had a significant impact on our business,” Linus claimed.
“Absolutely it would have impacted other creators, too. And they are victims in this. But it doesn’t change that anyone who relied on affiliate revenue and had it skimmed by Honey was victimized by Honey.”
Co-host Luke remarked that the Honey scandal “wasn’t their story to break,” bearing in mind that LTT didn’t know about how it affected users, only them.
MegaLag has yet to respond to Linus’ push back on the way he was portrayed in the video.
This drama follows LinusTechTips getting called out by YouTuber Gamer’s Nexus in 2023, something that sparked massive change in the company including an internal investigation and Linus himself stepping down as CEO to try and improve operations within LTT.
