YouTube laywer LegalEagle is suing Honey & wants to take the company down

The Legal Eagle, a YouTuber with over three million subscribers who doubles as an actual attorney at law, has filed a class-action lawsuit against Honey, with the goal of getting creators back the money they allegedly stole through affiliate link fishing.

YouTuber MegaLag made an exposé about the company on December 22, 2024, accusing them of stealing from both consumers and creators in a few ways.

He alleged that they not only replaced creators’ affiliate codes with their own to pocket the money from affiliate sales, but that they also partnered with companies to control which coupons were presented to users, going against their advertisement of getting people the best deal.

This also has the side effect of overwriting affiliate links doled out by sponsors other than Honey, with the app replacing those affiliate links as well if what MegaLag and LegalEagle allege is true. If Honey gets the affiliate link rather than the creator who gets paid based on how many of their viewers click that link, then the creator doesn’t get paid even if they went through the effort of driving their audience toward a product.

LegalEagle believes that this is disastrous for creators, and he was so compelled by MegaLag’s video that he and several other attorneys have organized a class-action lawsuit to fight back against Honey and sue for damages.

LegalEagle alleges Honey stole untold billions of dollars

LegalEagle claimed that he’s “putting his money where his mouth is” in starting a class-action suit against the PayPal-owned company, calling their business practice “insidious” and claiming that they may have stolen literal billions of dollars from creators.

“Think about how insidious this all was. Honey spent tens of millions of dollars, maybe even hundreds of millions of dollars, sponsoring some of the most beloved and successful creators on the planet. Honey allegedly seeded those audiences with their extension. And that extension probably stayed on their audience’s browsers like a sleeping leech, waiting for the viewer to conduct a transaction,” he explained.

“Forever after, the creator’s future sponsorships and future affiliate relationships and advertisements were devalued now that the creator’s audience was infected. The exact people who would be most likely to listen to the recommendations of that creator – which, by the way, is the reason that it’s so important to vet their sponsors and make sure they believe in the products – were now likely to be sniped.”

LegalEagle filed a class-action lawsuit to give creators and businesses that feel as if they’ve been wronged by Honey the ability to sue the company, with the goal of giving everyone back the money that was allegedly stolen. He expressed that he wants to make sure Honey and other coupon affiliation apps don’t do this to consumers in the future.

“I’m honestly surprised that extensions like Honey, Karma, Capital One Shopping, and Pie are even allowed on the Apple App Store or Google extension marketplace. So I say enough is enough. It’s time to put my money where my mouth is,” he asserted.

“So I, along with some other great attorneys, filed a suit on behalf of all creators and businesses who have been harmed by Honey PayPal. Because there are so many people, we filed a class-action lawsuit, seeking damages in the form of the money that we believe Honey prevented from reaching creators so we can give it back to creators.

“Equally important, we’re suing for an injunction to stop Honey’s practices in the future.”

He ended with an open offer to go to honeylawsuit.com, a site that gives people who want to participate in the class-action suit a place to go and become a part of it.

So, what does the lawsuit actually entail? And what exactly are they suing for?

Legal Eagle’s Honey lawsuit explained

The opening section of the class-action suit titled Wendover Productions, LLC v. PayPal Inc has the header, “How Big Tech Ruined Affiliate Links”, and is in line with the criticisms LegalEagle had for Honey and other coupon apps that work with affiliate linking.

For those unfamiliar with the term, a class-action lawsuit refers to a suit filed in a way that permits one or more plaintiffs to file and prosecute against a defendant. Joining in on the suit makes you part of the class, thus making it class-action.

Here’s the way in which Honey’s process of allegedly stealing from creators and businesses works as quoted from the suit.

• PayPal offers Honey to online shoppers as a free browser extension that purports to save shoppers money. These representations have attracted over 17 million users (on the Google Chrome browser alone) who use the Honey browser extension to find deals online.
• Online marketers, such as YouTubers and online influencers, direct their followers and viewers to specific products and services and earn commissions and other benefits when their audience members purchase the products and services they are promoting.
• Online merchants work with these online marketers through affiliate marketing programs (“Affiliate Programs”), which rely on attribution tracking through Affiliate Links (which create unique HTML tracking tags or cookies) to determine who gets credit for online referrals and product sales.
• The online marketer provides Affiliate Links to their audience and, if someone clicks on that link or uses that code immediately prior to making a purchase, the online marketer receives affiliate attribution credit for the sale.
• The industry refers to this practice as “last click attribution.”
• This case involves a scheme by Defendant to unlawfully steal the attribution for online sales from Plaintiffs by using Honey to intentionally supplant Plaintiffs’ affiliate attribution and replace it with their own, thereby taking all benefits that would have otherwise gone to the Plaintiffs.
• The online marketers whose benefits were redirected, which include Plaintiffs and the Proposed Class as described below, are entitled to damages for Defendants’ predatory and unfair conduct.
• Plaintiffs and the Proposed Class are also entitled to injunctive relief as deemed appropriate by the Court
• Because Defendant, via Honey, has standardized practices and procedures to which all online marketers are subject or affected by, the appropriate vehicle for recovery is a class action lawsuit.

This is just a small slice of the 23-page class-action suit, one that will likely grow in size as creators apply to become a part of it.