if you have the Honey browser extension installed, uninstall it immediately. big big story broke on youtube today strongly indicating that Honey has been massively defrauding basically everyone who does any business with them at every level, including influencers, customers, and actual retailers.

the short version of ONE of the alleged crimes is that they've been hijacking referral links and codes. if you have honey installed on your browser at all, and you use any referral code from anyone, there is a high probability honey will swap out the referral link identifier for their own even if they don't provide a coupon at checkout.

they also are just lying to you, and hiding coupons that very much exist. they're completely fraudulent

paypal bought honey in 2019 for 4 billion, so paypal has been strip mining the influencer economy for 5 years now. the amount of money that's been essentially stolen is unfathomable

from op in the comments because I didn't quite understand the explanation above:

let's say you watch a youtuber who is an artist who makes tutorials. she says "you can use my code MARTHA at ArtStore.com to get $10 off your order". if you click the link in her youtube video, it opens ArtStore.com/ref=MARTHA in a new tab so ArtStore.com can track where the click came from and pay Martha for the business she sent them. but if you have honey installed in your browser they will change that link to ArtStore.com/ref=HONEY and steal the sale from Martha even though Martha is not a Honey affiliate. it's diabolical

If you don't care about this, just know they are also lying to you about discounts too.

They make deals with retailers to give you lower discounts codes so retailers would lose less money.

So many people live in such fear of being called a bigot they literally refuse to have opinions or state harsh truths even if it’s at the expense of peoples lives. Some claims of bigotry are not true and will be used as a deflection it’s not the end of the world if someone wields this against you if you genuinely believe it not to be true you can say that. Put your big boy pants on and stop living in terror of having a Yourfaveisproblematic wiki page because you denounced genocide

Black Israelites (for anybody who is stupid im not referring to black Israelis im referring to the extremist ideology of black Hebrew Israelites) will call you racist if you denounce them, hindutvas will call you racist if you denounce them, zionists will call you antisemitic if you denounce them, terfs will call you misogynistic if you denounce them, so on and so on and so on. This is a level 1 tactic to protect the interests of fascism and make it impossible for other people to even speak on it. Dont fall for it

You can discover your favourite band when you’re in your late twenties. You can meet your best friend when you’re in your thirties. You can finally accomplish a life goal when you’re in your fifties. Your youth isn’t the only time frame where amazing, life-changing things can happen.

Allow yourself occasional lapses without giving up entirely. Perfection isn't the goal; continuity is.

It never fails to amuse me when I get “hello influencer” emails wanting me to push questionable products to my followers.

Like worstie, I can barely promote my own published book without wanting to curl up and die.

The fuck makes you think I’ll shill your discount wish shit?

Also, it's Tumblr. If I try to tell anyone about your knock-off Wish-quality sex toy there’s going to be a horde of Autistic lesbians doing a power point presentation in the notes about safe sex toy material and correct battery storage.

Which I am 100% down for, but it will not get you any sales.

I was trying to figure out if you were someone important on a other platform, because there's no way in hell anyone actually thinks you can be classified as "Influencer" if you have a big Tumblr blog.

And then also think advertising to this mob would be a good idea

There are actually lots of people who sell stuff successfully on here, usually drop ship stuff.

They’re just not disclosing it as ads, which they are supposed to do, and instead it's marketed in a very Tumblr-esque way which can be summed up as “omg guys look how CUTE this is” followed by a different account underneath going “omg found it!!” and it links to a drop ship site with the item(s).

And the link usually has an affiliate tracker in it, which you may or may not be able to spot unless you’re familiar with them, which is also something you are legally supposed to disclose.

I used to get a lot of offers from around 2016-2020 to sell “moon lamps” on here, y’know those orb lights that look like a moon? Yeah. I was offered a higher kickback to make it look like I wasnt posting an add because these sellers know Tumblrites don’t like ads.

They wanted it to look as organic and hyped up as possible and then I’d just so happen to be like “omg you guys it's on sale” and post a link. Which is skeevy as shit and also illegal af in the US.

It’s like the insta/tiktok girlies saying “link in bio” to get around saying “here’s a product I make money on if you buy it” because they want to sound like your friend because people are more likely to impulse buy stuff if a “friend” is recommending something.

They’re also trusting that everyone knows “link in bio” means “affiliate link” which is technically not enough of a disclosure but whatever.

This is why I tag all my own book promos with “affiliate links” because depending on which storefront you buy Hunger Pangs from, I may get a kickback from the vender which I do to help mediate the fees I lose from distribution. It’s not much—literal pennies in some cases—but I’m still legally required to state it.

It’s also why when I do post products I use or like, I make a point of letting people know I’m not an affiliate and not sponsored because despite the legal ramifications these people are flirting with by not disclosing their affiliate status, I want to be fully transparent with my followers when it comes to me trying to sell them things.

Y’all keep my lights on by reading my work and through my ko-fi and patreon. I am not about to risk that trust for the sake of some shitty vibrator sales from a sketch-ass drop shipper who wants me to pretend I’m not selling you things.

So, yeah. People do successfully sell stuff on here. A lot of us small indie creators sell our own work all the time.

But there are also drop-ship sellers on here who get enough of a kick-back from affiliate links to make selling cutesy kitsch stuff worth their time on here. They’re just making sure you don’t know you’re being marketed to.

those product posts thinly disguised as "omfg look at this cool thing!/I found it online!" seem to come in waves and once you've noticed the pattern they're just annoying - unless they're marine biology/dinosaur plushies of course in which case it's just an opportunity to gawp

The most recent one I can think of is that jellyfish light. That's 100% an ad, just hidden in tumblr-speak.

I find I can generally tell when it's an ad posted by a corp/dropshipper vs someone extremely passionate selling something they made and love, but there's a lot of the former floating around

God, thank you for saying something. I seriously considered making this same post back in July when I started noticing more and more posts of this kind with thousands of notes. Some of them were getting pushed onto my dashboard from a few of the most popular tags I track (like "artists on tumblr") but a few were getting shared by actual people who I follow (omg these ethereal dragon hair clips are perfect for cosplays... 😒)

(Screenshots I took at the time - this particular blog has been thoroughly scrubbed from existence in the meantime.)

There is an extensive interconnected network of blogs with URLs like haha-lol-cute-funny, daily-meme-inspiration, omg-wow-tiktoks, etc. that bulk post vast quantities of stolen memes with broad appeal, spam them in a million popular tags, and then reblog them back and forth from each other. Once any given meme takes off, the OP is edited and the meme replaced with one of these stealth ads. Then, because of the inflated note count, the ad version of the post will get pushed to the dashboards of anyone tracking those tags.

If you go into the notes of any of these, half the reblogs will still be of the original meme. Here's an example: Original meme / the ad it turned into.

(The OP of this one has already been taken down - screenshots because the images in this post are also liable to get scrubbed.)

The note count has the added benefit of making it look like thousands of real people are excited about the item in the post, and, for better or worse, people are strongly motivated by things they think others in their community are doing.

I see all the linked posts have already been deleted lmao.

lol they’re deleting things so fast tonight.

They really don’t like being called out.

I've always disliked mr beast just based on his content mill vaguely exploitative vibes so it's been kind of wild learning he also does legitimate crimes and workplace violations. it's like disliking an acquaintance because they're kinda annoying and then finding out they kill people too like damn dude you didn't have to do all that i already hated your ass.

yah like im perfectly content with disliking people for no other reason than that they annoy me, i genuinely do not require those i dislike to actually be bad people. i would prefer to just dislike regular folks who have a normal human amount of failings and mistakes.

and then there's THIS guy who in addition to being somewhat dislikeable has also done a startling amount of horrible crimes?

it's disconcerting.

Reading articles about MrBeast's dominance of YouTube is fucking bizarre because, from my perspective, the dude isn't even on YouTube. I've never watched one of his videos. YouTube has, to the best of my knowledge, never recommended one of his videos to me. Every thumbnail screenshot of his looks like something you could tell me was a photoshopped parody of YouTube culture, and I'd believe you. No one I follow on YouTube ever mentions him, even negatively or in passing. The first time I ever heard his name was in regards to the quality of his ghost kitchens. The only way I know he isn't a mass, shared hallucination is that I've witnessed the thoroughly mid-looking chocolate bars he sells at Walmart for some reason

Given the apparent eleventeen ongoing scandals it feels appropriate to bring this one back

this part of stevie nicks’ interview with rolling stone is taking me out