@honey

PayPal acquired Honey in early 2020 to gain a foothold in the pre-checkout shopping experience, reaching consumers while they were still browsing rather than only at the moment of payment. At the time of the deal, Honey had tens of millions of active users, making it one of the largest consumer-facing shopping tools on the internet.

PayPal fully owns Honey — it was acquired outright, not structured as a partnership. The @honey Instagram account uses the #PayPalAffiliate hashtag to comply with affiliate marketing disclosure requirements on posts that drive purchases, not because it operates as a separate third-party affiliate.

In late 2024, a widely shared video alleged that Honey's browser extension was overriding creators' affiliate cookies at the final moment of checkout, replacing their referral attribution with Honey's own and effectively diverting commission income. The allegations sparked significant backlash from the creator community and renewed scrutiny of how browser-extension tools interact with affiliate marketing.

Following the 2024 affiliate-override controversy, many creators publicly ended their Honey sponsorships, arguing the extension's alleged behavior was directly undercutting their own affiliate income streams. Honey had previously been one of the most prolific YouTube sponsors, appearing across gaming, tech, and lifestyle channels for several years.

Creator MegaLag published a detailed exposé in late 2024 claiming that Honey's extension was intercepting affiliate links at checkout and substituting its own attribution, meaning creators who had spent years promoting Honey were inadvertently losing affiliate commissions from their own audiences. The video went viral and is widely credited with triggering the mass creator exodus from Honey sponsorships.

Part of the 2024 controversy centered on claims that Honey did not always surface the highest-value discount codes available, instead favoring codes tied to its own merchant agreements. Prior to the backlash, the extension had been marketed — including through sponsored creator content — as a tool that guaranteed shoppers the best available deal at checkout.

Yes, Honey was one of the most common sponsorships in YouTube history, appearing in videos from creators including MrBeast, Linus Tech Tips, and hundreds of mid-to-large channels across nearly every content category. The breadth of that creator network made the 2024 allegations particularly resonant, since many of those same creators were among those reportedly losing affiliate revenue to the extension.

The @honey Instagram account has not posted in roughly two years as of mid-2026, making it essentially dormant. Its last activity consisted of giveaway winner announcements and deal highlights using hashtags like #sweepstakes and #giveaway, with support inquiries directed to the joinhoney.com help page.

The @honey Instagram account focused entirely on promotional content — primarily giveaway campaigns that announced winners by tagging their handles and teased upcoming sweepstakes, alongside occasional product deal highlights. There was no original lifestyle or editorial content; the account functioned as a brand channel for consumer acquisition and engagement.

Honey earns revenue through affiliate commission arrangements with retailers — when a user activates the extension and completes a purchase, Honey can receive a percentage of that sale value. This business model is precisely what drew intense scrutiny in 2024, when creators alleged Honey was displacing their own affiliate referrals at checkout in order to claim those commissions instead.