Investigation: GamersNexus Files New Lawsuit Against PayPal & Honey

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LegalEagle and Wendover Productions actually beat them to the punch Nebula on this. They filed on 29th December 2024, a whole 4 days earlier.
And since the US courts charge money to get these documents, I downloaded a copy of the complaint earlier on my PACER account so anyone who's interested can read it without incurring the stupid fees. Enjoy
Edit: Devin Stone (the host of LegalEagle) is actually a lawyer on this case. His name and his law firm are listed as a lawyer for the plaintiff on the complaint.
- In GN's video the law firm mentioned there are 3-4 cases already and they are probably getting combined or go to the same judge. (IANAL; IDK the specifics)
  
  Precisely.
  Tthey said that they started work on it and by the time they submitted it, they found out that others had already done the same (of course they wouldn't have known this when they started the legwork), but that ultimately that doesn't matter because if it goes class-action – which is their desired path of action – the cases will be combined anyway.
  If anything it's beneficial that multiple people took this up, it should make class-action more likely.
- Jesus, spelling mistake in the first sentence of the complaint. Fire the legal aide.
  
  What's the spelling mistake? I didn't see it.

At this rate Steve is going to end up offed or cancelled in some kind of way, he keeps digging deeper.
- They are running a drama/scandal focussed channel. Of course they are going to be controversial at times.
  
  investigative journalism is drama now 👍
  
  Not really. Reviews and weekly news are still their bread and butter. They do a few of these deep dive investigations per year.
  And they do very detailed reviews.
  
  Your being downvoted because they cannot handle the truth.

If you haven't seen it yet, check out this investigation on Honey (20 minutes, Part 1):
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vc4yL3YTwWk
It's fascinating stuff. Open fraud.
I can't speak for formal legal matters (I am assuming such scams are nominally legal in the US), but it goes to show that senior PayPal executives are basically criminals. There is no way they didn't know about this.
- I mean, Paypal is a bank that isn't beholden to all the normal bank regulations and customer protection rules due to technicalities. They have been caught effectively seizing customer funds through locking accounts for questionable reasons before, and offer no reasonable way of recovering funds from locked accounts. Numerous stories of people operating online etsy (and similar) storefronts getting accounts locked for vague claims they were actively money laundering, with no means for appeal.
  Anyone just now becoming aware of the paypal execs' corruption hasn't been paying attention.
  
  There's a reason that a set of grifters who ran the place is nicknamed "The Paypal Mafia".

LTT fans are in complete meltdown over big mean steve pointing out that Linus seemingly discovered this and stayed completely quiet about it.
Linus seems to had a big hissy fit about the whole subject of Honey on his WAN show, too.
- WAN show is like 33% Linus whining about any actual or perceived slight against him for like over a year now. It's getting so annoying.
  I tend to agree that they should have spoken up. Even if just for the damn clicks and views.
  
  If you're no longer doing business with them, why not be vocal about why? If there's a legitimate reason, it tells other partners where your line is so they know whether you're a good fit for them. Don't bad mouth them, but explain the facts and encourage viewers and other YouTubers to avoid them for the stated reasons.
  I honestly don't see what's wrong with that. Steve from GN has done much worse and still gets sponsors, so it really can't be that.
- Linus posted about it on the forum, and everything he said on the WAN show is correct if you actually watch the full clip instead of what GN edited it to say
  
  While I think Linus can be way too whiny at times. I think he handled the situation well if everything stated is true. He made it clear on his forum that they terminated the partnership/sponsorship. He could have made a 'more public statement (e.g., a video on ltt)' but as he stated, viewers probably would have raked him over the coals for doing so. It likely would have been perceived as 'oh no! Honey stole money from me but gave you a discount. Woe is me.'
  He still is too whiny as of the last few years but as a small business (very small; ~20 employees) owner myself, I kind of get it. I go out of my way to try to give my employees the best possible experience but sometimes people think I'm just taking advantage of them (despite me paying my full-time employees 1.5x my pre-tax take home rate). So I kind of get why he acts that way at times. Now, I don't condone it, but I understand.
  Edit I love what Steve from GN is doing. I reported the honey extension when this news initially came out. I have supported all his pro consumer reports/actions.
- Your comment is just objectively wrong.

I am genuinely concerned about this because Legal Eagle’s suit is directly tied to manipulating URLs and cookies. The suit, even with its focus on last click attribution, doesn’t make an incredibly specific argument. If Legal Eagle wins, this sets a very dangerous precedent for ad blockers being illegal because ad blockers directly manipulate cookies and URLs. I haven’t read the Gamer’s Nexus one yet.
Please note that I’m not trying to defend Honey at all. They’re actively misleading folks.
- That's like saying bank robberies being illegal mean that going to the bank is illegal.
  Honey is unlawful because of what they DO by changing those URLs and cookies, e.g enriching themselves at the expense of creators.
  
  Your analogy doesn’t work at all.
  If one of the core harms is the removal of income and tracking, ad blockers fall into this category. Ad blockers very explicitly remove these things. The harm is not “Honey stole my income” it’s “Honey removed my tracking and Honey added their tracking.” Read the Legal Eagle case.
- It could never apply to ad blockers. You install an ad blocker knowing that it will block stuff... and explicitly WANTING it to do so.
  Nobody installed honey knowing that it was manipulating cookies and stuff. The normal layperson who installs it will just think "It's just chucking in coupon codes into that box!"...
  One is predicated on a lie of omission... the other is literally what the user wants. There's a huge difference...
  
  It could never apply to ad blockers.
  I mean it certainly could if it was deemed so broad as "Honey was manipulating affiliate links", but I don't think it would.
  
  You’re looking at it from an end user perspective. “I want it to do this, so it’s ok” for an ad blocker, but “I didn’t know it was doing this so it’s bad” for Honey.
  But the LE/GN cases are that Honey changed URLs and cost them the sale revenue, no? That’s not the end user experience. Seems like that could easily be pivoted to a website who claims lost revenue was stolen from them because ad blockers are manipulating their site/URLs, end users’ desires be damned.
  
  Because the courts in America have proven how much they care about rule of law and procedure when it comes to rich offenders lately..
- But adblockers don't enable unlawful enrichment. Or do they?
  
  Only paid ones. Theoretically could impact Brave, for instance.
- I understand why you would think that, but this is not the case. Not a lawyer though, not legal advice.
  There are 2 main types of causes of action for this, let's go over them:
  Conversion, unjust enrichment: Here, Legal eagle and other creators allege Honey took money that was supposed to go to them. Basically just theft. This does not apply to adblock, since they don't take the money.
  Tortious interference: Here they claim, that by removing the tracking cookie, they unlawfully interfere with the business relationship between the affiliates and the shopping platform. This could maybe apply to ad-blockers, but it is almost certainly superseded by the user explicitly wanting to remove tracking cookies, and the user has the right to do so. Saying that it is unlawful interference is like saying a builder hired by a land owner to build a fence is interfering with truckers who were using the land as a shortcut. They had no legal right to pass through the land in the first place. So the owner can commission a fence and a builder can build it. A contract between the truckers and amazon would not matter. In case of honey, it is like the builder was not hired by the owner and just built the fence to spite the truckers without owners permission.
- I think it'll be okay, Honey was actually making money from the manipulation without user knowlage.
  Adblocks don't make money and users are (should be) aware that tracking links and stuff gets removed.
- IIRC Legal Eagle is suing on the side of retailers that have been harmed by the plugin, while this one is more on the side of consumers. They still might end up combined.
- There is no reason why the complaint can’t be specific to modifying just attribution and commission cookies. And ad blockers mostly work by blackholing DNS request to ad servers and manually editing DOM and removing elements that load content from known ad services. If an ad blocking extension modifies cookies it’s typically just blocking them entirely (something every browser has built in) not editing them.
  
  I use uBlock Origin to remove tracking. I also manually remove tracking. Privacy Badger is a tool that works to explicitly do this kind of tidying.

Tech Jesus strikes again!
Prepare for his cumming

Shit’s getting real in Honey’s legal department.

In a short 10-15 years we will see a resolution to this case and be able to have closure. A blink of a eye.

Netscape is suing PayPal?

I read that as “law slut”
- 18 U.S. Code § 351 always gets me going

Meh. I don't care about youtube personalities losing money when they all collectively contributed to lowering our standards and making us accept a 'new normal' of ads in videos.
spits
Make sure you download the SponsorBlock browser addon. It automatically skips over sponsored ads in the middle of youtube videos.
Edit: Good job sticking up for people who only see you as dollar signs. Can't say I expected more.
- SponsorBlock generaly sucks, I can do it manually
  
  No it doesn't.
  
  It usually works great for me (and when it doesn't - I help), but it obviously doesn't work on downloads so I still have to skip some ads manually.

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