Influencers and responsibility for the crimes, sins and misdemeanours of their sponsors

In My Humble Opinion
1

Last few weeks there has been the latest in a long series of scandals where yet another sponsor of creators on video platforms has turned out to be doing something really scammy.

This time, it’s PayPal’s Honey app/browser extension; stealing affiliate referral revenue and outright lying to customers about getting them ‘the best deal’ (indeed, making sure they don’t). Details in this video:

So the question is: What responsibility do, or should, online creators/influencers bear for having promoted a thing that turns out to be a scam or is otherwise doing bad things?

With the benefit of hindsight, it’s easy to argue that, since the affiliate referral theft thing is relatively easy to observe, due diligence should have been done to check for this before anyone just promoted Honey, in exchange for sponsorship money.

On the other hand, Honey has 17 million users, and this problem went on for years, undetected by any of them, so is it reasonable to argue that anyone’s due diligence could have spotted it? (It’s easy to observe once someone has told you about it and you know where to look for it, otherwise, not so much).

On the other-other hand, this keep on happening :-
Honey is stealing affiliate juice and lying about the quality of their service.
BetterHelp lied about the credentials of their ‘therapists’ (and sold clients’ personal information without consent).
Established Titles gave influencers a script that made false legal claims.
Kamikoto knives was a scam by the same people as Established Titles.
Various VPN suppliers gave influencers a script that made false claims about cyber risks.
FTX was a Ponzi scheme.
Insta360 told influencers to conceal the nature of their sponsorship (making it appear that the recommendations for their product were organic)

And the list gets considerably longer if you include companies that just do shitty things like making it really hard to cancel a trial subscription, etc.

Creators/Influencers receive payment for promoting their sponsors; does this fact alone mean they bear some portion of the responsibility for wrongdoing even if they couldn’t have predicted or detected such?

(For the record, I have no stake in this question as I don’t accept sponsorship on my channel).

2

I’m more or less willing to give channels a pass on Honey. On the face, it seemed to be doing what it should, it took a long while for it to get discovered and, even a few months ago, I would see YT videos calling out companies like BetterHelp and concluding with a list of “good” companies… like Honey. To their credit, the videos I saw on the topic pinned a comment about Honey afterward and took it in good humor but it really seemed like Honey was a reputable service. I suppose it also helps that, for the consumer, they probably DID come out ahead overall vs not using the extension even if Honey wasn’t always using the best coupons – it was more affiliates who got screwed.

On the other hand, stuff like crypto-schemes and “Buy a lordship title!” and similar is just trash that lowers my opinion on the channel. VPNs are a little more gray area – maybe people are saying “Internet security” but I assume most users are doing it for privacy and/or evading IP/Geo blocks. Feels more wink, wink than real deception but maybe that’s just because I’m not an uninformed viewer buying a VPN service because I think it’s going to stop a million hackers.

3

I’m loving that I’m seeing ads for a, apparently, Google/YouTube approved ad blocker, PI, which proudly proclaims, as evidence that the ad blocker is totally legit, “By the people that brought you Honey”!

4

I would say that if they do not do due diligence, they bear responsibility for any sins of the sponsor. A Youtube video a friend showed me about block chains and crypto currency started with the host saying that originally this video had been sponsored by a VPN company. They wanted him to explain why every body needed a VPN. He explained that most people did not need a VPN. He had refused to tell viewers that they did, or to repeat the claims of the sponsor which were sketchy at best. He then went on to demonstrate just how block chains work, and why nobody needs crypto currency.

If somebody genuinely believes in the sponsor, and it turns out the sponsor was a scam or something similiar, they should admit that in a video and detail what was wrong about the sponsor. OTTOMH, for a while Radium Water was touted as a health tonic. It was endorsed by a star athelete. He believed in its claims and drank a lot of radium water every day. This lead to him developing severe cases of several types of cancer and dying young.

Reba McEntyre has done television ads endorsing Fritos and KFC. Based on interviews I have seen, I believe she is a person of strong morals. While they paid her a bunch of money to endorse their products, I find it likely that Reba genuinely enjoys Fritos and KFC.

Which brings me to my final point. If the endorsement is worth paying for, then why shouldn’t the influencer bear responsibility? Corporations do not pay for endorsements unless they have numbers backing up the fact that the endorsement will lead to more sales. If people will buy something because an influencer tells them to, how is that influencer not responsible?

5

“It’s the poor carpenter who blames his shoddy tools on the OW! *bleep*ing stupid corballin’ piece of *bleep*.”

Stranger