Influencers’ Commission Hijacking Suits Have Rocky Legal Road

Social media content creators—including a golden doodle, a video essayist, and a fashion blogger—accusing PayPal Inc. and others of cutting into their affiliate marketing commissions are likely to have a hard time convincing the courts that the practice is illegal.

Influencers have filed a wave of lawsuits over browser extensions like PayPal’s Honey that they say “steal” last-click attributions when their followers use their link to purchase something online.

The online marketing practice credits a sale to a customer’s last digital touch-point before making a purchase.

Yet e-commerce scholars are skeptical the content creators can show the companies unlawfully blocked their earnings.

Alexandra Roberts, professor of law and media at Northeastern University School of Law, said the litigation will be an uphill battle.

The browser extension “earns revenue from affiliate marketing partnerships with e-commerce platforms,” she said. “Arguably, these are similar players competing for the same pot of money and I don’t know that that gets you intentional interference” with a contract, she said.

But the reputational stain of the class action litigation has the potential to lead brands and influencers to rethink how they track attributions and advertise deals going forward.

Influencers might try to negotiate discount deals that match the coupon from Honey, said Colin Campbell, a marketing professor at the University of San Diego.

But alternatives to the current affiliate link system can lock in bigger content creators with established audiences and block smaller influencers from growing their followers, he said.

Affiliate links are “relatively low-cost” for smaller creators compared to people with larger audiences who could command a flat fee for a certain number of product posts because of the bigger customer base, Campbell said.

Marketplace Competitors

The lawsuits follow a December 2024 YouTube essay from creator MegaLag who called Honey the “scam of the century.” That video currently has more than 17 million views.

Content creators also targeted couponing browser extensions from Capital One Corp., Klarna Inc., and Microsoft Corp.

The extensions promise users the best online shopping deal.

“These lawsuits target a broad number of industry participants and challenge agreed-upon-industry practices,” a spokesperson for Honey said. “We disagree with the claims in these lawsuits and look forward to defending ourselves.”

A spokesperson for Microsoft said its shopping feature follows industry standards and the claims “are without merit,” while Capital One said we “disagree with the premise of the complaints.”

Klarna didn’t respond to a request for comment.

A handful of complaints against PayPal were recently consolidated, and more suits have been filed since. All are in the early stages of litigation.

Devin Stone, an attorney who runs the LegalEagle YouTube channel and one of the first plaintiffs in the Honey litigation, has called the Honey a “sleeping leech.”

Other prominent creators like Hank Green have criticized Honey’s business model and creator ecosystem more generally, which Green called “ripe for exploitation.”

But both the Honey extension and content creators make money through commissions based on last-click attributions, so it’s not clear whether the alleged conduct is unlawful as opposed to fair competition, attorneys and scholars say.

Robert Freund, a lawyer who specializes in e-commerce and advertising law, said that though PayPal’s alleged conduct might “feel kind of slimy,” the content creators’ legal claims don’t appear viable because there’s a causation problem.

“It’s too far of a reach to say that if it weren’t for PayPal, they 100% would’ve gotten the commission,” Freund said.

It’s also possible that some of the consumers wouldn’t have made their purchase if not for the discount provided through the browser extension, he said.

Attribution determination is a broader problem within e-commerce marketing, Campbell said.

“As is often the case, we don’t tend to see one ad and buy something, but instead we’re seeing many ads over days or even months or years,” he said. “Whoever is the final person that we buy from, whatever the final ad is, they get the credit for all of the other stuff that you’ve seen as well too.”

Rise of Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing isn’t new. As the internet blossomed in the 1990s, e-commerce aimed at consumers did too.

Amazon.com Inc. launched Amazon’s Associates Program in 1996, allowing anyone who signed up and promoted Amazon product links to earn a commission if the link resulted in sales.

Amazon calls the initiative one of the largest affiliate marketing programs in the world. Many content creators have “Amazon Storefronts” that are an assortment of clothing or home goods products featured in their videos.

Affiliate marketing also expanded with the rise of user-generated content and influencer culture.

YouTube now allows people whose channels have more than 10,000 subscribers to earn commissions from tagged products, and the video platform also has an affiliate hub that links creators and product makers. ByteDance Ltd. runs a similar program through TikTok Shop.

Globally, brands and retailers spend more than $20 billion on publisher commissions annually, Bain Capital Ventures partner Scott Friend wrote on the firm’s site.

But as content creators rethink their relationships with Honey and other couponing applications, their audience members are reconsidering how they shop.

More than 3 million Google Chrome users have uninstalled the Honey extension from their browsers as of January.

In response to the blowback, Campbell suggested that influencers could demand a system similar to the way airlines and hotels advertise deals.

Those businesses prefer people book directly with them rather than through aggregator companies, and they encourage that through “best price guarantees,” he said.

Brands themselves might move toward a resurgence in coupon codes rather than tracking attribution through links.

But don’t expect a sea change in the law.

“If you have any experience with using affiliates, there’s a lot of shady and illegal stuff that goes on,” Freund said. “On the spectrum of things that are sad about affiliate marketing, the PayPal stuff is pretty on the white side of that spectrum.”