Temu "surprised" by the lawsuit, plans to "vigorously defend" itself.
  • Etterra@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    I can’t believe anyone would buy from Temu. I knew they were Chinese knockoff bullshit the second I saw their first obnoxious ad.

    • MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      With how cheap they are, people will and should buy from TEMU. Aliexpress as a general store never had much of a competition for English speakers outside of Banggood for select electronics. Taoboa is good but it’s harder to use

      • protist@mander.xyzEnglish
        0·
        1 year ago

        So for you, the lowest price is the only thing that matters? It doesn’t matter whether it’s a shitty product? Or that they’re one of the least efficient shippers due to their tariff avoidance strategy, and in doing so are contributing more per purchase to climate change than even companies like Amazon and Walmart?

        • MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          1 year ago

          I’m happy because it’s competition for Aliexpress.

          Arguments against carbon emissions and carbon footprints against corporations isn’t very helpful unless you can do something about it. This is somehow a very unpopular opinion here, for some reason people don’t like being told that they don’t have much power. Boycotting it by yourself won’t work either, because even if the west gives up on it, the East will not. Carbon emissions will remain unless strict regulations are maintained, and we know who buys politicians these days. If I can do nothing about the climate, then yes I’d rather pay less. And I’m not explicitly anti-China like some people here because America is just as hypocritical.

          Yes there are really bad products and their QC is horrible. I’ll say the same for Aliexpress, Taobao, Amazon, Walmart and Bestbuy. Unfortunately for everyone here, we’re going to have to choose between shit options, so yes I’d rather pay less if it’s shit I’m going to get anyway. Besides, I’m smart enough to not make bigger purchases on these sites because I know of their QC situation.

          • Rekorse@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            0·
            1 year ago

            Boycotting is a collective action, it spreads like a virus, so you are wrong on its effectiveness.

            You sound like someone who wants hand waive away the real costs of their actions by saying there’s nothing you can do to change things.

            I hope the people who read your post aren’t demotivated to effect change because of it.

            • MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.worldEnglish
              0·
              1 year ago

              What I do not understand is why people are biased against certain companies in such a discussion. If your arguments are correct, then Amazon is a horrendous beast that should have been killed by now with “viral boycotting”. And here we are. Is anyone demotivated by knowing that people still buy from Amazon and make them billions? Why all the hate against TEMU specifically, when they’re trying to undercut Amazon and other stores? Let’s not pretend that Amazon and Best Buy and Walmart are a collective bunch of saints and can mean no harm. Where is the action in this case?

              Let me speak the bitter truth for you: the majority of the population here is American, with an inherent anti-chinese mentality when it comes to capitalistic ventures/operations. That is the reason for the hate. Alibaba faced the same issues, and in case someone wants to bring up Huawei for their actions, remember that AT&T runs an NSA spy-mission in Manhattan. Where is the outcry in this case?

              I might have veered off-topic, but bad QC and cheap deals aren’t inherently a Chinese thing. Hence, I do not follow the propaganda against Chinese shops who are beating American companies at their own game.

              • eatthecake@lemmy.worldEnglish
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                1 year ago

                I’m anticonsumption in general and temu just seems like the epitome of paying for disposable garbage.

                In general i don’t understand why people are buying any nonessential items at all. Everyone is apparently too poor but random crap still sells. I splurged and bought a cheap tablet to use as an ereader this year but only because i can’t justify the expense of buying books and my local library is awful.

              • Rekorse@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
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                1 year ago

                I can’t force people to do the things I think they should. Noone can. People draw inspiration from all sorts of things. Like you right now seem inspired to protect China from racist western policies.

                I dont pretend to speak for my country, or its government, but I can do two things:

                1. Walk the walk, if you believe something then follow it. Examples: de-googling, disengaging with social media, following a vegan lifestyle, research companies before giving them your money.

                2. Talking about all of this stuff in public places. With my family, coworkers, or here on Lemmy, anything we say has the potential to inspire someone to change. You never know what will be the thing that triggers change, but for all the things I listed above I had someone share that information with me in a public forum, which caused me to change.

                I’m sure we can argue the efficacy of this strategy all day, and even some of the examples you gave like Amazon are no longer the behemoth they used to be.

                • MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  0·
                  1 year ago

                  After coming back from a break, I realised I might have leaned too hard into “protecting Chinese companies”. I will say this right now for everyone reading: I have no love for the nationality of said companies. I don’t care if Aliexpress or a clone of theirs was Chinese, Korean, Brazilian, Swiss, Russian, Iranian, Australian or Japanese (incidentally I spend time on buyee.jp because the cheap deals on CDs sometimes). What I care about is providing competition to the bigger mammoths here. If I find a USB adapter for a quarter of the price with free shipping and refunds from a Chinese shop with a decent reputation (Aliexpress, Banggood, TaoBao and now TEMU), I’ll take it. I hope this forces big American retailers to maybe give better, fairer prices to their customers.

                  I’m not quite convinced that Amazon is no longer the giant with worms as we knew it. Can you explain?

          • conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
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            1 year ago

            Yes there are really bad products and their QC is horrible. I’ll say the same for Aliexpress, Taobao, Amazon, Walmart and Bestbuy.

            There’s a huge difference between some 5/10 products at Walmart and Best Buy and the best case being a 5/10 product with the majority being 2/10 and some being actually dangerous like Temu.

            They’re not remotely similar.

            • MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.worldEnglish
              0·
              1 year ago

              Depends on what you buy. You shouldn’t be buying PSUs or TVs or something of the sort from there, but try finding cheap clothes, accessories, electronics like that on Amazon

                • MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  0·
                  1 year ago

                  And where am I getting such cheap clothes if I don’t have a thrift store near me? I’d happily take them for free.

                  And clothes are just one part of it, which I don’t really purchase that often (I mentioned them because I bought a few boxers to wear around the house but that’s it)

    • trolololol@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      I can’t believe people pay full price on cheap stuff. The only reasonable thing to do is pay cheap on cheap stuff. And the delivery times are unbeatable .

      • odelik@lemmy.todayEnglish
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        1 year ago

        I can’t believe people buy cheap trash that would be sold on Temu.

        But here we are, people buy cheap ass trash off Temu. If China started picking through the trash we shipped them and sold it back to us on a site like Temu, something tells me people would still buy it.

        • BruceTwarzen@lemm.eeEnglish
          0·
          1 year ago

          People would buy an actual turd on temu if it’s cheap enough. Just read these comments here… But it’s cheap. Congrats, you bought cheap garbage and it got send around the globe by a company that sells your data

      • exu@feditown.comEnglish
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        1 year ago

        Apparently for some people (my mom) the search or filters work better on Temu. No idea why, I only ever use AliExpress.

        • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
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          1 year ago

          Alis search is really bad.
          Somehow the auto translation is active for the product names but if you search they don’t seem to apply.
          For example:
          Searching for Cherry MX switches brings up articles that are named “Mechanische Kirsch Schalter für Tastatur” (essentially the name but translated). Problem is: Cherry the company is like it’s in english as well, also the fruit amd thus will not be translated correctly.
          Trying to search more niche stuff quickly gets annoying when trying to find something specific.

    • Oaksey@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      Plenty of items on eBay are just people who buy from China directly and mark up prices. If it is likely made in China and I don’t want it quickly, I’ll buy off aliexpress. That said, alibaba wanted me to upload photo ID which I noped out of. Temu started spamming my email address when I’d never used them. The unsubscribe link went to their website said to adjust your account settings if you didn’t want spam… I never created and account and avoided them completely following that.

        • dan@upvote.auEnglish
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          1 year ago

          Amazon is usually OK if you buy things that are sold by Amazon or sold by the manufacturer (if it’s a well-known brand). The third-party sellers based in China are almost always reselling stuff from Aliexpress/Alibaba with a significant markup.

          • Blackmist@feddit.ukEnglish
            0·
            1 year ago

            Half of them aren’t in China though. It’s dropshippers, so you still get your cheap death traps, but you get them in a few days, Amazon get their enormous cut, and they get to take no responsibility when it burns your house down.

      • Etterra@lemmy.worldEnglish
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        1 year ago

        I don’t buy anything from eBay that I can get elsewhere. I didn’t even use those other sites. Sure, everything is made in China, but I’m good not trusting China without a more reputable middleman that’s subject to American laws regarding things like refunds and such.

    • Fades@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      somethings people don’t care about quality. An example, the one time I checked out Temu way back when it first made its splash I bought some targets for shooting… Hard to fuck that up and got em cheap as fuck with that promo deal they do to hook you. Uninstalled it right after, probably not worth it but I feel like that is a common experience. There are items where you just simply can’t fuck up so the ultra cheapness works out.

      With that said, an obligatory FUCK temu and those like it.

        • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          0·
          1 year ago

          Have you seen the wheel spin and Fomo coupons?
          Maybe not as much but still highly gimmicky in comparison to normal e-commerce sites

          • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            0·
            11 months ago

            They don’t seem to give overall preference to a given supplier beyond their obvious coupons and paid rankings. Alibaba is better, but who needs 144 of any specific widget…?

            If you compare to one of the most preferred e-commerce website, which I would consider Amazon, it’s still not that bad. I have found less lies on Ali express v Amazon. If it comes to any cheaper electronics the Ali description is the real deal as far as I have seen. Amazon I have been shipped differing products, the description or features have just been a lie, or it didn’t come with the things implied. For the most part Ali descriptions are exactly what you will expect when opening the product… in fact many times I discover extra features when receiving the product that seemingly just couldn’t explain in their marketing.

            Ali>Aliexpress>Amazon… just depends on needs

      • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
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        1 year ago

        My only reasons to buy on Ali is when I need something simple like velcro that can be cut to length or other small scale stuff electronics (e.g. Rasperry Pi 0) and it doesnt have to be fast.
        Ironically the shipping is either free or so cheap it’s better than domestic amazon.
        I often suspect they sell the same item but order it with DHL shipping (our domestic shipper) with high priority shipping included in the price (2€ item + 8€ shipping = 10€ on Amazon + “free” shipping)

    • Chaotic Entropy@feddit.ukEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      A huge amount of products are just generic Chinese products that have a brand slapped on it. If you’ve ever bought a random small USB device (i.e USB hubs, etc) from a major brand like LogiTech and others, if you crack it open it is just the same device as cheap resellers with a branded coating. It’s not worth it to many companies to bother manufacturing their own small tat so they just sub-contract out.

      And sure, it likely works, but it’s the exact same hardware with the same capabilities as a product a 10th of the price.

      • towerful@programming.devEnglish
        0·
        1 year ago

        The cheap Chinese stuff often uses knock-off ICs tho.
        They can be fairly difficult to detect, and will work for a short time or under very light loads. But they will be nowhere near the spec of the data sheets.
        They might massively overheat, not provide the correct currents or voltages, run at lower speeds. All sorts of corners being cut to turn a $2 IC into a 50¢ IC. Or a 50¢ ic into a 5¢ one

        So yeh, might be the same PCB layout inside, it might visually look the same (or very very close) but the parts are likely to be counterfeit.

        Of course, it’s also probable that name brands might be hit with counterfeit parts inside as well. Hopefully their QA picks that up

        • GreatAlbatross@feddit.ukEnglish
          0·
          1 year ago

          I’ve found this when trying to get a decent USB>9-pin Serial connector.

          You think it’s your software, or something weird going wrong. Then you swap over a name-brand adapter, and the thing just works.

  • Snapz@lemmy.worldEnglish
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    1 year ago

    Have any of you actually ever stopped to process what the tagline, “I’m shopping like a billionaire” means?

    I’ve always interpreted it as,

    I’m needlessly buying things that don’t make me happy, but making the purchase without any hesitation, knowing that the purchase price could never financially impact me in any real way. When I purchase the thing, I’ll probably never use it or actually take it out of the box even. It is just empty, hollow. And somewhere inside, I always know that it’s all only possible, because I’m actively exploiting the cheap labor of scores of other people that are made to perpetually suffer in generations of abject poverty to allow for my relative comfort…

    🎶*“I’m shopping like a billionaire!”*🎶

    • Captain Poofter@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      I am disabled and have limited income I don’t have control over increasing or decreasing. I use temu to save a lot of money on essential things that should be cheap but are still overpriced in America. Sponges. Rags. Soaps. Pens. Tools. Home improvement hardware. Plant grow supplies. Gifts for me nieces. The tagline, is just a tagline. Billionaires are not like me and scouring for cheap magic sponges.

    • dan@upvote.auEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      My interpretation of that tagline is that since the prices on Temu are cheap, it means you can shop as if you had a lot of money, without actually spending that much.

  • panicnow@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    I generally think arstechnica.com does a decent job of being a non-garbage news site. I pay a couple bucks a month for the ad-free RSS feed. This story feels terrible to me. I don’t doubt a law suit has been filed, but I would expect some investigation by the reporter of the extra-ordinary claims of privilege escape the application is claimed to be capable of.

    • explore_broaden@midwest.socialEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      Given that the headline says that it is a claim in a lawsuit, and the lawsuit is by a state attorney general and not some random nobody, I feel like they are being fairly reasonable.

      • panicnow@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        1 year ago

        I would feel that it would be a reasonable if it was my local paper running the story. Arstechnica IS a primarily technical news site—I believe they should have a higher bar—otherwise they are just parroting a report and not providing useful (to me) news.

      • Raploc@feddit.nlEnglish
        0·
        1 year ago

        Yes because AG’s from repub states never ever file frivolous lawsuits that suit their own agenda.

  • TwitchingCheese@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    How about pass and enforce strong digital privacy protection laws you fucking cowards. When other countries spy on us it’s scary and bad, but for US companies? Best we can do is ban porn and demand backdoors to stop E2EE messaging.

  • xad@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    11 months ago

    I hate Temu, but this (apparently contracted?) Grizzly Reports report isn’t really all that trust inspiring, tbh.

    Our experts identified a stack of software functions that are completely inappropriate to and dangerous

    The stack difference to the Amazon app they list:

    • Package compile
    • Requesting system logs
    • Some code obfuscation
    • Mac address collection
    • Install permission
    • Wake lock

    Meh. That’s just a sliver worse than your regular, off the shelves proprietary corporate app. I don’t see how they can pull off the promise of being a truly dynamic Android app from that report.

    I do believe they hover up data, but they aren’t otherworldly super hackers. They will probably just ask for the data and the users will hand it over in a second. For most people, it really is that simple.

  • Sam_Bass@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    The only thing annoying to me about temu is the cheesy popups for “free” gifts and percent-off wheel spinners.

  • Bluefruit@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    Shocked i tell you. I am shocked.

    No way an app would collect data it doesnt need. Preposterous.

    Next thing you’ll tell me is that tiktok is doing the same thing!

          • TeddE@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            1 year ago

            Emphasis on by comparison, as in “molten hot metal is cooler than the surface of the sun, by comparison”.

            TikTok and Temu actively have code in them that would be considered a virus in other contexts. They exploit your system to gain more access than they should, violating the point of sandboxed access.

            By comparison Meta and Google merely take advantage of user ignorance and apathy by making opting out frustrating - but still technically doable.

            Both practices are terrible, but that’s not the same as saying they’re equally bad.

            • pop@lemmy.mlEnglish
              0·
              1 year ago

              By comparison Meta and Google merely take advantage of user ignorance and apathy by making opting out frustrating - but still technically doable.

              This is simply just not true. Meta used an adversary-in-the-middle attack to decrypt Snapchat and other competitors traffic. Facebook, Apple, Twitter and Google have been intercepting traffic since before https/sandbox/anti-virus were the norm. Do you think they didn’t do anything malicious?

              Install any Google app on Windows and it will install a task schedule and a always online background service to “check for updates” and downloads and runs their executable without any user consent. I wonder why no body had a problem with that. hmm…

              https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2024/03/facebook-spied-on-snapchat-users-to-get-analytics-about-the-competition

              Google runs it own operating system so they could technically do anything they so fucking please. You think Chinese Android variants are using exploits or just scooping data wholesale, because it can. But you think Google and Apple aren’t?

              It’s showing your prejudice, bias and concern trolling more than anything.

        • TWeaK@lemm.eeEnglish
          0·
          1 year ago

          Erm, WhatsApp would suggest otherwise.

          WhatsApp was the vector for zero click access to a target’s phone from Israel’s weapons grade hacking Pegasus toolkit. They would send a video call, typically in the middle of the night, and with no input from the used they’d get full access. My personal belief is that they used functionality WhatsApp itself uses to access user data.

          There was also an encrypted phone called ANOM, which had this trick calculator app with a hidden encrypted messager. “Made for criminals, by criminals”. Except, when the guy started his business he got investment from the FBI and Australian Federal Police to pay for the servers and some of the phones themselves. Basically every time it sent an encrypted message it sent a separate encrypted message to the ANOM servers. It’s entirely possible (perhaps even likely) that WhatsApp would do this also.

          As for Google, they’re truly insidious. Lots of banks now require you to connect to Google captcha servers - they don’t give you the pictures, it’s just the back end, basically the tracking parts. Then there’s the controversy about them collecting location data when users have said no. They absolutely do collect data they shouldn’t.

          • TeddE@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            1 year ago

            I’ll accept that maybe I’m giving Google a pass because of misplaced nostalgia, and while I personally have never used or liked Meta Facebook, I’ll concede that for a while it provided a service some people valued.

            It’s still my opinion that Google and Facebook have a large percentage of engineers that personally try to make them a genuinely good service, at least moreso than compared to TikTok and Temu. But I’m willing to concede it’s not as much a practical difference as I would like.

            • demonsword@lemmy.worldEnglish
              0·
              1 year ago

              It’s still my opinion that Google and Facebook have a large percentage of engineers that personally try to make them a genuinely good service

              Most of those people were sacked long ago. Today’s menu for those that remained is shareholder maximum value extraction sausage fest

  • cybermass@lemmy.caEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    I am not even remotely surprised.

    Every day I hear a story about Chinese software being spyware.

  • Timecircleline@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    But if you install the app you get a free Bluetooth speaker!!

    /Joking. Am I the only one who gets that ad constantly whenever I’m using a device that isn’t running ad blocks?

  • cheese_greater@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    Friendly reminder to ,check out Friendly Social Browser to get all these apps in a better experience and secure/private context