• Shelbyeileen@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1405·
    6 months ago

    It’s because it’s a data stealing company. They require 24 different types of permissions, including keylogging, biometrics (your fingerprint), your wifi network, your Bluetooth, photos, contact info and it saves your payment details, just by using the app. It also was recently flagged for malware. You’re getting a good price because you’re paying for it in a different way

    • KevonLooney@lemm.eeEnglish
      761·
      6 months ago

      It’s also just stuff from Alibaba. It’s all made in China, which has gotten really cheap. You can buy the same things on AliExpress without giving out all your contacts and everything.

      Basically you are seeing how stores in the US buy their merchandise. It’s extremely cheap, and they are marking it up at least 100%. Shirts and pants are like $3 to $10, maybe a little more for good quality. Places like Target and Walmart buy these and double or triple the price.

      • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.netEnglish
        57·
        6 months ago

        It’s also just stuff from Alibaba. It’s all made in China, which has gotten really cheap

        I feel the same about Amazon. Most listings are just US based resellers selling you cheap Chinese merchandise bought from Alibaba and then passing the costs onto the customer by inflating the price they resell it at.

        • KevonLooney@lemm.eeEnglish
          23·
          6 months ago

          True, but with Amazon you are paying more for faster shipping. Stuff actually shipped from China takes a long time.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
          19·
          6 months ago

          It’s literally just drop shipping

          Don’t run any inventory. Just take orders on a front-end website. Then buy at wholesale rates and resell at retail prices, while trying to make a margin based on the difference between the margin and the cost of advertising. It works great if you’re able to get a bunch of free publicity. So you’ll typically see these guys “networking” in hopes of doing an impromptu sales pitch in front the largest crowd possible. Or doing stunts to get literally anyone to look at them.

          Amazon is a multi-trillion dollar industry that’s functionally built on the idea of drop shipping. Jeff Bezos is just the richest incarnation of those insufferable frat-bros trying to sell you bitcoin.

      • JCreazy@midwest.socialEnglish
        23·
        6 months ago

        Aliexpress is the way to go. A lot of the time you’re buying directly from the company that makes the product. On Amazon, there are a lot of drop shippers.

    • NightAuthor@lemmy.worldEnglish
      39·
      6 months ago

      Just to be clear on the biometrics, no normal device anyone uses sends your biometrics to apps secured by biometrics.

      It’s more that your phone stores a very strong password that’s specific to that app, and your phone will automatically enter that password, but only if the phone can validate the biometric.

      This is not meant to detract from anything else you said, just clearing up how that actually works.

    • protist@mander.xyzEnglish
      231·
      6 months ago

      It’s not just a data-stealing company, they also exploit tariff exemptions on shipments from China by shipping single orders that stay below the sales amount threshold rather than large shipments of products imported for resale. Using this sales technique they can undercut their competion, while also being even worse ecologically. They’ve also dumped a ton of money into marketing

      • Paradachshund@lemmy.todayEnglish
        13·
        6 months ago

        No kidding. I remember they had like 3 ads at the Superbowl. I don’t know what that costs but it’s a fortune.

    • MissJinx@lemmy.worldEnglish
      81·
      6 months ago

      I wish it was always this simple, as a poor person if I could sell my data to pay for food or rent I would

      • Shelbyeileen@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        6 months ago

        A lot do, actually. There’s a bunch of places you can get paid for online surveys, people who can’t work a normal job do them full time and most make ~30k/year from bed. It’s been great for the disabled community.

      • Shelbyeileen@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        6 months ago

        Yup, a lot of my cosplay/fashion designer friends have had their work stolen and they can’t do anything because it’s international and they can’t afford an attorney with their small business income.

        Those cat paw socks, Danielle Baloo at Toe Beanies created them, several years ago and in the process of getting a patent, they were copied by Alibaba sellers. She was denied her Kickstarter campaign for drop-shipping, and had to fight for months, proving she was the original designer. Screw people who steal designs. She worked her ass off and they’re selling her work with cheap foam that’s not safe for human skin… I constantly report them.

        • VivendiEnglish
          1346·
          6 months ago

          When I have time, I will actually go through those one by one, but MANY news outlets actually go in circles, if you follow the trail you either end up with dead links or an RFA article

          The biggest info dump in the whole case, if you remember, was the supposed police files leak, and that contained both images of famous Chinese actors (who weren’t Uyghur btw) and AI-generated images, so sorry if I’m not on board with the latest Falun Gong propaganda leaflets

          • PersnickityPenguin@lemm.eeEnglish
            63·
            6 months ago

            Here’s the conclusion from the official 2022 UN report: https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/country-reports/ohchr-assessment-human-rights-concerns-xinjiang-uyghur-autonomous-region

            "Overall assessment and recommendations

            1. Serious human rights violations have been committed in XUAR in the context of the Government’s application of counter-terrorism and counter-“extremism” strategies. The implementation of these strategies, and associated policies in XUAR has led to interlocking patterns of severe and undue restrictions on a wide range of human rights. These patterns of restrictions are characterized by a discriminatory component, as the underlying acts often directly or indirectly affect Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim communities.

            2. These human rights violations, as documented in this assessment, flow from a domestic “anti-terrorism law system” that is deeply problematic from the perspective of international human rights norms and standards. It contains vague, broad and open-ended concepts that leave wide discretion to officials to interpret and apply broad investigative, preventive and coercive powers, in a context of limited safeguards and scant independent oversight. This framework, which is vulnerable to discriminatory application, has in practice led to the large-scale arbitrary deprivation of liberty of members of Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim communities in XUAR in so-called VETC and other facilities, at least between 2017 and 2019. Even if the VETC system has since been reduced in scope or wound up, as the Government has claimed, the laws and policies that underpin it remain in place. There appears to be a parallel trend of an increased number and length of imprisonments occurring through criminal justice processes, suggesting that the focus of deprivation of liberty has shifted towards imprisonment, on purported grounds of counter-terrorism and counter-“extremism”.

            3. The treatment of persons held in the system of so-called VETC facilities is of equal concern. Allegations of patterns of torture or ill-treatment, including forced medical treatment and adverse conditions of detention, are credible, as are allegations of individual incidents of sexual and gender-based violence. While the available information at this stage does not allow OHCHR to draw firm conclusions regarding the exact extent of such abuses, it is clear that the highly securitised and discriminatory nature of the VETC facilities, coupled with limited access to effective remedies or oversight by the authorities, provide fertile ground for such violations to take place on a broad scale."

            However, it is noteworthy that if one were in China and were to criticize the government or comment on the uyghar issue, you will find yourself being sentenced to prison. Possibly up to a life sentence.

      • Draedron@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        72·
        6 months ago

        Fuck off tanki. The genocide against the uyghurs is well documented. You can critique both the genocides commited by china and the one commited by Israel.

      • SuspiciousCatThing@pawb.socialEnglish
        84·
        6 months ago

        You are intentionally trying to spread extremely harmful and false ideas. You’re trying to cover for atrocities. You’re either misguided, or a bad person.

        • VivendiEnglish
          410·
          6 months ago

          I’m called misguided by someone deep into State Dept cool aid. 20 years ago, libs said the same shit about Iraq and it’s WMDs and y’all pretended like you were on the right side of history back then. It’s just nowadays that you admit to your mistakes. Same with CIA funding jihadi groups…

          Yeah, believe whatever the fuck you want, I live in the actual other side of the planet, your opinions won’t scratch my balls. Just a heads up, I said what I could

      • blargerer@kbin.social
        37·
        6 months ago

        ?? Temu is like 2 years old, they did a huge marketing blitz when they first started. Wish has been around since 2010, and I think they were probably most famous well before the pandemic.

    • Friend of DeSoto@startrek.websiteEnglish
      2·
      6 months ago

      Temu is different because they allow a seller to say I’ll make plastic dog shit toys by November 1. So it goes on sale in September and 100, 000 people order it. Now the company makes a single batch and knows exactly how many to make and what materials to buy. It’s smart. That’s why they want your friends involved because it lowers the price more to make more at once.

      I’m not defending the company but it is a smart way and less costly and wasteful than making 100, 000 dog shit toys and selling 10, throwing the other 999,990 in the local river and writing it off on taxes.

    • brbposting@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      7·
      6 months ago

      Well,

      Open in App Store

      ⭐️ View the rest of this comment in app for a 10% discount on our social commentary

    • baseless_discourse@mander.xyzEnglish
      292·
      6 months ago

      Sounds like yet another app to fuel excessive-consumption.

      Letting us trade our children’s planet for manufactured waste, while enabling billionaires move elsewhere when the earth inevitably die in their hand.

    • itsnicodegallo@lemm.eeEnglish
      18·
      6 months ago

      Same. Surprised at how much this resonated with other folks though. Seems to be a lot like Wish.

  • Blackmist@feddit.ukEnglish
    17·
    6 months ago

    “Shop Like a Biilionaire” says their tagline, but I can’t imagine Warren Buffett filling his house with flammable plastic tat from China.