I don't understand Temu.

Except I respect raccoons more than Temu sellers
- More trustworthy too

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
- 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.
  
  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.
  
  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.
- 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.
  
  Thank you for clarifying!
- 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
  
  No kidding. I remember they had like 3 ads at the Superbowl. I don't know what that costs but it's a fortune.
- The raccoons are kind of high maintenance.
- 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
  
  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.
- Is it worse than AliExpress?
  
  Yes and much worse than even Wish.
  
  Yes
- And they steal the design of the products they sell
  
  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.
- Gas em up, kid lol

By raccoons do you mean Uyighur slaves held by the CCP?
- Yes, definitely ignore the 572 cited sources on the wikipedia article; it's all totally just one guy.
  
  +50 social credit
  
  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.
  
  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.
  
  I knew it would come to this if leftists refused to get off tik tok. Acceptance of genocide against some people while decrying genocide against others, all based solely on whomever serves them the content tells them to.

What's there to understand? "Avoid." There. That's literally everything you need to know about Temu.

Temu is just new wish, right?
- I think Temu has been around a bit longer, Wish just got more popular during Covid
  
  ?? 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.
- 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.

AliExpress is now trying to copy Temu by gamifying the app which is such a PITA.
- Well,

- 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.
- Same. Surprised at how much this resonated with other folks though. Seems to be a lot like Wish.
  
  Even worse, as far as I can tell. I don't understand that site at all.
  
  It's wish for even dumber people

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

if that service existed I would buy from them and them alone