(Source: Snopes)

By Kemi Osamiluyi

News Editor

Temu – the hottest shopping app for 2023. But behind it’s unbelievably low prices and bright colors, is there a bought forced labor being covered?

Temu was launched in September 2022 by the Chinese company PDD Holdings. The online store grew from their ads in the 2023 Superbowl. Temu became extremely popular (seemingly overnight), because of their miraculously low prices, free returns and shipping, and insane discounts (often reaching 90% off).

The cheapest item on Temu is 1 cent. They have thousands of items for sale under their “under 1 dollar” section. However, we need to ask the important question is; how does a business who sells all their items for a couple of dollars, if not a couple of cents, make $4.6 billion in one day?

There is currently a Congressional investigation into Chinese shopping sites like Temu and Shein. This is a branch off of the Investigation into its sister app, Pinduoduo. In June of 2023, Temu had become the second most downloaded app in the Apple Store. These fast fashion companies, like Shein, have even avoided being discovered for their forced labor practices by undermining US customs in a tariff dodge by sending their packages directly to customers and having the products valued at less than $800.

They advertise under the motto of “Shop like a billionaire”. Their main purpose as a company is to provide the everyday individual with the ability to “shop like a billionaire”; without the billions. As they’re dirt cheap prices allow you to get more items than ever for less money than ever.

Unfortunately, this motto just promotes excessive spending, and mass consumerism. In addition, many of the goods and clothes sold on Temu are fast fashion.

So what is fast fashion?

Fast fashion is the mass production of trendy clothing at very low costs. The bad side of fast fashion is that once the trends are gone, no one desires them anymore and they are often discarded swiftly as people wait excitedly for the next trend to arrive. For such quick production and such low price there has to be a catch, being that production methods of fast fashion are not at all sustainable.

However, Temu’s hidden forced labor methods are not the worst of their actions, according to various cybersecurity researchers, tracking devices and malicious code have been used to spy on other apps on your device. If you download their app, they download your data. Pinduoduo, was removed from the Google App store because of the malware on the app that put Americans at risk. Pindudoduo requests 84 permissions when installed. These include Wi-fi network information and Bluetooth, and Temu requests 24 permissions; also consisting of Wi-fi network information and Bluetooth.

A poll administered among the students of Population. 56% of students polled believe that Temu is involved in forced labor practices, however. When asked ‘If you found out that Temu was involved in forced labor, would you stop buying from them?’, student Katie Cosgrove stated, “They [Temu] draw customers in with cheap prices while hiding the fact they use illegal methods.”

Another student, Kathy Rivera, stated that “Yes I would stop buying from them, because I do not support those kinds of business ethics. By buying and supporting Temu that would make the forced labor worse and make it harder to stop.”

Despite the fact that some people are genuinely happy with the purchases they made of Temu, that does not deter the fact that Temu is very likely exploiting people to produce said products.

So how can you make a difference?

You can support brands that speak up against exploitative use of labor. Try incorporating some staple pieces into your closet.  And most importantly, stop buying from fast fashion.