29 ms·
Temu pulls its U.S. Google Shopping ads
- maxilevi 1y agotemu and shein are cooked
- linotype 1y agoLess cheap junk flowing into the US sounds like a win to me. Maybe clothes should be more expensive and better quality.
- Eduard 1y agoAlso less affordable electronics
- meowkit 1y agoThere is also an argument that we should have fewer electronics too…
- roxolotl 1y agoIt is very interesting how if there was a genuine attempt at degrowth this is potentially a good start.
- thawtxp 1y ago[dead]
- mrguyorama 1y agoIt sure is funny how the party that has spent 2 decades screaming at anyone they could that "climate change isn't real" and "the people saying we should output less carbon are REALLY just degrowth cultists and we can consume everything forever with no issues" are outright, willfully, destroying the American economy in such a way that average americans WILL have to consume less
- mcphage 1y agoToo bad that’s not the argument being made by people pushing the current policies, instead of the idea that this will magically lead to us having more and better things.
- EasyMark 1y agoI don't think so. There is an argument for -individuals- buying too much electronics and they should revisit that, but it's not anyone's business other those people. Tanking the economy and destroying lives "just becuz consumers" is a really really bad way to run the country. Just giving back and going back to horse and buggy while China eats your lunch is not a good thing, because soon you will be making "cheap trinkets" for them
- linotype 1y agoEven more important in creating a more closed loop system with less waste. Some Android phones are e-waste before they hit a year or two.
- JKCalhoun 1y agoTangent. I got into building hi-fi tube amplifiers some years back. Part of it was a kind of nostalgia for the days of Heath-Kit which I am only just old enough to remember the company's sunsetting years. It was a fun few years deep-diving into the various amplifier topologies, buying NOS vacuum tubes on eBay, looking through electronics flea markets for parts. I made several amps, tried different tubes, topologies.... Eventually I settled on a small stereo amp and designed a PCB for it, created a small kit even. Using a drill press in the garage, a table saw to cut aluminum sheet stock down, even learning to powder-coat parts in a toaster-oven I picked up from Walmart, I made increasingly nicer looking amps. With two large output transformers and an even large power transformer they were fairly heavy beasts. Nonetheless, though I built them a decade or more ago, every one of the amplifiers I built are still in use today. The music I am listening to at this moment is coming from one. Another is down in my "lab". I have given several away to friends, co-workers in the past. I guess the reason for the tangent was to say that I did indeed find that when you have (or make) a thing of real quality it can last … perhaps a life time? And thinking again a little nostalgically, I like that too about electronics just up to the post-modern era: a new electronics purchase might have cost you a paycheck or two, but you got I think more mileage out of that device. EDIT: come to think of it, the heavy iron transformers are from the U.S., the tubes NOS from U.S. WWII bombers. I didn't built them of course with tariffs in mind, but surprisingly they are not so cost-dependent on overseas suppliers. And here's a photo of the finished amp (from when I once considered selling the kits): https://imgur.com/PBKOQMk https://imgur.com/PBKOQMk
- beepboopboop 1y agoThanks for sharing, that’s really cool and something I wish I had the time/skill/patience for. The amp looks great and love the name - might have to dust off the tools for a “Now and Then” model.
- tananaev 1y agoNow I need to pay 10x for a USB cable, a charger etc.
- jgyter 1y ago[flagged]
- ryao 1y agoMonoprice has low cost cables.
- markrages 1y ago...for now.
- ipsum2 1y agoMonoprice cables are made in China. They'll also cost 10x.
- bigiain 1y agoI'm not certain, but I suspect this'll work out better for Monoprice than it does for individuals. I _think_ Monoprice will pay the couple of hundred dollars "per package" fees for the pallet or container full of cables they bring in, amortising that cost over thousands of items. They'll still get charged the 145% tariff though, but they'll probably cost something like 3x rather than 10x. (Until they work out that they no longer compete with individuals buying from AliExpress/Temu/Shein, or probably even with side hustle Fulfilment by Amazon micro-importers).
- maxerickson 1y agoAt least we can rest assured that they will be more expensive.
- alabastervlog 1y agoI already buy a lot of clothes at least partially made in OECD states. Even with that “partially” doing a lot of work and my avoiding paying extra for “fancy” brand names… I don’t think Americans earning closer to median household income are gonna be happy about paying the kind of prices I pay.
- nebula8804 1y agoHere you go: enjoy your $120 American jeans: https://originusa.com/collections/jeans https://originusa.com/collections/jeans (Oh look its on sale 20$ off...yay :/ ) The sale discount is the entire amount I was able to buy my non American jeans for. :/ I guess I can make due with one pair for the week...or wash them each day(oh wait thats gotten more expensive as well).
- k4rli 1y agoProper jeans aren't really washed more than once a month or at all. Especially every day. They also will last for years therefore buying 1-3 pairs a year means your wardrobe will have plenty. Maybe local production will get cheaper once more people start keeping their money in local communities. Sending it to China is just awful for your country/region and kills local businesses. Disclaimer: from Europe so I don't care about USA at all. It's still having the same effect here
- runako 1y ago> Maybe local production will get cheaper once more people start keeping their money in local communities. Is the thinking here that increased scale would allow production to get cheaper? How would this account for the fact that production was scaled here, but was not cost-competitive when it was operating at scale? What's different now?
- buzer 1y agoLet's say currently it costs $15 to make thing 1m units of X in China and $50 to make 10k of them in the USA. USA could be scaled to make 50k of them for $40 and 100k for $30. 1m could cost like $25. There are people for who are ready to pay more for local products so the current production volume makes sense, but majority of people will go for cheaper option when given the chance so it doesn't make sense to scale up the production currently. If the import cost of the item goes above local production cost and there is still enough demand for the item, it can make sense to scale up that production even if you cannot compete with the China made things internationally. Of course that assumes your own costs (like raw materials) do not increase at least on the same scale and that you can rely on the situation being long-term thing (i.e. will last years rather than weeks) as costs include your CapEx on things like new machines.
- EasyMark 1y agothe thing is that life is about freedom of choice, I didn't buy they cheap junk, I'm fairly normal. I might be the occasional hobby board off alibaba express a couple times a year. Choice is good, not bad.
- LaundroMat 1y agoMaybe the law should impose quality and environmental standards instead of tariffs. But no, that would hurt domestic businesses.
- mytailorisrich 1y agoThe market does what people want. Fast fashion is exactly what people want because fashion has always been changing fast and about the "new thing" and people like to be able to buy new stuff all the time.
- astar1 1y agotoo little too late for Forever 21 and it's 350 locations which once employed 43,000 people at it's peak: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/17/forever-21-files-for-second-bankruptcy-blames-shein-and-temu.html https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/17/forever-21-files-for-second-... The temu/shein loophole should been closed ages ago.
- jgalt212 1y agoIt is pretty crazy how worker unfriendly US trade policy has been for so long.
- blitzar 1y agoThey need to get their priorities straight - stop directing trade policy towards tech companies employing 1000's of workers on $250,000 a year and start building factories employing 100's or people on 25c an hour.
- yonran 1y ago> The temu/shein loophole should been closed ages ago. Or the US should figure out how to get domestic shipping rates to be as cheap as the rates that Chinese shippers pay to ship to the US.
- GuinansEyebrows 1y agoThat would probably require that they receive federal funding to subsidize postage rates, which is unfortunately not going to happen (especially not under DeJoy).
- yonran 1y agoYes, perhaps the government should subsidize (or allow states to subsidize) the fixed costs of mail, just as we subsidize the fixed costs of roads, so that our business can be competitive. Is this what China does domestically, or what the US does when we charge for international shipping? Point is, we should at least list all the ways that we can be more competitive, rather than cheering isolationism that makes us all worse off.
- alabastervlog 1y agoIf the de minimus rule is in-fact suspended on May 2nd, yes. Hasn’t happened yet, so who knows. Amazon and other US selling platforms are also in trouble, given how much of their income is from drop shippers.
- throw310822 1y agoWell, given how many of their products come from China, right? How many of the products on sale on Amazon are partly or entirely produced in China? Those will have 125% (145? How mush is it today?) import duty on them, unless they're electronics.
- amanaplanacanal 1y agoI wonder what percentage of their sales has been in the US.
- viraptor 1y ago43% in 2023 https://ecdb.com/blog/temu-revenue/4995 https://ecdb.com/blog/temu-revenue/4995 They may not be toast, but I suspect there are many panicked planning meetings happening now. (Unless they were clever and had a plan ready for a while)
- sixseven 1y agoThey did have a plan. Temu/Shein used to ship directly from China, handling the shipping themselves for the sellers on their platforms. Since a year or two ago (or even earlier), they started accepting (and encouraging) sellers to handle the shipping themselves (while still maintaining a fast shipping time) by giving those sellers more traffic. In order to have fast shipping time, it basically mean the sellers need to have warehouses (or 3rd party warehouses) in the USA. It's easier for the sellers to workaround the tariffs when they are shipping in bulk to the USA. The prices will be higher for sure, but it will be a lot lower than people are expecting. Not sure how well the plan will work. Just what I heard from people working in the industry.
- glimshe 1y agoGood riddance. I'd rather have fewer things I care more about. If we rethink our consumption, we could become happier, need less space and spend less money even at higher prices. And when we do need to buy things, we'll be either supporting local workers or friendly nations.
- AstroBen 1y agoGood for you, but it's not all about rabid consumption. My girlfriend has been into jewelry making and ordered a lot of stuff off temu, which she gave away the end product to friends and family. That'll most likely be prohibitively expensive at this point
- glimshe 1y agoShe could give cards, food items or hugs. You don't need to cover people in cheap temu stuff to show you love them.
- AstroBen 1y agoAh yes, replace a creative hobby with.. hugs I think you'd be surprised at the quality
- hcfhbhjfhjh 1y ago[flagged]
- blitzar 1y agoI don't think people are aware their <insert high status luxury brand> came from the same place.
- Symbiote 1y agoThe luxury brand ensures the safety of the product, and as the importer is liable if they fail to do that.
- animitronix 1y agoFinally
- geor9e 1y agoI loved temu, aliexpress, and shein. I probably averaged 1 item per day arriving to my house, for years and years. Mostly little electronics parts and specialized tools for my workshop. Buying from Amazon or locally would have cost me 10x as much. Obviously it's over now. Anyone getting a package in May will be hit with a $75-$150 or more bill per package, even a 75 cent envelope will be charged +$75. I feel bad for the unaware people still ordering. I'm surprised the websites don't even acknowledge this yet. I guess they are hoping for a reversal in the next 2 weeks.
- roxolotl 1y agoWait why would $0.75 have a $75 charge? Is there a minimum tariff that’s not as widely reported reported on? That would be a 10000% tariff. Or is this just exaggeration
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- throwaway7394 1y agoThere's a minimum charge, as well a percentage. > Washington will also increase the per postal item fee on goods entering after May 2 and before June 1 to $100 from the planned $75. Parcels entering after June 1 will pay a fee of $200 per item instead of $150 announced previously, according to the Wednesday order. ref. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-10/trump-again-increases-small-parcel-tariff-on-china-shipments https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-10/trump-aga...
- roxolotl 1y agoWow I’m genuinely surprised that’s not getting more press. That’s absolutely going to shock the hell out of some people.
- nebula8804 1y agoIts going to be great. I can't wait to see how MAGA explains this one away. Eventually the pain will be enough that hopefully the bubble breaks with some of them.
- bufferoverflow 1y agoI used to buy a lot from Temu. Till I got a product that fell apart after three months. I tried to leave a bad review, but Temu wouldn't allow it. If you're trying to leave 3 star rating or below, they redirect you to customer service. But since customer service only dealt with items under 45 days (as far as I remember), they would just tell me something like "too bad, you're out of luck". So I can't get a refund, I can't get a replacement, I can't leave bad review. This was very eye-opening to me. I immediately uninstalled their stupid app.
- mattigames 1y agoThe closest thing to Amazon made in Latin America is almost the same thing, I'm talking of course about Mercadolibre.com, you can ask a refund for a product but if you do you cannot leave a review at all, and the products with bad scores have their scores and their reviews hidden, that's why is impossible to find a single product with less than 4 stars, and they have millions of them, it's as shady as it gets.
- wredcoll 1y agoWhats the goal here? Like, with amazon they don't own most of the products they sell, so presumably leaving a bad review doesn't bother amazon much, but what about temu?
- Freak_NL 1y agoTemu is about offering a convenient hyper fast shopping channel to Chinese manufacturers with customers worldwide, primarily for clothing. A product which sells for months/years and gathers reviews is not part of their vision. Their customers don't need reviews (sales numbers is everything), but the users expect them, so they are there.
- ipsum2 1y agoAliexpress has the same problem, quite frustrating.
- seydor 1y agoi dont know how long temu will last without americans, but it feels surreal that europeans have more buying power than americans
- frankacter 1y agolatest stats I saw had US at ~53%, followed by 12.9% Mexico, 7.4% United Kingdom, 6.4% France, 6.0% Germany, 4.6% Spain & 9.8% Others.
- blitzar 1y agoI don't know how long America will last without temu (or wallmart)
- simianwords 1y agoAmericans definitely have more buying power than Europe. This doesn't look to be true.
- moooo99 1y agoIf you use the PPP adjusted per capita GDP as a comparison metric the US stands about 37% higher than the EU. Considering the baseline tariff of 10% and the substantially higher tariffs for important trading partners the US targets, it may actually even out.
- simianwords 1y agoDoes this include the fact that tariffs negatively affect even the EU GDP?
- baq 1y agoTariffs in the US affect the whole world, not just US or EU - every single GDP goes down, the question is how much. EU gets hit less than the US is more or less a given, but error bars are significant.
- 1y ago
- whatever1 1y agoAds was THE thing that our tech industry was exporting to the world. I was astonished with the people who thought that tech would be not affected by the tariffs.
- fastball 1y agoThat doesn't make sense, as ads are useless without consumption (i.e. imports). We did manage to monetize our consumption thru ads though.
- vineyardmike 1y agoThe world is still consuming. Even if the US tariffs everyone else, they still trade amongst themselves. The real risk to our economy is that the rest of the world stops paying for our services and cultural exports.
- Symbiote 1y agoTrump is going to try to pressure other countries into putting tariffs on China etc in return for a trade deal with the USA. Several (EU, Japan and more) have said they won't agree to this.
- jajko 1y agoSometimes, one stands up to the bully even if its not the most convenient thing to do, something about morals and culture. Bully thinks this is some arab market with standalone greedy participants just like himself, while the game is anything but that. Bipolar bully on top just generates random chaos, the best course is to cut oneself off as much as possible as quickly as possible, which is clearly happening behind the curtains
- chvid 1y agoAs far as I know in Europe TEMU sends stuff from local fulfillment centers. So maybe TEMU US can return in that form if the trade conflict settles.
- Symbiote 1y agoThey aim to send 80% from European warehouses, but it's less than a year since they started so there's no figure for the current amount. The tax is the same either way, since they collect VAT for packages sent from China. The advantage is the faster delivery time.
- maxehmookau 1y agoI wonder what the environmental impact of this would be.
- skwee357 1y agoAren't Temu/Shein considered to be ultra-low-quality garbage, mostly? Don't people haul their items in order to promote their useless Instagram/TikTok, so their followers will buy the same ultra-low-quality garbage? Don't get me wrong. I'm in favor of direct access to overseas markets, rather than local distributors slapping 200% margin on Chinese sourced/produced items that you can buy from AliExpress. But I'm not in favor of flooding the market with cheap, toxic, unsafe, non-lasting crap that ends up in landfill in a few weeks or days. So no, I don't feel sorry for Temu.
- lilwobbles 1y agoI don't get this argument. All the cheap, toxic, unsafe, non-lasting crap will still exist, it's just going to be sold on Amazon with 1-day shipping. Consumers want these products and the market just fills the demand. The deregulation that will take place under this administration will lead to even more, toxic, unsafe crap flooding the market, except it'll just be manufactured in the U.S.
- skwee357 1y agoThe same item on Amazon will cost x2/3 times than Temu, if you will be able to find the same item at all, meaning it cuts a big chunk of the potential buyers of the cheap crap. The world would have been a better place if we hadn't been allowed to flood the market with cheap crap. Not only it creates enormous waste, it also means that reputable brands now start to cut corners in order to compete with cheap no name crap.
- pixl97 1y ago>meaning it cuts a big chunk of the potential buyers of the cheap crap. No. Really not much at all. The US cut 330 million or so people out of a market of billions setting it up so the rest of the world starts getting a competitive advantage over the US. >it also means that reputable brands now start to cut corners in order to compete with cheap no name crap. LOLOLOL. You do not think like a capitalist. They didn't go "oh no I have to cut corners". They saw they could cut corners on costs decades ago. China has been building your name brand products for as long half the people on HN have been alive. If you look at Tiktok now, they are out right showing the factories building products you are paying hundreds/thousands for in the US for 20-50 dollars. The US screwed itself with huge consolidations and rent seeking behaviors. We are paying huge amounts for products and not getting the value we deserve.
- varelse 1y ago[dead]
- constantcrying 1y agoI hope temu and the other Chinese companies in that segment stop selling overseas. Their model is just incredibly destructive to the environment, they ship over the lowest quality garbage imaginable and create so much pollution and waste in the process. I also have quite a bit of disdain for people using these sites. Nobody needs this and it is just harmful all around.
- Renaud 1y agoYou will find the exact same items on Amazon, except usually more expensive. There are many items sold on Aliexpress that are of decent quality. I think the point is to buy what you really need, and focus on quality, rather than impulse buying cheap stuff that ends up in the garbage after a month. Our consumerism is hooked onto cheap crap, the factories producing it are only fulfilling the demand.
- bmicraft 1y agoDemand doesn't need to get fulfilled. The people profiting off this are still the other half of the problem.
- 0xEF 1y agoI did an experiment for my blog awhile back that never got written up (lack of time, mostly), but it is was just me ordering about $30US of stuff from Temu to see why they were so aggressively marketing themselves, the app auto-installing on my Samsung smartphone I have for work, etc. The experience left me feeling very, very dirty. The items in question were some small fire sticks for camping, a couple of solar portable power banks, and two small canvas backpacks. Each arrived in separate packages on different days, all shipped from what appeared to be the same CA facility, so right off the bat, we're two strikes against environmental friendliness. The items were, as you'd expect, utter trash. - Fire Sicks: these are those magnesium bars shaped like a little key that you strike with a piece of metal to create a spark, this allowing you to maybe start a fire. Now, I've been starting camp fires without flame for most of my life (probably the only thing I took away from my time in the Boy Scouts), so I've seen plenty of junk products that claim to do the same, but these take the cake. The actual "magnesium" bar was coated in a thick black paint for some reason? And the striking tool is a flimsy piece of aluminum coated in orange paint. Useless. I had to use a bit of sandpaper to remove the paint, giving access to the metal parts of both tools, and even then, the spark created was barely hot enough to catch a pile of dead leaves on fire. I don't know what they actually used to make these, but don't assume they will save your butt in a survival situation - "Solar" Battery Bank: these are just regular USB power banks with a an extremely inefficient photovoltaic panel glued on. It is only capable of powering the green "charging" LED but definitely does not recharge the power bank itself. After I discharged them to see how long it would take to recharge with the solar panel, they sat in direct sunlight for 3 full days before I gave up with no additional power stored. However, they're not a total loss. They still work as you'd expect a regular USB power bank would, rechargeable with a typical micro-USB cord with two outputs to charge your devices. Didn't notice any weird voltages when charging my stuff, either. At the very least, they will not end up in a landfill because I can make use of them on camping trips. - Canvas Backpack: the stitching is a joke, so don't expect to put anything heavy in these. My wife sews as a hobby, ended up deconstructing them and reinforcing them with some proper canvas material that made them way more rugged and able to hold gear (I use one for fishing magnet crap and the other for rock-hounding tools) but we could not help but wonder just how little the workers were paid to paid these garbage bags and what those conditions are like. Their business model is built entirely on selling you garbage you do not need that will likely just be thrown away after a few (if any) uses unless you are more diy, willing to try to find ways to make things work or repurpose them. The entire shopping experience is gamified with spinning wheels and lightning deals, coupons falling from the sky, etc, to the point where it was ridiculous and intrusively preventing from searching for things I wanted to order. It felt like their target audience was the old ladies I see spending 8 hours a day glue to the chair of a slot machine in the local casinos. It was so absurd I felt like was in a cartoon about consumerism and actually experienced guilt for having conducted the experiment.
- 0xbadcafebee 1y agoI first learned about Temu when someone I barely knew messaged me saying they needed me to sign up to Temu under some referral code so they could get bonus points to shop more. They were addicted to shopping, and Temu was the most addictive thing on the internet. Like the Dollar Store, Amazon, slots, and a pyramid scheme, rolled into one.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- pndy 1y agoSpeaking of, anyone else has encountered issues while browsing temu? I'm facing captcha's most of the time. I mean the "slide to move piece into a position" which most of the times fails, after which I'm facing a more "difficult" pick object of color repeated etc. The site also after a while of browsing not logged in pushes me into login page. So I wonder if it's my browser and various adblocking extensions or it's a common thing?
- j16sdiz 1y agoalmost always because your adblocking extensions. They plants cookies and checks for that, and they never have to obverse gpdr. They do cross domain requests to keep those trackers around. adblocking extension hates cross-domain tracking.
- pndy 1y agoDamn, I forgot about cross-domain tracking. I'm either browsing or shopping on every platform in private mode - perhaps that also rolls me onto... the great captcha wall.
- forinti 1y agoThe Temu ads I see are so awful that they totally put me off from even wanting to look at their site.
- 0xTJ 1y agoGood. They're pushing overpriced low-quality junk. If you want to buy from Temu but want a better chance at reasonable prices, shop AliExpress.
- bognition 1y agoNot only that, their ads are incredibly invasive, often taking over the majority of a page.
- RankingMember 1y agoWhoever's doing the "design" on Temu and Ali seems to think all Americans want to feel like they're in Vegas while shopping. It's very obnoxious, to the point that people have created plug-ins to clean things up (e.g. AliTools Shopping Assistant, AliRadar).
- WorldPeas 1y agoThanks for pointing that out. Several times I’ve seen adapters or tools I could use only to click them and it sends me to a sale list I can’t find the original product in. How hard is it to have a grid of clickable jpegs
- arghwhat 1y agoTemu vs. AliExpress is usually a shipment speed vs. cost tradeoff. Their catalogues also differ quite a bit in some areas, so sometimes one has to use one or the other. I feel like AliExpress has improved in this area though, likely due to pressure from Temu.
- 34679 1y agoA few months ago, I had an AliExpress order beat an Amazon order to my house. I wasn't using Prime, but the AliExpress order did ship from China. It took about a week.
- matsemann 1y ago
- grey-area 1y agoInteresting dynamic here with echoes of the .com bubble where there is a huge web of industries all dependent on the current setup continuing and money being available for consumer spending and ads - when that dries up it will impact not just those selling goods imported from China, but everyone in the US. Disrupting US trade quickly with massive global tariffs will cause all sorts of secondary effects like a massive downturn in ad spending - directly affecting companies like Meta and Google who look insulated right now because they don't sell physical products. Not a great time to be dependent on ad revenue.
- flappyeagle 1y agoConclusion is wrong here. There’s plenty of bid for the ad inventory. Google and meta are extremely resilient to this kind of thing
- grey-area 1y agoEven when this kind of thing is a global recession and the end of US supremacy? If they stick with the tariffs we’ll see I guess though it seems likely Trump will have to back down.
- bgnn 1y agoI can't see how can add industry be resilient to recession. Maybe if you switch to selling ads for government propaganda?
- crowcroft 1y agoAdvertising on the whole is not recession proof[1], although in the last two dips Google showed growth in ad revenue[2], and Meta was relatively stable[3]. The first thing that gets cut is 'new channels' and experiments (read: channels that have bad measurable ROI). Pinterest, X, Snap. After that it's the most 'wasteful' brand spending/high cost per reach broadcast media that gets cut. Cinema, local TV, and increasingly nationwide TV. Then when the economy comes back to growth there's a broader recalibration of budgets. Because Google search has a very simple, easy to understand impact on sales they actually grew faster in recessions. Then when the recession ends brands don't see any reason to cut that spending. 1 - https://www.ibisworld.com/us/bed/total-advertising-expenditure/4118/ https://www.ibisworld.com/us/bed/total-advertising-expenditu... 2- https://www.statista.com/statistics/266249/advertising-revenue-of-google/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/266249/advertising-reven... 3 - https://www.statista.com/statistics/268604/annual-revenue-of-facebook/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/268604/annual-revenue-of...
- etchalon 1y agoTemu's whole grift was subsidized products and subsided shipping and both of those things are no longer available why would they continue to worry about the US?
- josefresco 1y agoLot of "good they only sell crap" comments here. Would you guys feel the same about your neighborhood dollar store?
- gaiagraphia 1y agoYes. Your spending is a far more powerful vote than any democratic process. Your society is what it spends on. A society addicted to cheap trash is going to be precisely that. These 'dollar stores' are wealth extraction centres, which don't really provide anything to society other than enriching a dropshipping middle class and foreign exploitative factory owner class. There's very little value being created. I'd far rather support places where purchases have numerous positive externalities, whether it be from labour conditions to promoting curiosity, or from environmental impacts, to building local communities. Society was doing quite ok until the greedy middleman classes decided to render the domestic working classes irrelevant for a little short-term profit, just so we can buy new LED lights, or change our t-shirt collection every week.
- zamalek 1y agoThe dollar store moves into neighborhoods that are impoverished as part of their strategy, and push out family owned businesses and would be competition through extreme saturation. I'd love to see them go. https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/19/business/dollar-general-opposition/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/19/business/dollar-general-oppos...
- mmmlinux 1y agoDollar general is not a "dollar store" where everything costs a dollar. not even dollar tree is that now though...
- margalabargala 1y agoTemu and Shein sell cheap crap. Dollar stores sell cheap crap and destroy communities. So no, I don't feel quite the same about them.
- tantalor 1y ago> shut off Google Shopping ads... App Store ranking subsequently plummeting Are they implying that app store ranking was quid pro quo for ads buys?
- wickedsight 1y agoApp store ranking is based on installs. Ads drive people to install the app. Less ads -> less installs -> lower ranking. Seems like a logical consequence.
- sfmike 1y agoits also seo linkjuice as they are links
- duxup 1y agoI don't know about quid pro quo but those ads are content on the internet so I would assume that would drop SEO and new installs. One of the strange patterns with Google is that quid pro quo is hard to even filter out as in some cases it is actually a natural part of the system. Probably a bad thing.
- ajross 1y agoHN can't stop being HN. Scary article about a global trade war gets interpreted as "Wait, is Google actually behind this?!"
- gruez 1y agoHow does this make sense? Google isn't affiliated with the App Store (note the capitals), and instead it's operated by its competitor.
- zamalek 1y agoI wonder if we can look forward to the end of the letter soup brands on Amazon, it's ridiculously difficult finding real brands in between them. That would be one silver lining in all this mess, at least.
- matt-p 1y agoI mean maybe, but the product will still be made in china.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 1y ago15 different variants of the same product, all obviously cheaply made from the same factory, with varying degrees of quality control and reviews strewn about the various “brands” of the product so that it’s much harder to have a negative review everywhere. Yeah, this sucks. Though the correct thing to do here is to enforce this hygiene on the platforms themselves. They have every resource and means to be able to prevent this kind of thing from happening. It’s just more profitable for them not to
- _heimdall 1y agoI ended up drastically cutting back on Amazon purchases when they started getting flooded with brands like that. Its absolutely on Amazon to maintain quality. There are certain brands and types of products I'll order there because they're just harder to find otherwise, but its mostly a last resort these days given that Amazon doesn't care to curate what is on their "shelves".
- blueboo 1y ago[flagged]
- _heimdall 1y agoI don't think its so easy to pull apart what people are buying and what they want to buy. Amazon has a pretty crippling hold on the online retail industry, and they collect massive amounts of data to decide what to put in front of people. Targeted marketing and the partnership between marketing and psychology is nothing new, it has gotten stronger though. I have a hard time looking at a market run like that as a roughly free market where the successful products indicate what buyers actually want rather than what they were best coerced (or "nudged") into buying.
- apercu 1y agoOh no! anyway..
- thctphr 1y agoGood, happy to see this!
- m3kw9 1y agoNo loss there
- buyucu 1y agoTemu is absolutely amazing. I went from being a frequent Amazon customer in 2020 to not having used Amazon at all in 2024, all thanks to Temu.
- psunavy03 1y ago[flagged]
- rtaylorgarlock 1y agoI'm relatively happy whenever I see negative news about Temu. Call it a bias, though my limited data[0] (itself biased) supports whatever negative perceptions I have towards Temu. The only brand to get 0/100? Why does human exploitation always have to pair with the absolute cheapest prices sourced from developing countries? [0]: https://baptistworldaid.org.au/resources/ethical-fashion-report/ https://baptistworldaid.org.au/resources/ethical-fashion-rep...
- prolly97 1y agoThis might more be a European thing, but over here some of the sellers on marketplaces like Amazon, are linked with organised VAT/Tax fraud. While I can't say it's all, it'll all things being equal, be baked in to the competitive dynamics. Thus undercutting legal operators, or destroying their profit (incentive) to provide good or domestically produced wares. There's a podcast episode from some ML (money laundering) specialists, that make mention of it. https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/trigger-warning/id1448635132?i=1000703477704 https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/trigger-warning/id1448...