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EU fines Temu €200M for allowing sale of illegal products

bbc.co.uk

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Re: EU fines Temu €200M for allowing sale of illegal products

#381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's still not proof of victimhood. Only that's imprudent to consume drugs. Also, due to politization of the topic, part of the data is distorted to help sell the war on drugs, which had a much more destructive effect overall, aside from failing in its main goal.

The ""war"" on drugs seems to be pretty successful in some countries where illegal drug usage is quite low compared to others.

Certainly not on the US, or any country where the criminalization is in full force.

Re: EU fines Temu €200M for allowing sale of illegal products

#382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ""war"" on drugs seems to be pretty successful in some countries where illegal drug usage is quite low compared to others.

Certainly not on the US, or any country where the criminalization is in full force.

> Certainly not on the US

We don't know how much higher the drug usage would be if all drugs were legalized.

> or any country where the criminalization is in full force.

That's an extremely general statement which is almost certainly wrong.

Re: EU fines Temu €200M for allowing sale of illegal products

#383
post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're assuming the conclusion. Why is it the marketplace platform who should be the police? Should banks have to audit your life before you can open a bank account? Should you be unable to transact with anyone if you're not rich enough for them to justify that expense? It's not Walmart you're proposing to unperson here.

The sellers are in practice anonymous, and the consumer facing Temu (or Shein, or Aliexpress, etc) very much markets to consumers, yet shirk any responsibility. They are Walmart but ignore the little accountability Walmart faces. Of course Temu is responsible for things I buy in the Temu app, and pay Temu for, which then Temu ships to me.

> The sellers are in practice anonymous, and the consumer facing Temu (or Shein, or Aliexpress, etc) very much markets to consumers, yet shirk any responsibility. They are Walmart but ignore the little accountability Walmart faces.

They are not Walmart.

> Of course Temu is responsible for things I buy in the Temu app, and pay Temu for, which then Temu ships to me.

If you send money to someone in the PayPal app, are they responsible for what you bought? Not just for giving you a refund; for having liability if your house burns down. If the seller keeps their inventory in a rented space, should you be able to sue their landlord? If FedEx delivers a package to you, are they responsible for the regulatory compliance of what's inside?

Consider what would happen if you did that. Could a normal person buy or sell something or rent space or send packages, if the intermediary had to take on liability for anything you do with it?

Re: EU fines Temu €200M for allowing sale of illegal products

#384
post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. I've even had an (Amazon rather than Temu) power-strip-and-USB combo noticeably sparking and tripping the apartment circuit breakers when plugged in just 6 months after purchase.

I was wondering when the EU was going to fine Temu West, aka. Amazon, given they sell things that are just as dangerous.

5 years ago.

Though after enough appeals, Amazon found a court willing to annul the verdict and force the regulator who issued the fine to reexamine: https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/win-amazon-luxembou...

Re: EU fines Temu €200M for allowing sale of illegal products

#385
post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Invoking 1857 is not a valid argument really, cause consumer priorities were different. Cheaper with some level of risk (which today's American, or German would consider excessive) was preferred option hence the market response as it was - at least it's a reasonable guess. In less rich countries it is how things work right now.

Industries dump toxic waste into waterways if they can get away with it in the US today (literally today [0]). I agree that I might not be specifically worried about borax milk if FDA was reversed, but I would absolutely expect risky shortcuts in food offerings. The incentives in the market has never changed. That's what regulation is for, shifting market incentives/forces to favor consumers/society. [0] https://www.…

Please try to distinguish these separate things.

Pollution is an externality. If Alice hires a company to do "Hydro Excavation" and they pollute Bob's water, even if Bob knows all about it and is entirely opposed, he can't prevent it by not patronizing them because he isn't a party to the transaction. So the solution to this has to be to prohibit pollution.

Product safety is about information. When Bob knows that a particular brand of milk is adulterated with chalk, he doesn't buy it. Which means that all you need for this is product labeling and liability. If the ingredients list chalk, the customer who doesn't want chalk doesn't buy it. If the ingredients don't list chalk then the seller is not in compliance if the product contains it. If the battery is unsafe then you can both not purchase it because the reviews concluded it was unsafe or sue them if your house burns down. And the compliance process is simple: You list the actual ingredients on the label and have responsibility for damages caused by your product. No massive regulatory bureaucracy with thousands of pages of rules, just liability for fraud and harm.

The problem for all of these is that the perpetrator has to be in your jurisdiction. If companies in China are emitting copious amounts of CO2, regulations in Europe can't do much about it. If those companies are making unsafe products that end up on the world market, you can't sue them in the US because they have no real presence in the US. But complex product regulations don't solve that either, because they too are subject to the same problem; foreign companies drop ship things that don't comply. Nor does putting the liability in the wrong place, because generic transportation or payments intermediaries are in a worse position than the government itself to be the ones evaluating things that come over the border.

Consider it this way: Why doesn't US customs exclude unsafe products from being imported from other countries? Consider what they would have to do to actually accomplish that.

Re: EU fines Temu €200M for allowing sale of illegal products

#386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t need to know if the plow has lead - I just test the Cheerios. Try again. You can answer the questions the exact same ways the other path uses, yes, and often with more rigor/vigor than just “legal minimum”.

You are believing a lie, then, and seem to have missed the point. You simply cannot have the knowledge to know if everything is safe - no matter what your specialty, there are things you'll have to just trust others for safety. Sure, you might buy a lead test kit that someone else has made, but the only way to know that the test kit works is to monitor your family for lead poisoning unless you have specialized knowle…

Yes, trust is earned.

General Mills hasn’t earned that trust.

I specifically addressed why I don’t need to know what metal is in the plow

to review end-products,

and you chose to ignore that point

and just talk some more.

Re: EU fines Temu €200M for allowing sale of illegal products

#387
post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are generally two ways governments hold companies accountable for dangerous products. The first is liability. If they're selling chargers that burn down houses, they get sued, and they don't want to get sued, so they don't want to sell chargers that burn down houses. The second is regulatory requirements. This one is generally worse. The incumbents capture the regulators to e.g. have the law require their techn…

> Customers expect some products to be dangerous and rely on product reviews to determine which ones. .. which are of course the easiest thing to fake. > then overpriced incumbents use their influence over the laws to target any new supplier that tries to establish a trusted brand, which causes the foreign suppliers to have to sell through dozens of unknown labels so they can continue to dissolve them if any of them…

> .. which are of course the easiest thing to fake.

How do you get Consumer Reports to publish a fake product review? Can you point to even one instance of that actually happening?

> This is not an accurate description of new market entry for .. well, anything?

Huawei is a pretty conspicuous example of it actually happening. They were starting to establish a brand and then regulatory destruction was imposed. Meanwhile there seem to be a huge number of other products from the same country with white labels or rotating unknown brands for some reason even though they probably come out of the same factory.

> And what are the new entrants being prosecuted for? Is it by any chance unsafe products?

That there is a difference between regulatory compliance and actual safety is obviously the point. All the incumbents need is for the rules to be complicated enough that compliance requires you to be a massive bureaucracy, or that nobody is really complying but selective enforcement gets imposed when someone undesirable is starting to look like a real challenger.

Re: EU fines Temu €200M for allowing sale of illegal products

#388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are generally two ways governments hold companies accountable for dangerous products. The first is liability. If they're selling chargers that burn down houses, they get sued, and they don't want to get sued, so they don't want to sell chargers that burn down houses. The second is regulatory requirements. This one is generally worse. The incumbents capture the regulators to e.g. have the law require their techn…

EU CE requirements are generally (outside some universally more regulated domains like medical devices) pretty lightweight to deal with, and pretty sensible. I've gone through them, and honestly the biggest pain is finding the applicable standard. Otherwise you basically just need to follow the standard and write up how you think your design follows it, and stick it into a drawer, most likely never to be seen again.…

How does that help you if someone is drop shipping fire hazards and trying to prosecute them means they just dissolve and create a new shell company?

Also, how does it get you anything over simple liability for fraud and harm? Why does the honest seller have to write a document if nobody is going to look at it and the dishonest one is going to skip doing it anyway?

Re: EU fines Temu €200M for allowing sale of illegal products

#389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t need to know if the plow has lead - I just test the Cheerios. Try again. You can answer the questions the exact same ways the other path uses, yes, and often with more rigor/vigor than just “legal minimum”.

I seriously doubt you check every batch of foodstuffs entering your house.

Good thing that’s not what was claimed!

You don’t need to check every box of Cheerios to know to avoid Cheerios.

I’ll review - as deeply as possible - the supply chains for my meats, produce, etc.

The more local you go, the more possible this becomes.

Re: EU fines Temu €200M for allowing sale of illegal products

#390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are believing a lie, then, and seem to have missed the point. You simply cannot have the knowledge to know if everything is safe - no matter what your specialty, there are things you'll have to just trust others for safety. Sure, you might buy a lead test kit that someone else has made, but the only way to know that the test kit works is to monitor your family for lead poisoning unless you have specialized knowle…

Yes, trust is earned. General Mills hasn’t earned that trust. I specifically addressed why I don’t need to know what metal is in the plow to review end-products, and you chose to ignore that point and just talk some more.

I used the plow as an example in a list of things to illustrate the varied information you need to verify things and to illustrate that you can't simply do research on everything. Maybe you missed that?

You can't trust the company making the lead test kits any more than you can trust General Mills. How would you know the tests are real, especially without a regulating body to verify that stuff?

What if it isn't General Mills and Cheerios? Do you test everything that comes in contact with your food? What is in their plows?

You aren't just testing the Cheerios. You are just choosing to trust one thing instead of another and you simply cannot have time to test all of the Cheerios in addition to the other things in life.

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