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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

#391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Gener…

To continue with your example:

Lead tests, and lead-testing labs, stay around by being accurate, reproducible science.

General Mills stays around by putting out wholesome commercials so you buy their slop.

My family and I could eat a total of 10 food products.

You don’t know my life, don’t project yours.

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

#392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Given what we know about the prohibition era and insights about the success in the fight against drug abuse, it's a pretty safe bet.

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

Is it? Even the most successful countries, like Japan and Singapore, seem to have low drug usage despite of criminalization, not because of. Even then, the data is murky, because criminalization of usage incentivizes low self-reporting.

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

#394
post #109

Say what you may of Temu, and I do think more vetting of certain goods is a good idea, but they fill a very real need. In the part of Europe where I live, the choice is only between intermediaries for the same products coming from China. The local intermediaries sell a very limited picking at staggering margins. And when it comes to certain things, like electronic components, the choice is between importing (old) Ame…

But I still think chargers and children's toys are exactly where the line should be drawn

I got a charger with a bluetooth speaker once (not from temu) and it came apart inside the outlet with the prongs sticking out from it.

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

#395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With that thinking, people would still be buying unlabelled arsenic wallpaper. Consumer standards are a net benefit to society. > and people are (incorrectly and dangerously) expecting to be protected now. The general public hasn’t the faintest idea how to differentiate between a safe product and an unsafe one, and they shouldn’t have to

And yet you still have children chewing toxic chunks of gypsum drywall, because people now assume if you can buy it, it’s safe , because their responsibility has been relieved of them.

I'm not understanding your example; as far as I know gypsum/gypsum drywall isn't toxic.

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

#396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The ones which are truly local end up in a "call us to know more" button, no pricing info disclosed. I cannot speak for the specific part of Europe that you are in, but in the professional Photography community, it is common practice to not list prices and instead have a "contact us" option. The reason isn't a, "Look at us, we're so exclusive and fancy!" Rather, if you list a price for various packages, people get…

> Rather, if you list a price for various packages, people get scared off Yet somehow other businesses manage to convey tiered pricing without scaring customers. Imagine trying to book a hotel room but were told to contact them because they have a range of rooms from single bed to honeymoon suite. "We couldn't possibly list all the packages, it would confuse you!" Or try to buy a car, but the dealer refused to list a…

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

#397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The ones which are truly local end up in a "call us to know more" button, no pricing info disclosed. I cannot speak for the specific part of Europe that you are in, but in the professional Photography community, it is common practice to not list prices and instead have a "contact us" option. The reason isn't a, "Look at us, we're so exclusive and fancy!" Rather, if you list a price for various packages, people get…

> Rather, if you list a price for various packages, people get scared off Yet somehow other businesses manage to convey tiered pricing without scaring customers. Imagine trying to book a hotel room but were told to contact them because they have a range of rooms from single bed to honeymoon suite. "We couldn't possibly list all the packages, it would confuse you!" Or try to buy a car, but the dealer refused to list a…

[deleted]

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

#398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I think the point of the parent, correct me if i'm wrong, was precisely that current EU regulations are insufficient in protecting customers and really not a burden to put any product on the market, and that anyone arguing regulation is against the little guy is talking in bad faith.

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

#399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the line should be much earlier than that. But even with this very thin line, like the parent said, the deficient products are everywhere. Just look at the recalls in any major store here (Carrefour, Action, Leclerc). And that's for the main brands/distributors, go into any bazaar or market and you'll find the exact same products you find on Aliexpress/Temu, but with 10x price markup, like the parent said. Do…

> i just don't understand why only Temu is being held responsible of the entire broken capitalist system They are not really. If one of the big brand shop is found importing stuff with fake certificate, they’ll experience the same thing. One of the advantage of the stores you mention is that they have a procedure for recalls, and their responsibility is on the line if they sell faulty goods. Good luck getting anythin…

So, then again, i'm not defending Temu. That being said, i doubt my local supermarkets face any kind of consequences. I mean, i just have to look at the AMAZING list of industrial scandals here in Europe over the last 30 years to know consequences are zero: mad cow, horse meat scandal, Volkswagen emissions, Uber claiming to not be an employer, Nestlé's "mineral" water, Mediator scandal, 2008 subprime crisis, France Télécom management/suicide scandal, etc etc.

I can't name a single executive that was jailed over this period here in France. Yet if the law was applied justly thousands of executives and engineers would rot in jail and the world would arguably be a much better place because it would provide incentives for companies to actually behave and not destroy our planet and livelihoods. So are companies really taking responsibility for the lives they destroy? Not so sure.

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

#400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You sure typed a lot to say 'a few kids are going to get the skin melted off their face by an exploding battery, that's just the cost of doing business!'

Notice that you fail to present any argument and are only retreating into indignation at the existence of the problem. You present no viable solution or counterargument to the criticism of the status quo.

Jail the executives and engineers cutting corners. For some reason, you can spend years in jail for cannabis possession or an online post criticizing Macron or the police, but people who actually commit murder and ecocide by cutting costs in engineering products, or who import such bad-quality products face exactly zero consequences.

Then we can't drink our water, can't eat anything from our soil, sometimes can't even breathe our air. But we are the only ones facing consequences while the rich fuckers are partying on yachts.

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