I’m curious what sorta finds you guys have had
I bought a big mousepad off ali, and its great. Well made, vibrant colours, stitched edges.
I limit what i buy off ali but it has some things you cant buy elsewhere.
Another one is reflective stickers for my motorbike mags. They were cheap, stuck well and looked legit.
Temu is just driving the social media impulse “buy buy buy you need it buy it now!!” Culture when in reality their stuff is crap, and even for the cheap prices… You probably weren’t going to buy it anyway. They are really striving in being a shitty company that’s bad for us and the planet.
Good video here that explains more of how they’re just manipulating us to buy more: https://youtu.be/7hGD5Cz_now
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/7hGD5Cz_now
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Capitalism in a nutshell. “Yeah it kills the planet and harms others and there may be forced labor involved, but idc, that’s other people’s problems”.
Not guilt tripping btw, just stating facts. I don’t and won’t buy for them.
Their tagline “Shop like a billionaire” makes me sick. Fast fashion and stuff like Temu have become so predatory lately. Fuck FOMO tactics.
TikTok and them just fuel each other to create fake fomo and it’s so crappy. They target kids so hard and take advantage of them wanting to fit in, and get them to just spend money on crap they didn’t need to buy anyway. Not to mention they’ve pushed fashion cycles to be faster to make people think that top they bought 2 months ago is useless and should be thrown out.
The top from 2 months ago frequently does need to be thrown out, because it’s so poorly made it lasts only a couple of washes. Even the waste-pickers in the Ghana landfills don’t want it.
Those platforms are notorious for selling counterfeit products. Whenever you see a deal that seems too good to be true, it more than likely is.
I sometimes use AliExpress for DIY electronics like microcontrollers and other components. An Esp32 usually costs around 8-12 euros in Europe. On AliExpress I buy them for 3 (plus shipping). Its worth it if you are buying more than just a few. Shipping is usually slow but if its not urgent its cheap and so far of good/ decent quality.
I did also buy a small industrial camera on there which did not work. I contacted the seller and after some troubleshooting they agreed to ship a new camera to me (still waiting on that one) but in principle I am satisfied with the service for the price I payed.
I feel like AliExpress and temu aren’t really equivalent. Temu makes it seem like you’re, well I guess the tagline is shop like a billionaire. Aliexpress doesn’t exactly hide the fact it’s a cheap Chinese market.
Aren’t they the same sweatshop slave-labor factory goods though?
Not that it’s possible to completely avoid goods which are made via exploitation, but I assumed they’re just an alternate outlet / search page for the same distributors and factories.
Skeletons in their closet and actively using slave labor are very different things, not that I blame you entirely, it’s not your fault companies like nestle own so fucking much it’s impossible to keep track of.
