The investigation will look into Temu’s content material and product recommender programs in addition to the sale of unlawful merchandise on the platform.
The European Fee opened formal proceedings towards Temu to evaluate whether or not the Chinese language on-line retailer could have breached the EU Digital Providers Act (DSA).
On 11 October, the Fee requested info from Temu relating to the mitigation efforts it has put in place towards unlawful product buying and selling on its platform, in addition to the dangers arising from the platform to shopper safety, public well being and customers’ wellbeing.
It additionally requested Temu for info on its recommender programs and the dangers to the safety of customers’ private knowledge.
The investigation, introduced immediately (31 October), adopted an evaluation of the corporate’s response to the Fee’s request for info a number of weeks in the past, in addition to Temu’s danger evaluation report together with info shared by third events.
The Fee mentioned it additionally relied on info shared by member states’ digital companies coordinators, particularly, Eire’s Coimisiún na Meán, to return to its determination on the formal investigation.
In line with the Fee, the investigation will deal with the sale of unlawful merchandise on Temu, in addition to the retailer’s built-in system to restrict the reappearance of beforehand suspended sellers who offered unlawful merchandise.
As well as, the EU authority may even look into the dangers related to the addictive design of the platform, together with the “game-like” reward programmes.
Temu, with a month-to-month person base of 75m, was designated as a very giant on-line platform beneath the DSA earlier this yr, which signifies that the corporate is topic to the “most stringent guidelines” beneath the Act in addition to being topic to sure obligations beneath the Act.
The formal proceedings opened immediately, as well as, will examine Temu’s DSA obligations linked to its content material and merchandise recommender programs in addition to its obligation to provide researchers entry to its publicly accessible knowledge.
The proceedings, which the Fee referred to as a “matter of precedence”, don’t have a deadline and will have drastic outcomes for Temu, which may very well be fined wherever as much as 6pc of its world annual turnover if discovered non-compliant.
This, nevertheless, is just not the primary time Temu has come beneath the EU’s radar. In July, e-commerce giants Temu and Shein had been despatched formal requests for info on the measures they’ve taken to adjust to DSA obligations on person stories on unlawful merchandise in addition to defending kids on its platform.
Earlier this yr, the EU used the DSA to go after Amazon, requesting that the web retail large Amazon share info relating to the transparency of its recommender programs and their parameters. These are algorithms that recommend content material to customers based mostly on knowledge it has gathered about these explicit customers.
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