I Exposed Temu's Darkest Secret.
- Hello, my friends, and welcome to the darkest place on the internet, (lightning roars) Temu.com. While it might be filled with happiness, fun and joy, for some, for me, it is an ever-reminding torment of capitalism gone amuck. So let's go buy some new stuff, y'all! I like how I am sitting on the homepage and one of the auto completes is, "Butt flap pajamas."
- [Matt] I know, I modeled for one of those. - I'll say a lot of the Anbernics are actually like 35 bucks. That's pretty cheap.
I actually don't understand this one. This one, it says they've got 38 sold, but no reviews whatsoever. - [Kinsey] Have you ever written a Temu review before? - Oh, I review every item I buy. I just do it in oral form. "Portable 2TB External Hard Drive," but it's absolutely just a dupe of a Samsung T5, for only $19.86.
Now, we looked at something very similar to this from Temu in the past, and that thing was, like, fake. I opened it up and it was like a little USB stick on the inside. (spring boings) 1,600 sold? The sixth best seller in data storage? - [Kinsey] So what do the reviews look like? - It has 64 reviews, four stars. "Excellent, very compact and fast, only complaint is after I showed my wife, she wanted one, she ordered the same one, only $2 cheaper." "Delivered as requested.
It works excellent so far; everything is great." These are not real reviews. No one... Sorry, Fu Manchu, no one writes like that! "Recommend, very nice, works like it should, exactly as described."
"Great for the price, love it." "Excellent, it arrived in good condition, thank you, and it was very fast." - [Kinsey] If you could log into Temu and try- - Yeah. - [Kinsey] Leaving a review for an item that you have bought. So you would be a verified- - Oh, sure! - Purchaser.
- So if I click on Review, it defaults to five stars. They're almost pre-writing my review. All I need to do is click on any of these buttons that I guess are already put there. (mysterious chimes ring) - [Kinsey] Now you see all those patterns? - Oh my God. - Those are on all of these items, not just the obvious scam ones. But also if you look up, you know, random pet items, it'll just say the same thing.
"My cat loved it." - Oh, look at this. I tried to leave the page. "Are you sure you wanna leave?" Click... "Select stars to leave a quick review." I can click one button and rate every single thing in this order five stars.
It's one thing for an obviously fake review to be on a platform, like, every platform has to deal with that to some degree. But Temu are... They're, like, fluffing their numbers.
I'm gonna just write one thing. I'm gonna rate the Shrek thing. There's like extra punctuation in these. Sure, I'm gonna do "100% love it awesome."
Submit. Oh, I accidentally just reviewed everything. (disappointing trombone blurts) - [Kinsey] So how many of the no comment, five-star reviews are- - Accidents. - Someone who got like 20 things, and they wanted to rate one thing that they felt strongly about, perhaps. And they just- - I don't even think I can review one item. This is nefarious.
I really don't like this. Like, this is actually, actively pushing people in the direction of buying products that are fake, misleading, terrible. Maybe not in all cases, but it doesn't matter.
Let me take a closer look at some of these reviews, some of these listings, and see exactly what's going on here. (detective trumpets blow) And so it is time to begin our investigative journalism. And what better way to do that than to wear my investigation attire? Which is why I bought this on Temu for like $9. - [Matt] I think you overspent by 10 bucks, dude. - We have a number of items we have purchased from Temu.
And we're going to compare the items themselves to the reviews. - [Ken] You look like you have pretty high karma on Reddit. (Matt laughs) - Let's begin, shall we? This is an M.2 SSD. The listing made this look pretty much exactly like a Samsung T7. I would say normally the two terabytes were like 200 bucks, something like that? - Something like that. - [Austin] This, however, was the lowly price of, like, 20 bucks? - What? - 20 bucks.
- 20 bucks. This does say "2tb S7." It also says it's a portable SSD enclosure. And it also says hard drive, which...
It's not a hard drive. - [Alex] And for reference, this scored a 4.1 total score on Temu. - It seems pretty good. Oh, well, what the...
(Ken laughing) What the hell? Okay, we have a USB-A to USB-C adapter, as well as a USB-A to micro. Wait, no, we have micro USB. Okay, so we have the T7 itself, or S7, whatever they call it.
And then a little dinky USB. This gotta be USB 2. "Don't shake the body when accessing data with a mobile hard disk."
- [Ken] That's something that they teach you as soon as you're a parent, right? (thingies ring) - Wait, it's not a hard drive, is it? - [Ken] I mean, if you're hearing something loose, maybe there's a screw in there. - I'm gonna crack this open, but let's go ahead and actually plug it in. See if it actually is two terabytes. This is terrible tolerance. (cable snaps) - Oh. - Ooh.
- And let's connect it to my computer. Hope that it's not immediately overwhelmed with malware. And see what we've got. Oh, I like it, immediately. "Do you wanna connect this USB Disk 2.0 to the Mac?"
- [Alex] That's line number one already. - Yep. Sure, we'll connect it. So it shows us ExFAT, 2.1 terabytes. So, normally, when you buy a two-terabyte drive, it's actually like, what? Like 1.8 terabytes or something after it's been formatted. Let's do this, let's just try a disk speed test real quick.
Oh, we're getting 82 megabytes a second. And it stopped. And 70 and then 50.
That is... I've never seen the speed test act so weirdly. 30 megabytes a second. What is this, a USB 2? Flash drive from the year 2003? Look, it froze the disk speed test. My suspicion is that this is not a two-terabyte SSD inside, but instead a little USB flash drive that could be like 30 gigs, or 64 gigs, or something. And what they'll do is they'll just format it with some trickery to make it look like two terabytes.
- [Alex] Are you saying that 2000 people who left reviews are wrong? That they're all liars? - Yes, that's what I'm insinuating. So I'm now using a known, good USB Type C. It should be at least good for 500 megabytes a second. Not showing up, that's great. Strap in, my friends.
We're about to do some questionable activities together. But what else is new? I mean, you saw the hat, you didn't click away, so... (wind whooshes) - We're gonna...
We're gonna cut this bad boy open. (saw whirring) Okay, I didn't actually expect this to be metal. - This is much more well-built than I expected for 20 bucks. - It is smoking on the inside.
- Excellent. - Oh. - You cutting the... Why would you do that? Don't smell the fumes! (pocket knife snaps) - Ooh. - Oh, it snapped the knife! - No! - Wow. - Well, now that $20 drive costs us $120, so... - There we go.
And look at that, absolute scam. It is just a little USB-C to USB-A adapter plate, and then it's just a flash drive. How many fake reviews were there on this? - [Alex] Hundreds, thousands of fake reviews on this. - They're lying to you, they are all lying to you.
This is a 50-cent USB stick in a... I'll be generous to say, $3 enclosure. And importantly, it ruined Matt's pocket knife. (wind whooshes) So inside we have... The bird whistle? Wait, this is the bird whistle? - [Alex] Correct, that is a bird whistle. (Matt and Alex whistling) - It's a lovebird whistle.
As I open this, would you so carefully illuminate me on why this is what it is? Because I did not think it was gonna be this small. - [Alex] It is one of those things where you stick it on your tongue, and then you, like, blow into it a certain way. - [Ken] Oh hell, he just keeps talking and he's- - The gifs... I just see the gifs in real time.
- Yeah. (Matt laughing) - So I need to wet it for one minute with my tongue or wet it- - None of this sounds real. - [Alex] I will say the description for this is- (Austin blows raspberry) (all laugh) Have you never made a love call before? You always gotta wet it for a minute. - Alex! - What? That's what it says! - What? That's that- - - That's what it says. - I'll say, "Don't put things from Temu in your mouth." - [Alex] I will say some of these reviews are very odd.
(Austin laughs) - This- - Are they written by birds? - [Alex] "Hey, I got this for Christmas. The alarm clock is set up to read the time in the ceiling." - All right.
(Austin sprays) - Oh God. That's... Are you sure this is not a snake caller? (Austin hissing) See, here's- - Oh my god, that's a lot of spit.
That's- - What am I supposed to do? - [Ken] Okay, you laugh, but when we leave the office today, there's gonna be a million pigeons out our door. (all laugh) - [Alex] All right, do you want the video? - Yeah, gimme the video. (example whistling gracefully) (Austin bumbling) - I don't know, I'm (indistinct). Okay, so I'll give a slight pass on this one 'cause I can't do it, but I will just freely admit that maybe that's user error. My tongue tastes like metal. I can see the class action lawsuit phone number now.
(wind whooshes) (subtle upbeat music) - Wow. - Whoa. - That doesn't work anymore. - All right, well, ha! - [Ken] We didn't even have to do that ourselves. - Hey-oh! So this is an R365 Game Console. I've used Anbernics before.
In fact, this is a 365, I think I've actually looked at this particular one in the past. Now, the question with this one's more so on the reviews being a little over-ambitious, perhaps? This was pretty affordable, right? This was well less than a hundred bucks. - [Alex] Yes, this was $35. - Oh, I like that. Oh, I like that a lot.
So we've got dual USB-C on the bottom as well as the headphone jack. You've got yourself D-Pad, X, Y... Oh, even the buttons feel nice? You do have dual micro SD cards. So, one of which is empty, but the other one does look like it is already loaded.
Dude, this actually might be really solid. Like, maybe we actually found something good. - [Ken] It says it has 20,021 games. - Oh, there you go. (Alex laughs)
- I will say this screen is actually terrific. The fact this was really... How much? 30 what? - 35. - $35? I mean, unless this thing catches on fire in my hand in the next five minutes, I don't think there's any way you can say this is not worth 35 bucks. Oh, it even has box art and screenshot. Dude, this is actually nice.
I mean this, I will say, for a Game Boy game, this is terrific. I mean, it looks nice. Lemme actually try something else.
This has all the way up to, like, Dreamcast and PSP. I know Dreamcast is not gonna work that well. Should we try PlayStation? How do I go... Oh, B is A.
Oh, of course, 'cause PlayStation. Naughty Dog have come a long way. - [Ken] Yeah, from ripping off "Mario Kart". (scoffs)
- I mean, dude, there's no question. This thing is A+ tier. Like, the fact that it comes with the ROMs, okay, cool. You can debate that or not, but look, if you really don't want the ROMs, you wanna be... Stay on the good side of Nintendo Legal Department... I don't know, just load your own ROMs, right? I will give Temu props on this one.
This is an item that fully deserves its sterling rating. And I'm gonna put it in my pocket if this pocket was real. Is it real? It is real, excellent.
(wind whooshes) I own two trophies that I have won legitimately in my life. I won a prestigious fishing tournament in 1998. - [Ken] That is the most- - And- - Missouri-ass thing- I won again in 2001. - Man- - You didn't have electricity back then, so what else you gonna do? - So this is a fish pen. So anytime, anywhere you get the urge to catch yourself a very small, little fish, this is it. I'm realizing that it does not have any line on it, so that's a little bit of a problem.
It amusingly looks like an enormous pen. It is... - Oh my god. - A fishing rod with a... (bells ring) What are we doing here? What are we doing? - I prefer my fishing tool. - What the hell's that? - Oh, that's the better one. - Like a harpoon gun? - What? - Yeah, my favorite- - Oh, oh, oh, oh! - Hey.
- Okay, this is making dramatically more sense now. - [Alex] I would like to read to you my favorite review. - Please do. - [Alex] It says that it is load-bearing of one kilogram at max, "But I caught a three kilogram fish," and he included a photo. And this photo of this fish is basically, like, the size of his leg. - Oh. - Aye!
(gun clicks) (glass shatters) - Oh shoot. - I have assembled my rod. So I'm ready if I had some fishing line to get it set. So, basically you have to open up the pen. The pen part, I think just- - Trying to give you a fishing line.
- Oh, thank you. - [Matt] I won a fishing competition, but I had a... - I said 1998! - I had a... - Forget the 1998 part? - A servant boy to... - Nah, my dad helped me. I'm gonna need to cut that line.
- Well, I would cut something (Austin laughs) if I had a knife. Behold, my friends. - Ooh. - This used to be a pen and now it is a mediocre-at-best rod and reel. Now, do you wanna be the fish? - What do you mean by that? - Don't you want that, don't you want that? You can probably just grab it with your hands.
You don't have to put in your mouth. - I got him! (grunts) (Alex laughs) (Austin struggles) - I don't think he's going anywhere with this. (Alex laughs) (Austin struggles) - I could be reeling right now. - He does look like it has some give though. - I'm pulling, right? - Ooh. - Like, there's some real force here.
This is actually, legitimately, a decent little fishing rod. - [Alex] 'Cause I mean, wouldn't fish also, like, fight? - Yeah, of course. - Yeah, yeah. So yeah, you need a little bit of force to compensate for that too. - Wait for you to get tired and then start reeling again. Reeling him in.
(Ken laughing) How much was this delightful little fishing rod? - [Alex] It was $9. - This is absolutely worth $9. Like, is it gonna take you, like, five minutes to set it up and tear it apart every time? Yes. But this is actually high quality. Like, I will say this is way better than you would think for nine bucks.
Clearly there are some things that actually do have value on Temu. The unfortunate part of that is that the reviews don't really tell you that much. If it's super positive, that could just mean that it's a great product, or it's a terrible product and that it is a complete scam.
You never know! (wind whooshes) Temu is a place that you can buy headphones that have the words "Hi-Fi" in them. Is that something you can trust? Not usually. How are these advertised? 'Cause I feel like they were making some promises here. - [Alex] Yeah, I think the biggest claim is that these are very good noise-canceling headphones, with a detached screen. - I mean, I will say they passed the initial test, which is that they don't feel incredibly light.
It actually is a detachable screen. (screen clacks) - Oh. - I have paired the headphones, so they're now paired to my phone. And you can see the little screen. Unfortunately, the screen doesn't do anything.
Oh, it does. Oh, okay. Wow, this hat is unfortunately not going to work. Oh, you know what I can do? I can take off the screen and I can just control it from here.
- Yeah. - So let's just pull up some music on my phone. So it is actually syncing so I can see the title. There's actually not terrible ANC. That's kinda surprising. How much are these headphones? - [Alex] It was like $41.
- Okay, so still pretty reasonably priced, especially considering you got your little magnetic screen. I mean, it is, I don't know. I would give it like a C+. It's not bad.
Unfortunately the audio is not great. It is bass! - [Alex] That explains one of the reviews that says the bass was chef's kiss. I mean, do you think that it's worth the 4.8? - No, these are like 3.5 stars to me. Sorry, I gotta put this back on or no one's gonna take me seriously.
- [Ken] Oh yeah, it was the hat. (wind whooshes) - A few years ago we did a video evaluating some spy gadgets, and we used something that, theoretically, is quite similar to this. An intelligent detector. You might call this a little paranoid, but I think it's perfectly reasonable if you're concerned about maybe some hidden cameras or an AirTag lurking in your Airbnb or whatever the case is. So you wanna buy a little gadget to see if you can find stuff. It does have USB-C, which is nice.
Oh, and we got our antenna. That's- - A little guy. - [Alex] That is... That's too small. - He's just a little guy! - [Ken] He's adorable.
- How much (detector beeps) was... (detector ringing) This? - Oh, well, we found something! - It's detected... Oh, it's detecting me. - No. - I'm so smart, you know? - [Matt] No, actually you have it in silly little goose mode.
(detector beeping) (echo booms) - Elementary. - [Alex] So this is $13, and it is the number 12 bestseller on all of Temu. (detector beeping) - Really? - What? - [Alex] Yeah, and the aggregate rating is 4.6. - I will say that the reviews for this one I'm gonna treat with a little bit of extra caution.
Maybe people who are buying Temu gadget detectors are gonna be a little bit inclined to believe that they're being spied upon. Unlike me. I'm very confident that no one's watching me at all right now.
So I have a little red light, which I guess the idea with this one is that it's going to help you spot, like, little hidden cameras. But can we actually go ahead and dim the lights? - [Ken] This is not a hidden camera. I am literally holding it. - I see a camera right here. - [Ken] I'm literally holding it! - [Matt] That camera is bigger than you. (subtle inquisitive music) (bell rings) - Yeah. - Okay, no, no. (bell rings)
But here... Here, here, here, here. So those are Meta Ray-Bans, by the way. So there are lenses- - Yeah. - [Ken] On the front, like, camera lenses.
- [Austin] I will say that's not reflective. - I mean, I guess I do see the- - Probably not great for the lens... The camera to be doing that, but... - Oh geez. - Oh God. - So I've got a white light so I can- - Is that just a flashlight? - I got a flashlight where I can determine nefarious activities.
The idea with the lights, I think, is that you want to see, like, maybe, like, the reflection of, like, a camera lens. This is obviously just a light so you can look for things, that's not that special. But what is, is the RF detection. Theoretically, if I arm it correctly, it's gonna beep when I'm near a Wi-Fi device, or Bluetooth, or GPS. My thought, and this is just a thought, is that it's probably just gonna go off because there's Wi-Fi everywhere.
But let's see. So let's see if I'll detect the mic. So I'm gonna show the pack. (detector beeps) Okay, it does see a pack. - [Matt] You are literally standing underneath the router. (detector beeping) - [Alex] And a camera, and a mic.
- So, can it detect your Apple Watch? (detector beeping) It does. Okay. - Meta Ray-Bans. (detector beeping) (detector beeping) Well, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I... - I mean, this does seem to work. The problem is though, is it's also just beeping in general.
Like, what about the cubes? Yeah, it detects the cubes. (Alex laughs) - Okay. - So it's a metal detector. (Alex chuckles) - Maybe if you're in an area where you really wanna double check, this might lead you to, like, something like an AirTag or something. But the problem is it goes off so much for almost anything around you that... Yeah, you could adjust the sensitivity. It might help you a little bit.
The light's fine. I mean, for 13 bucks, whatever. - It might be one of those things that, like, it goes off so frequently that it scares people into thinking it works. Oh my God, I found something immediately! - Yeah. I'm gonna say two stars.
- [Ken] Are there good reviews for this? Like, any good, like- - All of these- - Actual things? Everyone- - No, I mean- - Yeah. - I mean, like, what are people saying about it? - [Alex] A large portion of these people have bought it again to gift to other people. "I think it works from any frequency, from 1 Mega Hert to 6 or 8 Mega Hertz" or something like that. So it's like- - Oh man, I hate the six megahertz range. - [Ken] God forbid you find 5G. (echo booms) - That's why it's going off everywhere! They installed 5G in the studio! After seeing exactly what kind of products I got, after following these suspicious reviews, I wanted to sit down and talk with an expert.
- I'm Sandy Jap. I'm the Sarah Beth Brown Professor of Marketing at Emory University in the Goizueta Business School I'm gonna quiz you, Austin. - Yeah, yeah, let's do it. - What percent of online reviews do you believe are fake? - 50%? - The actual number is about 42%. - Who is leaving the fake reviews? Is it the sellers of the product? - There were many companies that you can just hire to beef up your reviews.
You pay them, they pay others. So it's an industry. And the good news in all of this is that there's research and there's knowledge going on and it's getting shared constantly. So, what our work did is we kind of looked at what are the ways that consumers see information as trustworthy? So when they see reviews where, all five stars, there's nothing else but five stars, right? People get suspicious. You're nodding your head. But then when you look at the words, if it's actually negative, right? You're nodding your head again.
Sites like Temu and Alibaba... Once you kinda move outside the United States and kinda outside our regulations and our expectations, you're kind of in Wonderland, right? So I would say, tread very carefully, right? Because it's the Wild West. Anything can happen.
(wind whooshes) - Okay, so that's a lot. Let's break it down. Online reviews have been around for a long time. In the early days of the internet, back when buying something on a website and having it shipped to you was still fairly new and a little scary for most people, reviews were a way of showing legitimacy. It gave you a signal that an online company was legit, or how trustworthy individual sellers on platforms like eBay were. Over the years, online reviews have become the most common way to learn about all kinds of products, restaurants, basically anything that you couldn't immediately just look at and try for yourself.
Now, this is a great resource, except, as we all know, you can never have anything nice on the internet. It wasn't long before people realized that you could just post positive reviews to skew the results, making things or places seem better than they actually are. I was reading a review for Area 51 the other day, but when I showed up, a bunch of people with guns told me to go (censored) myself, so I figured maybe I'd go to area 52. No, it was actually 4.5 stars, pretty good, mm-mm, mm. It all started out pretty simple: just hire people to post reviews. But just as companies and customers started catching on, the nefarious actors stepped it up.
They sent products out so that fake reviewers could write more convincing reviews, and maybe even included some minor negatives. You know, like, tiny downsides that didn't matter at all, just to add that icing to the fake review cake. Well, fast forward to today, and we've graduated to straight up bribing customers for positive reviews. Several times when I've purchased items from stores such as Amazon, I'll get a little thing saying, "Hey, get a gift card if you leave us a review." I mean, who wouldn't wanna get a free gift card just to leave a quick little review on Amazon? And maybe the scariest final boss of fake reviews are the ones written by AI. (wind whooshes)
So let's start on Temu. I'm gonna pick a random product and I'm gonna use Copilot to write me a review. How about this? The R365S retro handheld. It's good, but if I was a nefarious actor and I wanna ignore this whole "Reviews are from verified purchases" tag. Let's see if I can use Copilot to write a review for me. So I'm gonna go ahead and paste this in and say, "I just bought this product.
Help me write a positive review." Five stars! "I recently purchased the Retro R365 handheld game," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It wrote the whole thing in, like, literally one second.
"It's a fantastic blend of nostalgia and modern convenience. Happy gaming!" This is actually a good review- But let's say, "Make it shorter and less professional." "This little console is awesome!" I mean, you see how fast this is? It's even pulling out a lot of the specifics, of like, the 128GB storage, which you can see is included with the little 128GB micro SD card. Like, these all reviews seem legitimate enough, but if you compare it to what I got from Copilot, I do not immediately notice that that's not a real review. Like, that seems close enough that if I was reading an Amazon page or Temu page and I saw this review, I'd be like, "Oh, you know what? That person really likes it." Do you see why I'm worried about this? (boomerang whooshes) Now, you might be asking, "Are we cooked?" For now, most of the fake reviews still seem to be the good old-fashioned spam farms that use really generic language and are there just to skew the aggregate review total.
Those reviews are fairly easy to spot if you dig a little deeper. They're usually pretty non-specific, using broad terms that could be used for any product in that category. Like, "Oh boy, I loved it."
Or, "Wow, what a great screen." I'm not sure why Mickey Mouse is leaving reviews. Now, you can go the extra mile and click on a reviewer's profile and if it looks like they only review really weird things and it all looks fake. Well, guess what? They're a hired gun, just there to farm reviews and bounce. Okay, we've cleared out the obviously fake reviews.
Now we're getting to the sophisticated stuff. There will be reviews that might pass all the checks we've already talked about, but there are still two things to be careful of: an overly positive tone, and weirdly technical statements. If a review sounds like you're just reading the marketing material from the company, or they're just generally trying to sell you on a product maybe a little too hard, as opposed to listing their experience, that's a little bit of a red flag. Now look, I will be very clear there are many helpful reviewers online that do their own testing and post on stores such as Amazon. But as we've seen from many examples, sometimes people just use fancy technical words that make absolutely no sense, just so they seem like they know what they're talking about.
So what now? Do we just ignore all online reviews because we can't tell what's real and what's fake? Not necessarily. I do think that the top-level aggregate review total, you know, that big number you see when you first scroll through products, is probably not the most accurate. Not only could those reviews have a heavy proportion of fakeness, but some companies will list a basic simple product to get a ton of reviews, and then change the name of the listing to something totally different while keeping the existing reviews. Yikes! Now, I'm not biased or anything, but I honestly do think that the best way to go is to trust independent reviewers.
That would be YouTubers, news sites, blogs, and online journals from reputable sources. If you just wanna skim the reviews for five seconds before buying some nonsense on Temu, be my guest. But if it's a big, important purchase, try to get as many perspectives as possible from as many places as you can. There might not be a foolproof way to get an accurate and unbiased review online, but with a little bit of legwork and a healthy dose of skepticism, we'll get through this together, or you could just subscribe to the Austin Evans Channel and let me do all the work reviewing those questionable purchases so you don't have to. Just saying, it's kinda my job.
(subtle upbeat music)
2025-02-13 17:08
