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this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2023
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My kid and his friends were convinced they would get $100 of free stuff from Temu, but only if they got 10 people to download the app. I tried telling them it was bullshit marketing but since they "heard so and so got $100 then it will work.". I downloaded it just to get them to shut up and deleted it.
Temu. Fucking Temu? It's the dollar store wish.com and that's saying something.
Anyways, it obviously didn't work and haven't heard about Temu since, then I'm pretty sure they realize their mistake.
Temu is legitimately malware. The company had their source dumped and they obfuscated their malware-like practices to avoid Google's automatic detection. I presume they did the same with their iOS client. It is very telling that they have been extremely successful despite the same exact company and team doing this before with another app, Pinduoduo. That's right; same dev team and everything. Temu goes above and beyond the normal surveillance capitalism stuff we are used to and circumvents system security in order to sell your raw data on the market. The entire scheme isn't to build a retail space (although it is doing that as well); it is to get as many people to download the app so they can steal an absurd amount of data which is normally protected.
Pinduoduo is the parent company of Temu. Of course it's going to be the same dev team.
This is like saying you're surprised Instagram shares code and engineers with Facebook.
Referral codes aren't exactly uncommon for new apps, especially if VC money is involved.