Shein sex doll scandal shines light on marketplaces’ dark corners

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By Helen Reid

LONDON (Reuters) -France’s crackdown on Shein over childlike sex dolls and banned weapons is exposing a perennial problem of online marketplaces: failing to properly police third-party sellers and block sales of counterfeit, illegal, dangerous or simply offensive products.

Online marketplaces – platforms that let multiple vendors display and ship their goods globally – have surged over the past decade, with Amazon, Alibaba, Temu and Shein generating massive revenues by offering consumers a seemingly endless array of low-cost products.

Not all products comply with safety or legal standards.

Amazon was criticised in Britain in 2022 for selling illegal weapons, and in 2018 for selling sex dolls resembling children, the same issues that have caused an uproar in France with the government moving to ban Shein.

“Because marketplaces are not policing the products all the time, you can find lookalikes or even the same products just being sold under a different name again, very briefly after they’ve been taken down,” said Sylvia Maurer, director of advocacy coordination at European consumer organisation BEUC.

“It’s a little bit like fighting windmills.”

Shein was meeting with the European Commission on Friday, a spokesperson for the EU executive said, after France urged the Commission to launch an investigation into the Chinese online retailer under its Digital Services Act law governing online platforms.

VAST MARKETPLACE

Shein, popular with young and lower-income consumers for its ultra-affordable fashion, showcases around 10 million individual items on its website, with the vast majority from third-party vendors rather than its own brand clothes, estimates New York-based ecommerce analyst Juozas Kaziukenas.

“It’s just a massive, massive catalogue from all sorts of different manufacturers and sellers, and things you will find are things no person at Shein has manually reviewed to be on the site – it’s just on the site,” said Kaziukenas.

In a statement to Reuters, Shein said it screens product listings to identify any prohibited goods or policy violations. It said it uses detection tools to help flag potential issues and has more than 900 employees globally working on content moderation.

Amazon said it takes measures to prevent prohibited products from being listed by third-party sellers and continuously monitors its store.

NO ONE TO HOLD ACCOUNTABLE

Marketplaces, as intermediaries, are not liable for the products they sell as they are not the “deemed importer” under European Union law, said Maurer. Her organisation is among those pushing for this to change, in the EU’s upcoming customs reform.

Many foreign suppliers get away with selling on platforms with minimal oversight and no EU-based entity, said Gabriela da Costa, partner at law firm K&L Gates in London.

“This leaves the authorities with no one in the Union to hold accountable, compounded by the practical and resource difficulties of enforcing against massive volumes,” she added.

French authorities are investigating online marketplaces Shein, Temu, AliExpress and Wish for alleged rule breaches that include minors being able to access pornographic content via their marketplaces, the Paris prosecutor said on Tuesday.

France’s crackdown on Shein comes amid growing concern in Europe about online platforms facilitating increased flows of cheap Chinese products into the bloc. 

Shein, Temu, AliExpress, and Amazon Haul send products from Chinese factories direct to consumers without paying customs duties, as the EU waives these for ecommerce parcels under 150 euros ($174.93). Some 4.6 billion low-value ecommerce parcels were imported into the EU in 2024, double the number in 2023.

‘SMALL PARCELS INUNDATING OUR CITIES’

Paris, the global fashion capital, is also increasingly frustrated with platforms selling counterfeit handbags or cosmetics.

“There are, in this massive flow of small parcels inundating our cities and our villages, counterfeit products, unhealthy products and illicit products,” France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said in a radio interview.

France’s Budget Minister Amelie de Montchalin on Friday said customs authorities have examined 100,000 low-value parcels at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport, as the government looks for evidence of illegal products sent by Shein. 

The child-like sex doll is “egregious and easy to point to because it makes headlines, but in reality, the everyday situation we’re dealing with is, for example, a cream that’s not exactly the real deal, but looks legitimate,” said da Costa.

French state-owned postal service La Poste, which last month announced a partnership with Temu, says French consumers are ordering heavily from Chinese platforms, which now account for 20% of its Colissimo parcels – the same share as Amazon.

Temu said its compliance teams work to ensure that products and sellers on its platform meet EU safety and legal requirements. AliExpress said its algorithms detect risky listings which are then reviewed by humans.

($1 = 0.8575 euros)

(Reporting by Helen Reid; additional reporting by Casey Hall in Shanghai, Claude Chendjou in Paris; Editing by Lisa Jucca and Ros Russell)