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Comment by mytailorisrich | Hacker News Reader

> Their preliminary findings indicate that Temu engages in illegal practices like ... gamification of shopping.

It's one thing to protect consumers, it's another to treat them like children by banning everything.

Looking at how much damage gambling debts cause in Asia, I believe it’s pretty reasonable to just ban lootboxes. Both in video games and the sort of gambling that Temu offers.

Same argument could be made for banning alcohol.

Correct. But Temu is complying with the local laws in that aspect by not shipping alcohol to kids.

If alcohol was invented in 2015 it would 100% be banned, we're giving it a pass because it's as old as organised societies.

Last time I checked, the sale and advertising of alcohol is highly regulated in most EU countries.

How is it relavant that some people in Asia suffers from gambling addiction for wether or not to allow companies in EU to provide discounts to customers?

I thought this was about Temu being investigated for offering in-app gambling inside the EU. And then I consider gambling addiction in Asia highly relevant, because Temu is trying to get away with treating EU customers in a way that they'd never dare with Chinese customers, despite the gambling part being equally illegal in both jurisdictions.

I mean the gamification that Temu does is a way to make prices less transparent.

This kind of behavior is explicitly forbidden by market authorities.

I don't see any reason why we should allow it, or why consumers would be better off with this gamification.

This has nothing to do with freedom to do whatever you want, but everything with a seller which is doing everything it can to confuse buyers. A market needs rules. And we should not allow a seller to determine all the rules.

Making them play by the rules is not the same thing as banning.

I am commenting on quote that states that "gamification of shopping" (whatever that means in practice) is illegal. Surely "illegal" means "banned"?

A market requires rules. Allowing the seller to determine all the rules is a bad idea for obvious reasons. Do you have a suggestion of how to do this in a better way than letting an elected government decide about the rules?

Your two replies have nothing to do with my two comments, unfortunately.

Why is "gamification of shopping" banned? EU law is on a slippery slope because under the stated aim of protecting consumers what it is doing is treating us like children and banning anything that the benevolent Commission think is 'bad' for us. This can end very badly for our freedoms (it has started).

Now, I do agree with banning misleading practices and with enforcing information to consumers, but that's quite different: In a free society you make sure that people are informed and then you let them make their own decisions, you don't make those decisions on their behalf which implies that they can't be trusted to make the "correct" decision (with chilling ramifications for the democratic process).

So you do not agree that the gamification of shopping is a misleading practice?

If so, I'm curious why you think that any consumer wants the system to be gamed? And why freedom to game the system should be a right.

Why would gamification be a misleading practice per se?

Obviously the term has nothing to with "gaming the system", which is an expression that essnetially means cheating.

You can go to a casino and play roulette or slots without being misled or cheated. That being the case you can definitely gamify shopping without misleading or cheating customers. If that's the case then people are adults and make their own decisions.

I don't think any sane consumer wants gamification. Can you give an example of why a consumer would want it (other than by being coerced into it by the seller)?

Temu is doing this because they gain from it. So if this were legal, then other sellers might be forced to do it too to remain competitive. Is this really a direction you want to go in?

This argument assumes equal power of parties involved.

Unless you are an organiziation the size of Temu, you either put up with their bullshit or you don't get to buy whatever it is you wanted to buy.

The way out here is using the power of the democratically elected state to put Temu in their place - using democracy to counteract capitalist abuse.

> you either put up with their bullshit or you don't get to buy whatever it is you wanted to buy.

Or you remember that you have free will and that no-one is forcing you to use their app or to buy anything on it...

Also, this was about gamification, not unfair practices...

Gamification is unfair practices.

And yes, I have free will, but that doesn't help me against corporate might. Only the state does.

Gamification is not an unfair practice. Gambling is not an unfair practice.

This is not what "unfair" means.

The EU wants to ban gamification because it sees it as addictive. So this is the nanny state that thinks people are children.

Gamification is a practice to obscure pricing, which makes it unfair.

And of course, the state should do that. That's the whole point of a state - to use its power as a weapon of the people against capitalist abuses.

It does mean banning actors which don't play by the rules. But we can't just deploy thought terminating cliche here, we need to look at what the rules actually are.

Every day I get ads by Temu saying "get this electric bicycle for 0€", "this tablet is available for free" and other very misleading claims. Apparently you have to have bought many other things before in order to save up enough "coins" or whatever to get that, but this is not mentioned in the ads and thus illegal.

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