Pinduoduo, founded by Chinese billionaire and former Google employee Colin Huang in 2015, was originally designed to directly connect farmers with buyers, thereby cutting out the costs associated with selling to distributors. At the time of this reporting, PDD Holdings was worth about $92 billion. PDD Holdings, traded on the New York Stock Exchange, is the corporate entity behind Pinduoduo, China's second most popular eCommerce app.

Neither explanation, however, truly captures the business model of Temu's parent company - PDD Holdings. Temu itself claims that its low prices are enabled by a 'deep network of merchants, logistic partners,' and the parent company's 'established ecosystem built over the years.' Komando's article suggests that the suspiciously low prices offered by Temu are the result of cheap production and manufacturing. Prices are low because the goods are cheap. Snopes will update this article if we receive a response. Temu's parent company - PDD Holdings - did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Here, Snopes explains the origin and veracity of each of these assertions. The USA Today column and similar claims, while rooted in fact, are imprecise and, in some cases, incorrect. In other words, literally everything on your phone. Temu gains full access to all your contacts, calendars and photo albums, plus all your social media accounts, chats and texts. Temu is a Communist China-based app and site.Īs you shop, Temu monitors your activity on other apps, tracks your notifications and location and changes settings. The pictures of what you see advertised may not be what you actually get. That article makes several assertions about the app Temu, advising users to delete the app immediately. Many of these concerns were articulated in an April 2023 USA Today column by cybersecurity writer Kim Komando, which has since been shared widely in the form of copypasta - repeatedly copy-and-pasted text shared without source on social media.

The company's Chinese ownership and opaque corporate structure have also raised cybersecurity, privacy, and national security concerns.

Temu, launched in September 2022, made waves with a pricey Super Bowl ad buy in February 2023 that promoted the company slogan 'shop like a billionaire.' At the time of this reporting, the Temu app was the second most popular free app in Apple's App Store.Īs described in an April 2023 report by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC), 'Temu's success raises flags about its business practices.' The fact that the prices offered are so low has led potential users to wonder if the deals are real or if they are part of a scam operation. Ads for what appear to be unrealistically cheap products sold by the app and website Temu have become ubiquitous online.

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