Thursday, November 25th 2021
France is Trying to Ban Wish by Asking App Stores and Search Engines to Block its Apps and Website
Wish has become something of a phenomenon, in the sense that it has become Europe's go-to place for cheap gadgets, toys, clothing and more, most of which are delivered straight from the PRC to your front door. However, a lot of the products sold on Wish doesn't meet European safety regulations and now France's DGCCRF (direction générale de la concurrence, de la consommation et de la répression des fraudes) or in English, the General Directorate for Competition Policy, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control, are going after Wish for selling substandard and even outright dangerous goods to French consumers.
There is clearly legit reasoning behind it all, as the DGCCRF ordered some 140 different products from Wish - of which most arrived directly from the PRC - and then proceeded to test them to see if they met European safety standards. Out of the 140 products, 45 percent were deemed outright dangerous, although when it came to electronic products, 90 percent were deemed dangerous and 95 percent were not certified for use in Europe. It's not clear how many of the products were electronic products though, which makes it a bit hard to judge how bad the situation really is.
Other products weren't quite as bad, but even on the accessory side, 62 percent of the products were considered dangerous. In all fairness to Wish, Amazon and other online shops where third parties can sell their products directly, are likely to have similar, if not quite as bad issues. Wish is said to be proactively removing sellers that are reported to be selling dangerous products, but apparently this wasn't quite good enough for the DGCCRF, as they feel Wish isn't taking earlier warnings seriously enough.
As such, the DGCCRF has decided to request that the likes of Apple, Google and Microsoft block access to the Wish app, as well as remove Wish from search engines. This obviously only applies to French citizens for the time being, but as France is an EU nation, it's possible that an EU wide blockade of Wish could happen in the future. However, if Wish were to implement the changes the DGCCRF wants to see, the block of Wish to French customers would be removed.
However, in a statement provided by Wish to TechCrunch, it seems like the company doesn't feel that it's responsible to make sure its third party sellers' products meet European standards. Wish also seem to think that they already have a good enough mechanism for removing sellers of poor quality products. Overall, Wish is obviously not happy with what the DGCCRF is doing, as they're losing access to a fairly sizeable market. Time will tell what the long term effect of this disagreement will be, but if nothing else, it might make some more room for shipping other products from the PRC to France.
Source:
TechCrunch
There is clearly legit reasoning behind it all, as the DGCCRF ordered some 140 different products from Wish - of which most arrived directly from the PRC - and then proceeded to test them to see if they met European safety standards. Out of the 140 products, 45 percent were deemed outright dangerous, although when it came to electronic products, 90 percent were deemed dangerous and 95 percent were not certified for use in Europe. It's not clear how many of the products were electronic products though, which makes it a bit hard to judge how bad the situation really is.
As such, the DGCCRF has decided to request that the likes of Apple, Google and Microsoft block access to the Wish app, as well as remove Wish from search engines. This obviously only applies to French citizens for the time being, but as France is an EU nation, it's possible that an EU wide blockade of Wish could happen in the future. However, if Wish were to implement the changes the DGCCRF wants to see, the block of Wish to French customers would be removed.
However, in a statement provided by Wish to TechCrunch, it seems like the company doesn't feel that it's responsible to make sure its third party sellers' products meet European standards. Wish also seem to think that they already have a good enough mechanism for removing sellers of poor quality products. Overall, Wish is obviously not happy with what the DGCCRF is doing, as they're losing access to a fairly sizeable market. Time will tell what the long term effect of this disagreement will be, but if nothing else, it might make some more room for shipping other products from the PRC to France.
47 Comments on France is Trying to Ban Wish by Asking App Stores and Search Engines to Block its Apps and Website
I'm not sharing mine. :D
t. boomer
In 1994, IIRC, I hopped on the internet for the first time and I was still a computer dummy at that time! :(
But, at least since the very-late-1990s, IIRC, I knew how to type addresses, finally. Even if laughably limited, don't remember exactly, LOL. But even then it looked like the internet, was my life!
More true, since 1999, IIRC!
And that's exactly the problem of the internet at its core. There is too much information, and people suck at filtering - doing the right filtering is something for the happy few. I know, it sounds arrogant, but its true. The vast majority is utterly clueless, and new generations aren't exactly better than the last. We can blame education for that, and ourselves. The world online moves faster than our institutions and societies do.
That is at least my argument for saying 'yes, personal responsibility is key' while at the same time saying 'regulation is essential'. We need both, so we have guidelines and less BS.
We can go further, to the general state of consumerism. I see that as but a symptom of where we are in the progression of capitalism. It's a system predicated on some of the very buying and selling patterns that seem to encourage a special kind of ignorance. The behavior needed to make it work, the things we wind up accepting, make us dumb. Or perhaps I should say 'especially shortsighted.' People develop blind spots living in the cultures that bloom from such socioeconomic soil. Thick layers of old skin to shed. But we still aren't heading that way. Some folks are, but it's not enough for individuals to simply be able to see it. As long as consumerism is a dominating force in major societies, there will be things like Wish and so much more. And living in that society, you are almost beholden to the exploitation. Engaging in it and being pulled by it is going to be a matter of course if you have any goals at all. We all perpetuate it as individuals, over the course of just living within this. It's just so much more than anyone can hope to keep track of. The structure we'd have to build to regulate it all effectively would be bigger than the things it regulates, I'm almost betting. I kind of see it as an endless cat and mouse game. Call of Duty: Nazi Zombies. Though the fact that I see it as endless is probably a fallacy of plain human perception. There are many ways it does end, or at least change irreversibly. Global warming being one potential catalyst.
Basically, I think the internet marketplaces for both things and information are just a natural extension of how our society already is. It's not that it's nessesarily outpacing... just as the fastest growing branch on a tree does not 'outpace' the growth of the tree itself. More they are one in the same and what you see online is just a product of how the 'civilized' world as a whole has operated for a long time. It's the next stage AFAIC. I don't know if we can really hope for a different internet without addressing the real world it exists in first. I think if there was somehow some radical change in how economies work, you would see big changes mirrored across the net. Whereas if you try to make the net operate differently than the real world, it eventually gets consumed by the ways of said real world. But that's assuming you can make the leap to see the internet and the real world as one in the same. For me, the internet is not this shadow realm, or some augmentation. It is an actual thing that exists, within the real world. A part of it. Not a discreet space in any sense.
Regarding safety regulations why hasnt Amazon been blocked? the site is rampant with chinese based third party sellers selling cheap electrical products and adaptors without proper fuses, earthing etc.
However, I agree that there seems to be more and more dodgy products from bizarrely named brands on Amazon these days, making it hard to know what is what.
Shite we're gunna end up with government ran stores equivalent to amazon and ebay for every country, arent we?