Temu, a new popular marketplace taking the world by storm is not welcomed by the Indonesian government

The Indonesian government has requested Apple and Google to block the rising Chinese e-commerce app, Temu in their app stores.

The app runs by the PDD Holdings allows customers to connect directly with the manufacturers in China. This creates unhealthy price war between the local vendors and the Chinese factories. Temu’s rapid growth has triggered scrutiny over its low-cost business model of sending parcels to customers from China by several countries.

Budi Arie Setiadi, the Minister of Communication and Information Technology of Indonesia, told Reuters that they fear of the economic impacts of this toxic competition to the country’s small and medium-sized enterprises, as they could be eaten away by a flood of cheap products from China.

The minister said that the digital space should be making the society more productive and profitable. The government will ban the platform if it is destructive. Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, will block any investment made by Temu in the local e-commerce as well.

CNA reported that Temu tried to register to operate in Indonesia thrice but to no avail. As another business is using the same name, hence leads to the rejection.

Is Temu safe?

According to an article by Nord VPN safety concerns have been raised around Temu and its data-gathering practices. A frightening report from Grizzly Research reveals a disturbing truth: once the app is installed, it can grab more user data than it actually needs to function. This isn’t the first time the company has faced unsettling accusations.

For instance, in April 2023, privacy experts raised red flags about the Pinduoduo app, warning that it could collect massive amounts of user data without asking for permission. In a desperate attempt to silence the critics, PDD broke up the team of developers behind the Pinduoduo app and, according to CNN Business, quickly moved many of them to work on the Temu app instead.

Does this mean Temu is dangerous? Not exactly, but it certainly highlights the shady reputation of its parent company and its troubling ways of collecting data. Over the last twenty years, many tech companies have been caught in privacy scandals, but Temu’s ties to China make people in the Western world uneasy about where all that collected data is really going.

For more information, visit Reuters’ article on Indonesia asks Apple, Google to block China’s Temu to protect small merchants.