Shein childlike sex doll scandal shines light on marketplaces' dark corners

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.

"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, 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.

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 organization 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.

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.

The French Finance Ministry on Friday halted the suspension proceedings of Chinese online retailer Shein initiated last week after the Chinese retailer withdrew all illicit products from its platforms.

The French government started the process to block Shein in France on Wednesday after it found childlike sex dolls and weapons for sale on its site, the same day the fast-fashion retailer opened its first physical shop in a Paris department store. The finance ministry said it would suspend Shein's entire website in France, not just the marketplace, if banned products continue to be found for sale.

On Friday, the French consumer watchdog observed that all the illegal products, including medicines, were no longer on Shein, the ministry said in a statement.

Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu asked the situation to be evaluated again next week, it added. "Shein will remain under close surveillance by state services."

"Shein remains committed to dialogue with the French authorities in order to address the concerns raised and to present the measures we have put in place to continue improving," the company said in a statement.

Judicial proceedings seeking the suspension of the platform are unaffected by Friday's decision, Lecornu said in a separate statement.

The interior ministry has opened a case against Shein in a court in Paris, while a prosecutor has opened four investigations over the sale of the sex dolls, and customs will keep controlling all the goods it has seized.

The French authorities will also investigate other platforms where the sale of illegal products were also spotted, the ministry said.