Summary
European Union officials propose holding retailers such as Temu, Shein, and Amazon Marketplace accountable for dangerous and illegal products sold to consumers.
A draft proposal requires platforms to provide customs data before goods enter the EU, enabling authorities to inspect shipments and enforce safety standards.
New reforms shift import responsibilities from individual buyers to online platforms, mandating collection of duties, VAT, and compliance with comprehensive strict EU regulations.
Officials warn that these changes could improve consumer safety and reduce harmful imports, while prompting legal debates and challenges for e-commerce firms.
The whole tech ethos seems to be:
I believe it’s called Regulatory Arbitrage - using the time gap between a new technology appearing that allows new ways of doing something which have yet to be Regulated and Lawmakers getting around to regulating it, to run an unregulated (yet legal) business - and indeed as you pointed out it has been the most common business model of the largest startups since at least the 2010s.