The European Commission (EC) has opened an inquiry into Shein under the auspices of the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA). The allegations are three:
- addictive design
- non-transparent recommender systems
- sale of illegal products (e.g., “child-like sex dolls”)
The inquiry follows on preliminary analyses of Shein’s own risk-assessment reports and replies to EC requests for information and on information from third parties.
The proceedings are, say the EC, “complementary to the ongoing coordinated action regarding Shein’s compliance with its obligations under consumer law, led by the Consumer Protection Cooperation (CPC) Network of national consumer protection authorities […].” They are also “without prejudice to actions and measures of market surveillance authorities concerning the enforcement of the General Product Safety Regulation (GPSR), including the follow-up to the first product safety sweep focusing on childcare articles carried out in 2025.”
Other cases
Also under EC investigation for violations of the DSA is another China-rooted specialist in fast-fashion: Temu. The allegations against it, made in October 2024, are all but identical to those against Shein:
- sale of non-compliant or illegal products
- addictive design
- non-transparent recommender systems
- lack of access to public data for researchers
EU regulators raided Temu’s European headquarters (Dublin) this past December.
Still other companies under investigation for DSA violations are X (the former Twitter), TikTok and Meta.
The problem of design
Often at issue in these inquiries are “dark patterns,” or “dark commercial patterns.” The latter term is in use at the OECD, which (in a 96-page report) breaks them down into seven categories:
- forced action (e.g., forcing the disclosure of more personal data than desired)
- interface interference (e.g., visual prominence of options favorable to the business)
- nagging (i.e., repeated requests to change a setting to benefit the business)
- obstruction (e.g., making it hard to cancel a service)
- sneaking (e.g., adding non-optional charges to a transaction at its final stage)
- social proof (e.g., notifications of other consumers’ purchasing activities)
- urgency (e.g., countdown timer indicating the expiry of a deal)
Track record
So far two DSA-related investigations have been closed, and no company yet has come out clean in the investigators’ estimation.
In August 2024 the EC obliged TikTok to withdraw its Light Rewards program from the EU for all time and extracted a pledge never to institute any other such program.
Some months later Germany’s Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur), acting in the EC’s stead, obliged the social network Bluesky to make certain disclosures (user numbers, EU contact persons, legal information). With its 20 million users, Bluesky is too small to qualify as a Very Large Online Platform (VLOP), a designation reserved for user bases of 45 million or more. It therefore falls outside of the EC’s jurisdiction and inside that of national agencies.
This past December the EC levied a fine of €120 million on X, which has until March to submit a plan to comply or file an appeal with the EU General Court. According to Reuters, this inquiry remains open on two fronts: how X deals with illegal content (user flagging, social network’s deletions) and algorithmic recommendations (with respect to elections and what the EC qualifies as radicalization/terrorism).
The EC levied fines of €200 and €500 million respectively on Meta and Apple last April, but the grounds were different. Those were antitrust cases under the similarly named Digital Markets Act (DMA).
