Fact Check: We Looked Into the Origins of This Video Purporting to Show Workers in a Temu Warehouse

Taija PerryCook
·3 min read
Douyin user @dys9spfh12vc
Douyin user @dys9spfh12vc

Claim:

Video from May 2024 authentically depicts workers in a Temu warehouse.

Rating:

Rating: False
Rating: False

In May 2024, dozens of posts of a video went viral claiming to depict warehouse workers for Temu, a Chinese e-commerce company founded in 2022.

A regular work day at the Temu warehouse
byu/DrFetusRN interestingasfuck

U.K. news site Daily Mail posted the video on TikTok stating that it "allegedly" depicted a Temu warehouse, but as of this writing, Daily Mail had deleted the post. "Not a single thing is that bright orange Temu colour- Daily Mail knows it's not a Temu warehouse, that's why they put allegedly so they don't get called out for making stuff up," one TikTok user wrote. "I don't think that's Temu. They only ship in bags not boxes," another wrote.

Commenters on other platforms were also quick to question the validity of the claim that the warehouse pictured was actually a Temu warehouse, with some saying that it was more likely the sorting room of a Chinese courier company. "This is not Temu," one user on Reddit commented. "This is an old video of backup at a post office in pre-pandemic China."

(Threads user @wtruszczynska)

We looked into the claim and found no proof that the video in question depicts a Temu warehouse. We were unable to determine exactly where or when the video in question was taken. We reached out to Temu directly, and they confirmed the video was misinformation. "The warehouse shown in the video is in no way affiliated with Temu," the media contact for Temu wrote via email.

Using Google's reverse image search, the oldest version of the video we were able to find was uploaded to YouTube on May 6, 2024. Unlike other viral posts of the video, this YouTube video [archived here] has a watermark crediting Douyin (Chinese TikTok) account @dys9spfh12vc.

Douyin user @dys9spfh12vc, who appears to have deleted the video in question, posted another video [archived here] depicting a similar package-processing environment on April 20, 2021.

In sum, because there is no clear evidence that the video in question was taken at a Temu warehouse, the video appears to have been taken and originally posted by a person who did not claim it was taken at a Temu warehouse, and Temu itself confirmed that the video was not in any way affiliated with the company, we rate this claim "False."

Sources:

Chow, Andrew R. 'The Truth About Temu, the Most Downloaded New App in America'. TIME, 29 Dec. 2022, https://time.com/6243738/temu-app-complaints/.

https://www.douyin.com/user/MS4wLjABAAAAz3GGqu_hlSxjYrGyUktD-VwjtfXHaTseLLUXKIXx5pA. Accessed 20 May 2024.

https://www.douyin.com/user/MS4wLjABAAAAz3GGqu_hlSxjYrGyUktD-VwjtfXHaTseLLUXKIXx5pA?modal_id=6998553385418984718. Accessed 20 May 2024.

Threads. https://www.threads.net/@wtruszczynska/post/C60t4NILwXs. Accessed 20 May 2024.

TikTok - Make Your Day. https://www.tiktok.com/@dailymail/video/7369906316447517998. Accessed 20 May 2024.

中国百态. 快遞暴力分揀 告訴我這不是真的 #快遞 #暴力 #中國. 2024. YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmaqtUU7B44.

'[기타] 여러분이 테뮤에서 뭔가를 사면 보이지않는곳에서 벌어지는일'. PGR21.Com, https://ppt21.com/humor/499674. Accessed 20 May 2024.