Earlier this month, I reported that Temu appeared to be pushing products on Facebook and Instagram through fake creator accounts. Fortune shared the story of Ya Lili, a creator account with 183k Instagram followers and 129k Facebook followers whose content ran in over 100k Temu ad campaigns throughout the 16 months ending in April 2026, which is about 225 campaigns per day. Temu spent as much as $962M on ads like these across all of its “creators” during the same time period in the UK and Europe, according to Online Risk Labs research.
Well, now Fortune reports that Temu has mostly stopped the practice. It originally broke the story on August 31 and said that Temu was running 4,900 separate partnership campaigns a day at the time. However, by September 4, Ya Lili only had five ads appearing on Meta platforms, likely as remnants from previously scheduled ad buys, and the account, which previously posted multiple times per day, had stopped posting entirely on September 7.
ORL manager Vendula Prokůpková told Fortune:
“When you look at their Instagram accounts, you can see that they have not published any new posts/reels since two weeks or so. These are predominantly the accounts based in Russia, with some also based in the United States or China. We also noticed that most of the Instagram accounts of these ‘creators’ no longer display information about the country the account is based in.”
Fortune also reports that Temu maintained its ad budget for “legitimate creators,” but that ads in Ireland, Cyprus, Austria, Denmark, Latvia, and Slovenia ceased almost entirely, according to ORL, which might have to do with laws in those countries against misleading advertising.
Earlier this month I wrote:
“What exactly does ‘fake’ mean anymore? Is Wirecutter ‘fake’ because it’s a team of professionals putting out their product videos instead of just one solo creator? Is MrBeast involved in fraudulent activity for naming his channel after himself and not his entire production crew? Perhaps it’s fair that Temu could be more transparent about their creator accounts, if they’re the ones behind them, but that alone doesn’t necessarily mean they’re doing anything illegal or breaking any platform rules.”
I still have those same questions. What exactly is the problem with a retailer building non-branded channels to promote its own goods? I can name countless other retailers and companies that do the same. I recently discovered an AI company operating 20+ LinkedIn pages about e-commerce, AI, automation, Shopify, etc, and liking / reposting their own posts across each page. Is it illegal? Doubtful, but laws do vary from place to place.
It’s possible that Temu simply stopped the practice because it was exposed, and not because it was doing anything illegal, but the company has yet to comment on the story.
