Online Shopping Has Become a Giant Fake Product Machine
Between knockoffs, artificial reviews and a glut of affiliate marketing, shoppers have no way to tell what is real.
In my bathroom, I have a bottle of snail slime I apply to my face every day. It’s not as weird as it sounds. The snail slime has been formulated into a widely beloved skin-care serum made by the Korean beauty brand COSRX. It was a cult favorite among American skin-care enthusiasts for years before becoming a viral hit in 2023. But what is weird: I have no idea if the product I’m using is real.
Along with the serum’s sudden internet fame came a huge spike in demand. While COSRX worked to ramp up production and distribution to keep the real thing in stock, a flood of counterfeiters rushed in with products in almost identical packaging that claimed to be the real thing. I bought the serum from Amazon twice in the second half of 2023, around the time—unbeknownst to me, a devout user of the product—that the brand was warning the public to be wary of offerings on marketplaces such as Amazon and TikTok Shop, which allow third-party sellers to bring their own inventory and list their own products.