Shein to face “cyber attack” tonight

French activists are planning to unleash a whirlwind of clicks on Shein to make the fashion giant lose money. They are calling for a massive “hack” of the Chinese e-commerce giant this evening.

Attack on ads

In truth, it has little to do with “hacking”, but that is how French activists from The Good Goods are presenting their action against Shein. They are calling on consumers to click on Shein’s sponsored search results on Google and elsewhere tonight.

The aim is to make Shein lose money by letting it pay for the advertising results, without the online fashion shop making any profit from it. Shein pays Google (and search engines in general) a lot of money to have its products appear first in search results, The Good Goods explains on Instagram.

“Wave of outrage”

“Every time you click, the brand is charged an amount by the search engine called the cost per click (CPC). For example: for 100 people who click through at a CPC of 0.25 euros, the acquisition cost is 25 euros for 100 potential customers and becomes profitable if the people who buy accumulate at least 25 euros in purchases”, according to the campaign.

“On the other hand, if 100 people click but no-one buys, Shein loses 25 euros… Perhaps you can see where we are going with this. We would like you to click dozens of times, without buying, at the same time”, the message reads. The initiators hope to attract 500,000 activists and to lose Shein more than a million euros.

However, the campaign also raises critical questions: according to some reactions, Shein is far from paying 25 cents per click, while the initiators themselves realise that they are “enriching the search engines in this way”. The campaign therefore suggests using a search engine other than Google, such as Ecosia, and above all says it wants to “generate a new wave of indignation against the ultra fast fashion model”.