After a 5-year hiatus, the Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book) has once again stirred controversy for being “filled with child pornography,” sparking widespread attention online. On March 15, the topic labeled “Massive Child Soft Porn Content on Million-User App” briefly trended in the top ten on Weibo.
According to reports from mainland Chinese media on March 15, data from the app market shows that the total number of downloads for the social app Xiaohongshu has reached nearly 30 billion.
In a test conducted by Chinese media reporters, it was found that no real-name authentication was required. Even though the personal information was set as a 15-year-old female, Xiaohongshu still pushed a significant amount of borderline pornographic novels, images, and interactive content to underage users.
On Xiaohongshu, the interactive feature “You Ask, I Answer” has attracted many underage student users. Particularly, interactions with tags like “Middle School Girls Ask Anything” and “Sixth Grade Girls Answer All Questions” have seen numerous users posing questions to these underage female students. These questions touch on not only normal daily life and academics but also include inquiries about menstrual periods, sexual orientation, underwear choices, and even requests for photos of specific body parts.
One user, tagged as an eighth-grade girl, mentioned in a pinned comment that she initiated the “You Ask, I Answer” interaction with the intention of making friends but instead received many inappropriate harassing private messages.
Wu Bo, the managing partner of the Subo Law Firm in Jiangsu Province, expressed to mainland Chinese media that if the users being questioned are indeed minors, such online harassment behavior could potentially violate administrative regulations or even criminal laws.
Apart from the harassment of minors in the interactive sections, Xiaohongshu has also seen some users dressing children in adult provocative clothing or posing in an adult manner to promote products and attract traffic on the platform. There were even instances where children in diapers were featured in nude photos on push notifications. Comments on these posts clearly pointed out the content as “borderline” and “sexualizing children,” with some users opposing the trend of child sexualization.
Yin Fei, the deputy dean of the Family Education Research Institute at Nanjing Normal University, stated, “Because many of the contents are adult-oriented and involve the public disclosure of personal life, this is extremely detrimental to the protection of minors.”
Further investigations revealed that child soft pornography has become a “bait” for some users to gain more traffic. Some netizens exposed that adult users deliberately used underage identities to participate in interactions in order to gain attention. There were also suspicions about adult users deliberately dressing up as young children and posting borderline photos or videos.
In response to these issues, netizens commented, “Indeed, I have previously complained and they stopped pushing such content to me.” “Meituan, Dianping, and the adult gray porn industry have even more issues.” “Kuaishou is even more outrageous.” “It is recommended to rectify all platforms including certain music apps, Xiaohongshu, certain blogs, and certain forums.” “How did these key platforms pass the review?” “For the sake of making money without any bottom line, normal users might get banned for posting a regular check-in post, but turning a blind eye to the borderline behavior and feeding off minors, they find it ‘acceptable’ and should be closed soon.”
Some online users suggested, “This incident should serve as a wake-up call for all parents: activating the underage protection feature is essential.” “The online world is very dangerous, not enabling the protection mode is equivalent to letting children ‘run naked.'”
In March 2021, a blogger exposed online suspicions about the emergence of a child pornography ring on Xiaohongshu. The blogger questioned the decency of some photos being posted, wondering if these images were part of branded soft advertisements or contained “secret signals” of child pornography. On July 21, 2021, Xiaohongshu was summoned for “spreading child soft porn emojis and using suggestive short videos involving minors to attract traffic.” At the time, Xiaohongshu responded by apologizing for the oversight in content moderation and announced the initiation of a new round of minor governance campaigns.
In September 2021, Mr. Jiang, a parent of a primary school student, discovered that while searching for family-friendly content on the Xiaohongshu app, he was persistently served with short videos containing a significant amount of minors’ daily lives. Eventually, an increasing number of videos revealing minors’ bodily privacy were pushed to his feed.