Recently, the Chinese social platform Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book) has sparked a wave of criticism after suspending a total of 1,259,709 accounts, causing uproar among users. On December 20th, the topic of “Xiaohongshu account suspensions” trended at the top of Weibo’s hot search list.
On the 20th, many netizens took to social media to report their Xiaohongshu accounts being suspended. Screenshots shared by users revealed three main reasons for the violations:
1. Involvement in mass posting of low-cost, homogeneous content for traffic or profit; 2. Involvement in mass posting of content that does not meet expectations, aims to attract attention, deceive users, and attract interaction; 3. Other content violations against platform rules.
However, many users claimed they had only participated in Xiaohongshu platform activities such as “Get a free cup of milk tea,” “Share a photo of their dog,” or “Recommend a KTV,” and were notified of their accounts being suspended when sharing these posts. Some stated they had not violated any rules and had no prior record of punishment, raising suspicions of mistaken judgment.
On December 19th, Xiaohongshu officially announced that from November 18th to December 16th, their special team for handling “black-gray industrial accounts” had dealt with nearly 1.26 million accounts, including 252 accounts with over 100,000 followers and 4,941 accounts with over 10,000 followers.
The announcement regarding the treatment of “black-gray industrial accounts” on Xiaohongshu was made on November 18th. According to the announcement, a strict crackdown was initiated against “horizontally evaluated black-gray industrial water armies” and “black-gray industrial account matrices.” The head of this special operation stated that this would be the most severe crackdown on black-gray industrial accounts in the history of Xiaohongshu.
Xiaohongshu mentioned that black-gray organizations operate in a multi-account (group) format, systematically disseminating a large number of fake horizontal evaluations or low-quality, homogeneous, or even illegal content, while mutually diverting traffic and directing it outside the platform.
In response to Xiaohongshu’s suspension of nearly 1.26 million accounts, many users demanded explanations on Xiaohongshu’s official customer service Weibo account. Some said, “How should we deal with account reselling? Even normal operations like ours without advertising have been reported as using early-stage nurturing for later monetization. Can’t you make a clear judgment before suspending accounts?” Others expressed frustration, with some opting to deactivate their Xiaohongshu app accounts and stop using the platform.
In response, Xiaohongshu’s platform customer service stated that account penalties are solely based on the severity of the violations and should refer to the notifications received via internal messages. If a penalty duration is specified, it will automatically lift after the stated time, otherwise, it will be permanent.
Since its inception over a decade ago, Xiaohongshu has seen approximately 129 million daily active users and around 339 million monthly active users as of June of this year. According to sources from Zhou Tian Finance, in the fourth quarter of 2024, Xiaohongshu’s daily average search volume reached around 600 million, compared to 300 million in the mid-year of 2023.
Jiemian News reported that since its inception, Xiaohongshu has had a “grass planting” (behavior of recommending good products to entice purchases from others) attribute. However, as the platform has evolved, this advantage has also become a double-edged sword. Especially in the current push for commercialization potential, limiting “soft ads” is a necessary step to increase advertising revenue. This explains why Xiaohongshu’s account suspension actions have become more aggressive.