On January 5, 2022, Xiaohongshu launched the second round of the "false marketing" governance project, and 39 consumer brands, medical beauty institutions and medical beauty product brands suspected of illegal marketing were banned. The scope of this governance has been extended to offline business entities, from consumer goods brands to offline medical beauty institutions and medical beauty supplies brands.
The scope of governance this time is mainly aimed at the medical beauty industry, especially the false content around personal safety, serious adverse effects and misleading users. In addition to medical beauty institutions, consumer products brands including cosmetics, medical beauty, food, and baby products have also been investigated by Xiaohongshu and screened out violators. Searches on the Xiaohongshu site will no longer display notes from these brands or institutions.
International beauty and skincare players, including Neutrogena, Nivea and Dove are among those caught up in the crackdown.
When users search for these brands or institutions, the relevant notes will no longer be displayed. The search results page only displays “This brand is suspected of illegal marketing, relevant content will not be displayed”. Brand flagship stores on the platform still appear to be up and running, however.
In recent years, with the rapid development of social media, "planting grass" or content seeding has become one of the ways for many people to share and taste early adopters. "Growing grass" relies on word-of-mouth and mutual trust. However, some brands and businesses employ professional writers and Internet navy to make up "grass-planting notes" and "Internet celebrity evaluation". This behaviour not only pollutes the content ecology of the Internet platform, but also affects consumers' right to know, damages consumers' rights and interests, and may even damage life safety and physical health. At the same time, this also seriously affected the credibility of the content on Xiaohongshu.
In order to improve this situation, Xiaohongshu has started this governance since December last year. It is believed that the activities will continue, and there is still a long way to go to improve the overall environment of the digital marketing industry.
Xiaohongshu is taking such drastic steps partly also because of new regulatory policies. Read more about our regulatory policies updates and report - December update, November update, October update, Anti-monopoly crackdown, PIPL, Advertising law.
Keep abreast of China marketing chengles and avoid illegal advertisement, contact us to help you.