Taiwan has announced that it will block access to the popular app Xiaohongshu – known in English as RedNote – for one year after concluding it poses serious cybersecurity risks and had become a hub for fraud.
RedNote is an Instagram-style app used by more than three million people in Taiwan. Users were warned to expect the app to become inoperable within hours of the order being issued to internet service providers on Thursday.
The Taiwanese ministry of digital affairs (MODA) issued a warning earlier in the week about five Chinese platforms – Xiaohongshu, Douyin, Weibo, WeChat and Baidu Wangpan – that it said presented “significant cybersecurity risks”.
The ministry warned that these applications can gather sensitive personal information and potentially transmit it to outside parties without users’ permission. A separate review by the National Security Bureau concluded that Xiaohongshu did not pass any of its cybersecurity tests.
Officials in Taiwan have also previously expressed concern that RedNote could serve as a channel for pro-Beijing messaging or coordinated disinformation efforts – problems the government says it has confronted for many years.
Beijing’s Communist Party maintains that self-governed Taiwan is part of its territory, though the two have been ruled separately since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949. Chinese president Xi Jinping has said he is willing to seize Taiwan by force if necessary, but in the meantime Beijing pursues its goal of “reunification” through other means such as diplomatic pressure and campaigns to influence the Taiwanese public.
The Taiwanese interior ministry said the decision to impose a one-year ban on RedNote stemmed from the app’s unwillingness to engage with regulators. The authorities said they had contacted the operator – Shanghai-based Xingyin Information Technology Co – but received no reply.
“Due to the inability to obtain necessary data in accordance with the law, law enforcement authorities have encountered significant obstacles in investigations, creating a de facto legal vacuum,” the ministry said in a statement.
The ministry also pointed to more than 1,700 fraud cases tied to the platform, which it said had cost victims roughly $7.9m. It said the most common scams linked to RedNote involved counterfeit e-commerce sites, fake instalment-payment cancellations, fraudulent investment pitches, romance fraud, and sexual-content extortion.
Ma Shih-yuan, deputy minister of the interior, said that during the one-year block, officials will track whether the company takes steps to meet Taiwan’s digital-security requirements.
After Thursday’s order, local media reported that some users were seeing a message when they tried to open RedNote that said that the service was unavailable due to “security restrictions”.
The Independent has reached out to RedNote for comment.
Founded in 2013, the app has hundreds of millions of users across Asia and recently saw a spike in the US as an alternative for people worried about a possible TikTok ban.
The government’s move has prompted criticism from opposition voices. “We once mocked people in China for needing VPNs to access information,” Lai Shyh-bao, a lawmaker from the main opposition party Kuomintang, wrote on Facebook. “Internet freedom in Taiwan is heading toward a day when people will need VPNs.”
