On December 4, 2025, Taiwan’s Ministry of the Interior imposed a one-year ban on Xiaohongshu (Rednote), a Chinese social media platform, which has become an important source of everyday information, particularly for younger users in Taiwan. Invoking fraud-prevention concerns, the Ministry instructed the Taiwan Network Information Center to implement DNS Response Policy Zone blocking, which prevents the resolution of Xiaohongshu’s domain name. Taiwan’s approximately three million Xiaohongshu users can now access the platform only through VPNs, alternative DNS providers, or other circumvention methods.

The government’s decision to block access to the platform raises fundamental questions about platform governance in democracies: how should governments balance cybersecurity concerns with freedom of expression? These questions arise with particular intensity in Taiwan (see here). Given cross-Strait tensions, digital platforms have become arenas for political influence operations. Regulatory intervention may possibly be justified. We argue, however, that Taiwan’s Xiaohongshu ban is constitutionally problematic. Rather than foreclosing access to an entire platform, the Taiwanese government should adopt targeted and proportionate measures, such as implementing shorter suspension periods with clear compliance benchmarks that allow the company to remedy deficiencies.

Rationales for Regulation

Invoking Article 42 of the Fraud Crime Hazard Prevention Act, the Ministry has offered two principal justifications for the ban.

First, officials cite significant fraud concerns associated with the platform. According to the Ministry, Taiwanese users have increasingly fallen victim to investment scams, romance fraud, and deceptive commercial schemes on Xiaohongshu. Official statistics indicate that through December 2025, 756 cases were reported, resulting in total financial losses of approximately US$3.67 million.

Second, the Ministry emphasized Xiaohongshu’s alleged failure to cooperate with Taiwanese authorities. Despite repeated requests, the company reportedly refused to engage meaningfully in fraud prevention efforts. Specifically, it declined to establish a local representative office, implement requested content moderation measures, or provide information to criminal investigators. This lack of cooperation, the government contends, left it with no alternative but comprehensive blocking.

Whether Article 42 provides clear statutory authorization for a one-year platform ban remains doubtful. The provision empowers authorities to take “necessary measures” for fraud prevention, but does not explicitly authorize a long-term comprehensive platform ban. Regardless, these justifications may reflect legitimate governmental interests in protecting citizens from overseas fraud. Yet legitimate interests alone do not suffice when restrictions implicate freedom of speech.

The Constitutional Right to Receive Information

While Xiaohongshu itself has not publicly opposed the ban, the policy triggered immediate public backlash. Taiwanese users, particularly younger generations, expressed strong disappointment with the government’s approach to internet regulation. Their dissatisfaction stems primarily from losing access to information provided by Xiaohongshu’s user community.

This interest in accessing diverse information is protected under Taiwan’s constitutional freedom of speech doctrine. Constitutional jurisprudence has long recognized that freedom of speech encompasses not only the right to express ideas but also the right to receive information (for leading cases, see here, here, and here). This dual conception acknowledges that meaningful public discourse requires both speakers and listeners, and that restrictions on information access can undermine democratic functioning as severely as restrictions on expression itself.

From this perspective, the freedom of speech concerns implicated by the Xiaohongshu ban extend beyond restrictions on users’ ability to publish content. Crucially, this ban infringes on users’ right to receive information.

Content-Neutral Regulation

The fact that this ban implicates the right to receive information does not automatically render it unconstitutional. The question is whether it can withstand scrutiny under Taiwan’s freedom of speech doctrine. More specifically, the central issue is whether this content-neutral regulation satisfies constitutional requirements.

The Xiaohongshu ban qualifies as content-neutral regulation: a government action undertaken for non-speech regulatory purposes that substantially impacts expressive activity. Taiwan’s constitutional doctrine, like that of many democratic systems, does not exempt such collateral regulations from scrutiny (for the leading case, see here). Even under a less demanding standard than that applied to content-based restrictions, content-neutral regulations must satisfy three requirements: (1) they must promote legitimate governmental interests without an intent to suppress expression; (2) they must employ reasonable measures that impose only incidental restraints on speech; and (3) they must preserve adequate alternative channels for communication.

Despite fraud prevention being a legitimate governmental interest, the Xiaohongshu ban fails on all three counts.

First, the ban is both overinclusive and underinclusive. It operates as a blanket prohibition, preventing all Taiwanese users from accessing any content on Xiaohongshu—including the vast majority of legitimate, non-fraudulent material. This sweeping approach bears little relation to the fraud-prevention rationale. At the same time, the ban is underinclusive: fraud cases linked to Xiaohongshu represent only a relatively small fraction compared to other platforms. According to Taiwan’s Ministry of Digital Affairs’ Internet Fraud Reporting and Query Network, the 1,706 fraud cases reported on Xiaohongshu over two years fall far short of the 22,015 cases reported on Facebook in a single month. This disparity casts doubt on the rational design of the measure. Ironically, after the ban took effect, Taiwanese users learned to circumvent it through VPN services and continued to fall victim to fraud on the platform. The ban’s effectiveness in preventing fraud thus remains highly questionable.

Second, the one-year duration of the ban appears arbitrary and excessive. Even if Xiaohongshu’s lack of cooperation justifies heightened regulatory scrutiny, the government failed to calibrate the restriction to that concern. If non-cooperation is the concern, the government should impose a shorter ban with clear compliance benchmarks, allowing the company opportunities to demonstrate cooperation. This graduated approach would serve the government’s interest while restricting speech less severely.

Are there Alternative Channels?

The third constitutional deficiency lies in the absence of adequate alternative channels. Taiwanese users lose meaningful access to the type of expression that Xiaohongshu facilitates: participation in Mandarin-language lifestyle communities and cross-Strait cultural exchange.

Proponents of the Xiaohongshu ban might argue that Taiwanese users retain access to numerous social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X, Snapchat, and others. These platforms collectively reach billions of users worldwide and offer sophisticated features for sharing information. From this perspective, losing access to one platform does not diminish access to other available, and possibly more robust, channels.

However, Xiaohongshu has some unique characteristics that other platforms lack. First, it serves a distinct linguistic community. Xiaohongshu functions primarily as a Mandarin-language platform with content created predominantly by Chinese speakers from mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia. Crucially, mainland Chinese users cannot access Facebook, Instagram, or other Western platforms due to the Great Firewall. This makes Xiaohongshu irreplaceable as a venue for cross-Strait cultural exchange: it is one of the few platforms where Taiwanese users can interact with mainland China’s users. For Taiwan’s Mandarin-speaking population, Xiaohongshu offered access to a community and content ecosystem that generic international platforms cannot replicate.

Second, Xiaohongshu has cultivated a distinctive content culture. The platform emphasizes lifestyle content, consumer product reviews, travel experiences, educational resources, and personal narratives — generally eschewing overtly political discourse. This content focus distinguishes it markedly from platforms like Facebook and X, where political debate dominates Taiwanese public discourse. The platform’s sophisticated recommendation algorithm, which effectively personalizes content feeds to individual user interests, further enhances its distinctive value for users seeking lifestyle and consumer information. For users seeking information about daily life, consumer choices, or cultural experiences rather than political commentary, Xiaohongshu occupied a relatively apolitical niche in Taiwan’s otherwise highly politicized social media environment.

These characteristics suggest that Xiaohongshu possesses a degree of irreplaceability in terms of freedom of speech values. Freedom of speech facilitates not only the pure political self-governance, but also a democratic culture, where individuals have a fair chance to engage in consuming, creating, and shaping culture. Even when content is not explicitly political, blocking access to an entire platform prevents Taiwanese users from engaging with and contributing to transnational Chinese-language cultural communities. The ban fails to satisfy the “adequate alternative channels” requirement because the blocked platform serves a distinct linguistic community and content niche that alternatives cannot functionally replace.

Platform Governance and Freedom of Speech Under the Shadow of China

This analysis identified three failures of the Xiaohongshu ban under the freedom of speech doctrine: overinclusiveness, arbitrary duration, and inadequate alternatives. This critique should not be understood as freedom of speech absolutism. Chinese platforms pose serious challenges to Taiwan society, including fraud, data security, and potential political manipulation. Furthermore, China’s lasting intention to annex Taiwan complicates the regulation of China-linked platforms. These are legitimate governmental interests that warrant regulatory attention.

However, acknowledging these threats does not justify abandoning constitutional principles. Taking China’s threats seriously is one thing; permitting arbitrary restrictions on speech is quite another. What fundamentally distinguishes Taiwan from the PRC is Taiwan’s commitment to constitutional governance, democratic accountability, and the rule of law, with freedom of speech as the cornerstone. Forcing citizens to use VPNs to access information only narrows the distance between Taiwan’s democracy and the PRC’s censorship regime.