2026 Q1 Rednote (Xiaohongshu) Official Rule Updates! The Essential Risk Avoidance and Compliance Guide for Overseas Brands

Entering 2026, the commercialization and community ecosystem governance of Rednote (Xiaohongshu) have stepped into an unprecedentedly strict phase. During the 2026 Q1, officials released intensive rule updates, and many formerly customary "growth shortcuts"  have now become minefields that lead directly to account bans.

For enterprises in Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan, as well as overseas brands and international companies, there are significant differences in context, legal regulations, and marketing habits between the two regions. If overseas marketing materials are directly ported to Rednote, it is extremely easy to cross the red line. Therefore, we have deeply deduplicated and refined all the core rules released officially in Q1, and combined them with actual operational scenarios to compile this "Rednote Rule Analysis and Risk Avoidance Guide" for everyone.

I. Platform Values and the Upgrade of " Rednote Community Guidelines 2.0" (小紅書社區公約 2.0)

? Rednote Rule Encyclopedia Potato (規則百科薯) Announcement:

Rednote has officially launched the "Rednote Community Guidelines 2.0", explicitly calling for the maintenance of its foundational tone of "sincere sharing, friendly interaction." :

• Oppose creating antagonism: Respect differences, engage in rational dialogue, and refrain from inciting or antagonizing.
• Resolutely boycott fake content: Do not fabricate identities or deliberately exaggerate.
• Jointly practice orderly business operations: Clearly reveal your identity, operate with integrity, and reject malicious competition.

? Risk Avoidance Analysis for Overseas Brands: When entering the Chinese market, overseas brands often use "cultural differences" and "overseas vs. domestic lifestyle comparisons" to attract attention. Under the 2.0 Guidelines, this type of comparison with a "flame-baiting" or "praising one while stepping on another" nature is extremely likely to be judged as "inciting antagonism" and subsequently face traffic restriction.

Avoidance Strategy: Abandon the "fake regular user" (假素人) strategy. Many overseas start-up brands like to register personal accounts, disguising themselves as "ordinary international students overseas" to recommend their own products. Now that the platform requires "revealing identity", enterprises should apply for enterprise authentication (Professional Account / 專業號). Marketing copy should focus on the unique value of the product itself, and strictly avoid using malicious competition rhetoric such as "completely destroying Chinese products" or "crushing a certain famous brand".

II. Content Creation Compliance and Declaration Mechanisms (Heavily Regulated Area)

In response to increasingly diverse creation formats (such as AI generation, short dramas, and content porting), Rednote has proposed extremely detailed mandatory declaration requirements in Q1.

? Rednote Rule Encyclopedia Potato Announcement:

• AI Content Risk Guidelines: Strictly regulate the use of AI to generate or disseminate harmful information such as falsehoods, infringements, and illegalities. Specific targeted types include: AI impersonation of celebrities, AI tampering with military and police images, AI fake personas, AI false information, AI vulgarity, AI gimmicks to deceive interactions, and AI advertising and marketing. Publishing AI-generated content must be proactively declared (Path: Publish Note -> Settings -> Content Type Declaration -> Check "Note contains AI-synthesized content").
• "Plot Acting" Note Standards: To prevent viewers from mistaking "carefully choreographed scripts" for real events, publishing such content requires clear labelling. Users can use the platform's "Creator Declaration Function", or add labels in video subtitles, body text hashtags, profile pages, or note titles. Suggested tags: fictional acting (虛構演繹), plot acting (劇情演繹), purely fictional content (內容純屬虛構), acting content (演繹內容), acting works/short dramas/theatre (演繹作品/短劇/劇場), etc.
• Reposting and Originality Protection: If any part of the note originates from others (including "politely taking" (禮貌拿) someone else's copy to pair with your own pictures, or not posting a complete screen recording but only releasing a clipped segment), it is not considered original and must be set with a repost declaration.

? Risk Avoidance Analysis for Overseas Brands: Overseas operators or brand owners are quite fond of using AI tools like Midjourney and Sora to reduce the production costs of localized content, or directly porting short videos from overseas TikTok/Instagram.

Avoidance Strategy (AI Applications): If you used AI to generate try-on images of foreign models, product usage scenarios, or even script copy written by AI, please be sure to check the AI declaration. Being caught by the system without a declaration will result in being judged as an "AI fake persona" or "AI advertising marketing", leading to the note being traffic-restricted or even the account being banned.

Avoidance Strategy (Copyright and Short Dramas): If a brand shoots a short video advertisement with plot twists, it is imperative to add the "plot acting" tag. Furthermore, directly screenshotting or downloading overseas influencers' materials for secondary publishing will be strictly judged as "pseudo-original" (偽原創) porting on Rednote. When quoting others' materials, be sure to make good use of the platform's "repost declaration" function.

III. Commercial Advertising and Marketing Minefields for High-Risk Industries (Strictly Controlled)

During Q1, the officials significantly tightened the review of Aurora (聚光) advertising placements, as well as the review on the PGY (蒲公英) platform, and qualification reviews for specific high-risk industries.

? Rednote Rule Encyclopedia Potato Announcement:

• Advertising Efficacy and Guaranteed Commitments: Advertising content must not make explicit or implicit guaranteed commitments regarding product/service effects (including absolute, comprehensive coverage, or unconditional refund statements). For non-medical ordinary products, you absolutely cannot claim: disease-curing effects, medical aesthetic efficacies, or healthcare functions. All efficacy descriptions must strictly conform to the product's actual functional scope (covering industries such as education and training, medical and health, home goods, maternal and child products, food and beverages, and beauty and personal care).
• Qualifications and Marketing for High-Risk Industries (Real Estate): Under the new rules, real estate is classified as a special high-risk industry, and the account authentication entity must match the promoted industry. Account opening identities are strictly limited to: comprehensive real estate service platforms, real estate developers, real estate sales agency companies, property services, and real estate agency storefronts.
• Five Major Violation Minefields in Real Estate: ① Must not promise absolutized or untrue statements about geographical locations; ② Must not promise that buying a house can achieve household registration (落戶), school enrolment, or household transfer; ③ Must not promise investment returns and appreciation prospects; ④ Pre-sale or pre-lease commercial housing must not involve decoration and fitting-out content; ⑤ Must not promise unconfirmed future planning.
• Second-hand Industry and Other Standards: Advertisers for second-hand goods recycling and second-hand luxury goods (bags, watches, jewellery, etc.) must complete corresponding high-risk industry qualification certifications; strict crackdowns are imposed on fake content and "pig-butchering scam" (殺豬盤) tactics in the matchmaking industry; strict regulations on KOS (Key Opinion Sales) accounts conducting unqualified marketing; merchants in the electronic resources category must ensure transactions are completed within the platform, prohibiting transfers to individuals for selling.

? Risk Avoidance Analysis for Overseas Brands: There is a massive gap between the advertising regulations of overseas countries and the "Advertising Law" of mainland China; directly translating an overseas Marketing Kit will often lead you straight into the line of fire.

Avoidance Strategy (General Health and Beauty): Overseas Dietary Supplements, before obtaining the mainland China "Blue Hat" (藍帽子) health food approval (the dedicated certification mark for Chinese health food), can only be promoted as "ordinary food" on Rednote. The copy must absolutely not contain special-approval efficacy terms such as "curing", "anti-inflammatory", "medical aesthetic grade whitening", or "anti-depressant". At the same time, please delete standard overseas phrases like "100% Guaranteed" and "Full refund if ineffective" from your advertising library, as these belong to violating "guaranteed commitments".

Avoidance Strategy (Overseas Real Estate): Many overseas agencies promoting properties in the UK, Australia, and Japan like to acquire customers on Rednote. Please note that the copy must absolutely not contain words like "buy a house and get a green card/visa, "guaranteed rental return rate up to 8%", "guaranteed profit without loss", or "buying is earning". Before placing ads, you must first submit the corresponding qualifications of the overseas enterprise and complete the high-risk industry certification.

Avoidance Strategy (Second-hand Designer Brands and Electronic Resources): Overseas buyer boutiques doing Vintage (second-hand luxury goods) must be certified before boosting traffic. As for merchants selling overseas e-books and design assets, do not guide users in notes to "add WeChat for private transfers"; you must use Rednote's official store for transactions, otherwise, it will be deemed as illegal traffic diversion.

IV. Platform Banned Goods Upgrade List (Severe Crackdown on Four Major Categories)

In Q1, officials intensively updated the banned goods list in four phases, covering sensitive and forbidden industries (灰黑產業) as well as various contrabands, and explicitly warned merchants not to attempt using vague descriptions to "skirt the rules".

? Rednote Rule Encyclopedia Potato Announcement:

• Category 1: Dangerous/Controlled Items (conventional dangerous contrabands).
• Category 2: Contraband Items: Items destroying ecological health, goods of a gambling nature, tobacco and related products, goods/services invading privacy, and illicit financial goods/services.
• Category 3: Cheating and Forgery Goods/Services (Cyber Grey Industries / 賽博灰產):
  • Life Shortcut Experience Cards: Medical miracle certificates (specifically for taking leave), credit accelerators, internship experience generators, out-of-thin-air diploma sets (無中生「證」學歷套裝), and civil service experience cards (體制內體驗卡).
  • Hardcore Tech Hacks: Electric vehicle high-beam modification kits, drone no-fly zone cracking tutorials, plug-in All-in-one buckets (外掛全家桶) (instant kill/IP drifting/traceless wall-hacking), and iCloud infinite nesting expansion tricks.
  • Classic Get-Rich Packages: Claim assassin crash courses, pretending-to-work family buckets, tailor-made zombie accounts, and AI exam prediction papers.
• Category 4: Knock-off and Counterfeit Goods: Severe crackdowns on all kinds of knock-offs and fake goods.

? Pitfall Avoidance Analysis for Overseas Brands: Goods that are legal overseas do not necessarily comply with Rednote's community guidelines and mainland Chinese laws.

Avoidance Strategy: For cross-border e-commerce brands, please strictly review your product lines. For example, CBD (cannabidiol) related skincare products, overseas gummies containing specific ingredients like melatonin, overseas gambling/lottery purchasing agents, and even e-cigarettes and their accessories are all absolute red lines.

Never Use "IP Drifting" (change IP tool): Many Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, or overseas operation teams, in order to make their accounts look like they are "operating in the mainland," will go and purchase the explicitly banned "IP drifting/VPN" services from the list. Rednote's inspection of such cheating and forging behaviour is extremely strict; once caught by the system, the account faces the risk of a permanent ban. Authentically displaying your overseas IP can actually increase the "authenticity of origin" for cross-border brands.

V. Comment Section Ecosystem and Ghostwriter (水軍) Governance

Rednote's "seeding" ecosystem is built on authenticity, and in Q1, the officials specifically implemented standardized reviews for interactions in the comment section.

? Rednote Rule Encyclopedia Potato Announcement:

• Unfriendly Interactions: The review scope is not limited to directly insulting people. Insulting the work, insulting a character, or even posting aggressive memes in the comments also constitutes unfriendly behaviour and will be punished.
• Goods/Services Marketing Promotion: Strict crackdowns on illicit advertising placements under notes where users sincerely ask for recommendations. Common violation formats include: ① Mass publishing homogenized advertising information; ② Merchants hiring "regular user" accounts to promote in the tone of a consumer; ③ Multiple accounts cooperating with each other to promote through Q&A and other methods.

? Risk Avoidance Analysis for Overseas Brands: Many overseas brands that are new to Rednote will find outsourcing teams to do the cheapest "ghostwriter marketing" or "ghostwriter comment section control". The most common script is: Account A asks, "Excuse me, where can I buy this face mask?", and Account B replies below, "I bought it at XX, it's super easy to use".

Avoidance Strategy: This kind of "two-man Q&A act" and "hiring ghostwriters to spam comments" is equivalent to "streaking" in front of Rednote's 2026 AI review mechanisms. Once judged by the system as "malicious marketing", brand-related keyword searches will be deprioritized or even blocked. Instead of spending money on ineffective and dangerous fake interactions, it is better to invest the budget in real KOC (Key Opinion Consumer) product sampling and reviews.

Customer Service Response Standards: When replying to negative fan reviews or handling PR crises, customer service teams of overseas brands must maintain absolute professionalism and composure. Do not get into arguments with netizens, and definitely do not use sarcastic or aggressive memes to fight back, to avoid violating the "unfriendly interactions" clause.