The Ministry of the Interior yesterday ordered Taiwanese Internet service providers (ISPs) to block access to Chinese social media app Xiaohongshu (小紅書, also known as RedNote in English) for a year, after detecting hundreds of instances of fraud on the platform.
The ISPs have been instructed to block access to the app to its more than 3 million users in Taiwan, effective immediately, Deputy Minister of the Interior Ma Shih-yuan (馬士元) told a news conference at the National Police Agency’s Fraud Prevention Center.
The order is being implemented via protocols governing domain name system (DNS) response policy zones, he said.
Photo: Reuters
Xiaohongshu meets none of the nation’s 15 cybersecurity standards governing online platforms, which puts its millions of Taiwanese users at imminent danger of fraud, he said.
The bureau said in a statement that 1,706 cases of fraud have been identified since last year through the app, with financial losses exceeding NT$247 million (US$7.9 million).
The company that owns the China-based app, Xingyin Information Technology (Shanghai) Co (行吟資訊科技(上海)) does not have an office in Taiwan and has not responded to regulators’ requests to submit a plan to improve data security on its platform, Ma said.
The measures are necessary for authorities to compensate victims of crime and protect consumer rights, he said, adding that Meta Platforms Inc, Alphabet Inc, ByteDance Ltd (字節跳動) and LY Corp, the operator of the Line messaging app, are all in compliance with Taiwanese law.
By comparison, Xingyin has not responded to government legal filings in the 52 days since their receipt, Ma said.
The government must take action against Xiaohongshu or admit the abdication of its regulatory responsibilities, he said, adding that inaction would also be unfair to companies that follow the law.
The decision is part of the ministry’s comprehensive anti-fraud strategy, not an action specifically targeting Xiaohongshu, officials said.
The government has blocked access to 45,059 platform-operating entities, 95 percent of which were based in a foreign nation, they said.
As Xiaohongshu owns more than 1,000 Internet protocol addresses, the government ban would not shut down the app at once, officials said.
Instead, the platform would likely see DNS response policy zone protocols gradually degrade streaming speeds until the corporation complies with laws and regulations, or its service becomes unusable, they said.
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