Chinese Social Media Platform Xiaohongshu Apologizes for Users’ Over-Modification of Scenic Spot Photos

In response to a large number of its users complaining about over-decorated scenic spot photos shared on the platform, lifestyle sharing platform Xiaohongshu issued a statement on Sunday apologizing to users, saying that it had launched a series of operational activities to encourage its creators to share useful rather than over-beautified ones.

Recently, many netizens in China have complained about the over-decorated scenic photos posted on Xiaohongshu. Many say on social media that they see a big gap between some scenic places and the photos shared on Xiaohongshu, and they felt cheated.

One of the netizens complained on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter: “In the screenshot of Xiaohongshu, the visitor is in a sunny promenade, and the picture is so beautiful. The photo creator recommends the place with words such as ‘a niche place that is free to visit’ and ‘a great place for taking pictures’, which makes people yearn for it. But when I arrived at the scene, I found that it was actually just a wall, and it used wallpaper to create a 3D visual effect.”

In response to the reasons for such posts, Xiaohongshu said, “Some users do over-beautify their posts. For example, most of the posts people have seen recently belong to the professional travel pictures category, but the creators do not clearly indicate that they are photographic works, which are then used as travel guides.”

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In order to optimize the user experience, when users search for a scenic spot, Xiaohongshu will provide more search related words and show more content such as avoiding over-modified posts. The platform will also try to launch features such as scenic spot scoring list and unreliable posts avoiding list, so as to help users obtain more useful information.