Adhering to the principle of "not disturbing users," WeChat has finally taken action on Yuanbao red envelopes.

Author | Huang Yu On the first withdrawal day of Tencent Yuanbao's Spring Festival 1-billion-yuan red envelope event, the sharing link for Yuanbao's red envelopes was blocked by its "brother product" WeChat. On February 4, many people found that Yuanbao's red envelope links could no longer be directly opened in WeChat; only by copying them into a browser could users continue to claim red envelopes. Yuanbao red envelope links redirecting in WeChat would display "The webpage contains content that induces sharing, following, and other inducements." Soon, WeChat officially released an announcement regarding cracking down on third-party induced sharing, stating that it had recently published its "Announcement on Combating Third-Party Violations" to target excessive marketing and induced sharing activities, especially those erupting during the Spring Festival period. WeChat stated: “Against this backdrop, we received user feedback and complaints about Yuanbao, with its Spring Festival marketing activities inducing users to frequently share links to group chats through ‘doing tasks’ and ‘claiming red envelopes,’ disrupting the platform’s ecosystem, impacting user experience, and causing harassment to users.” After evaluation, WeChat dealt with Yuanbao’s violating links by restricting their direct opening within WeChat. These measures took effect immediately. This turn of events means that the direct path to Yuanbao red envelopes within WeChat’s ecosystem has been severed. To continue claiming or withdrawing, users must now go through complicated cross-app steps such as “copying links and opening them in a browser.” Currently, Yuanbao has also publicly responded to the issue of being blocked by WeChat, saying that it is urgently optimizing and adjusting its sharing mechanism and will be online soon to ensure users’ red envelope experience. This type of “righteous self-sacrifice” ban is a clash of order within a tech giant’s own family. Not long ago, at a Tencent staff conference, Pony Ma expressed high hopes for Yuanbao’s Spring Festival red envelope event, aiming to recreate the miracle from eleven years ago, when WeChat Pay swept the market thanks to red envelopes. Since the event launched at midnight on February 1, Yuanbao red envelopes have demonstrated Tencent’s social ecosystem’s powerful viral capacity, helping the Yuanbao APP briefly top the Apple Store’s free app chart and leaving ByteDance’s Doubao far behind. But this “viral” expansion based on social relationships quickly crashed into WeChat’s internal regulatory wall. The most direct reason for WeChat to block Yuanbao red envelopes is that they crossed the “induced sharing” red line laid out in the “WeChat External Link Content Management Specifications.” According to Yuanbao’s rules, every user who invites a friend to claim a red envelope gets one more chance to enter the lucky draw. This design naturally encourages users to forward red envelope links to every end of their social network. In reality, this evolved into serious interference in WeChat’s social environment: from heartfelt family groups to serious property owner groups, the original spaces for interaction were dominated by intensive red envelope links, leading to widespread user dissatisfaction, and even group quitting or expulsions. Previously, an article from Wallstreetcn titled “Looking at Tencent’s Sudden User Attitude Shift from Yuanbao’s 1 Billion New Users Campaign” already pointed out that this 1-billion-yuan new user campaign from Yuanbao was a compromise of Tencent’s “not easily disturbing users” product culture, and also reveals Tencent’s anxiety in the current AI battle. On February 2, The Paper reported that Tencent had internally discussed and responded to this issue. According to an internal letter: “Today we received much discussion and feedback about the Yuanbao Spring Festival red envelope activity and WeChat’s external link management standards. Our team is closely following up, and remains in tight communication with the legal, PR, and related business teams for comprehensive evaluation. Thank you for your attention and thoughts — this helps us better assess compliance boundaries and user experience for such activities.” The internal email also said: “Taking this opportunity, we wish to share our current thinking and basic position: The underlying logic of Yuanbao’s Spring Festival red envelope event is ‘no threshold for claiming.’ Users do not need to complete tasks like assisting or collecting cards — they can directly claim basic red envelopes. This differs from the platform’s consistently opposed ‘induced sharing’ model. Based on the mechanism design of this event, our initial judgment is: its nature differs fundamentally from malicious marketing activity targeted by the platform. The platform always maintains an open attitude toward genuine benefit activities with no strings attached for users. This rule also applies to all third-party software or activities as a principle. We will closely monitor the operation of related campaigns, and promptly gather user feedback and review experiences.” Nevertheless, when an app needs to “interfere” with social chains to exchange for growth, it has already stood on the opposite side of WeChat’s ecosystem governance. As a national social tool, the core moat of WeChat lies in the purity of user experience and the consistency of its rules. If exceptions were made for Yuanbao, it would destroy the trust WeChat has established in managing third-party induced links over the years. This ban is undoubtedly a heavy blow to Yuanbao’s 1-billion-yuan red envelope plan. The broken link substantially raises the barrier for user participation, and the previously smooth traffic funnel now faces a huge gap at the jump point within WeChat. A deeper crisis is, just how many genuine users does this traffic driven by red envelope viral expansion actually leave for Yuanbao? Many voices on social platforms have pointed out that currently, large model applications are highly homogeneous in their features. In terms of image generation and chat capabilities, Yuanbao does not surpass rivals, and once the red envelope subsidy tide recedes, whether Yuanbao can become the top AI entrance for users remains a huge question mark. Yuanbao’s stumble within WeChat also reflects the difficult game big companies face between business breakout and ecosystem bottom lines: Even under the same roof, any business sprint must yield to social norms. For Yuanbao to truly recreate WeChat Red Envelope’s legendary moment, it may not be enough to just rely on distributing 1 billion yuan, but must consider how, beyond the shared link red line, product strength can genuinely convince ordinary users who are already tired of “task groups.” Risk Reminder and Disclaimer Markets have risks; investment needs to be cautious. 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