Chinese app slaps Aussie politicians with restrictions

MPs using China’s answer to ­Instagram have had their ­accounts restricted, with experts ­describing the timing as too much of a ‘coincidence’ given efforts to win over Australian-Chinese voters at the federal election.

MPs Keith Wolahan and Jerome Laxale have had their accounts restricted on Chinese social media app Rednote.

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MPs using China’s answer to ­Instagram have had their ­accounts restricted, with experts ­describing the timing as too much of a “coincidence” given efforts to win over Australian-Chinese voters at the federal election.

Rednote, also known as the Little Red Book or Xiaohongshu, boasts more than 300 million users – nearly one million of whom live in Australia.

Politicians in both federal and state parliaments who have been using the app, which was launched in 2013, include Liberal MP Keith Wolahan, Labor MP Jerome Laxale, teal independent Monique Ryan and Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan.

Mr Wolahan, whose redrawn seat of Menzies now has the largest population of people with Chinese ancestry in the country, joined Rednote in June last year and quickly amassed about 8000 followers – more than he had on any other social media platform.

But late last year, Mr Wolahan began to notice the steady growth in followers and engagement drop off and after further investigation found his account had been restricted.

While still able to be accessed by those already following him, Mr Wolahan’s profile is now not able to be found by new users, in what appears to be a move by the platform that is also referred to as shadowbanning.

Shadowbanning typically blocks people from seeing a certain user’s social media posts, but refers to any restrictions that limit a user’s reach and make it less likely for their content to appear in searches, hashtags, or feeds of some cohorts.

“The restriction affected views, followers and the ability to search my account,” said Mr Wolahan, who has a separate phone from his parliamentary ­device for the Rednote app. “It’s disappointing.”

Mr Laxale also confirmed his account had been restricted. “You now can’t search for MPs,” he said.

The Australian understands Dr Ryan’s account has also been restricted, significantly affecting the reach of her posts.

DeepSeek has been banned from government devices.

It follows New Zealand last week banning Rednote from MPs phones, along with two other Chinese-owned platforms, WeChat and Deepseek.

While Australia banned DeepSeek from government devices earlier this year, politicians are not restricted from using other Chinese apps such as WeChat, despite Coalition MPs boycotting the app under Scott Morrison’s leadership.

The boycott was quietly lifted in recent years, as the Coalition ramped up its campaign to claw back the Chinese diaspora – which sits at more than one million people. Members of the Chinese diaspora swung against the Coalition at double the rate of the national average in the 2022 ­election.

University of Melbourne research fellow Fan Yang said “you can’t underestimate” the importance of apps such as Rednote for the Chinese diaspora, who she had found were increasingly using the platform to have Australian government policies translated for them. “It will be important, especially ahead of the election,” she said.

CyberCX executive director of cyber intelligence Katherine Mansted said the algorithms of apps like Tiktok – which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance – had also raised questions in recent years.

“These developments … what they show is the power of social media companies. And whether it’s through an accident or an ­algorithmic choice, or whether it’s following foreign government directions, (they) can have a ­really material impact on political speech in this country,” she said.

“Social media companies make choices all the time around their algorithm. However, the timing of this (with the election) has a certain degree of coincidence.”

Ms Mansted said Rednote posed the same concerns as Deepseek, with Chinese companies “operating in a completely different legal regime”.

“They must comply with censorship by the Chinese Communist Party, they must also share information with the Chinese government on request, and they don’t have to disclose that to their users,” she said.