Tencent’s AI Giveaway Hits A Wall As WeChat Blocks Yuanbao Campaign: Tencent’s big push to promote its AI chatbot Yuanbao through a massive red packet giveaway ran into trouble this week. The company planned to give away 1 billion yuan to attract users, but the campaign hit a major obstacle when Tencent’s own super app, WeChat, stepped in with new restrictions.
WeChat Steps In With Immediate Restrictions
On Wednesday, WeChat, also known as Weixin in mainland China, announced it would stop Yuanbao links from opening directly inside the app. The decision came after what the company described as “user feedback and complaints”. The change took effect immediately and disrupted a key part of Yuanbao’s marketing strategy.
How the Red Packet Campaign Worked
Yuanbao encouraged users to share digital red packets through WeChat to earn more rewards. The campaign was designed to spread quickly through social sharing, helping the new AI app grow its user base faster.
But WeChat said the method “induces users to share links to WeChat groups in high frequency, disrupting the platform’s ecosystem, impacting user experience and causing harassment to the community”. From Wednesday morning, anyone trying to open those links started seeing a warning about “induced sharing”.
Users React to the Dispute
Some users were confused by the sudden block. Beijing resident Jiang Ruipeng said he was “a bit surprised” to find out about the dispute as “Yuanbao and WeChat both belong to Tencent”.
Jiang, who had already earned around 40 yuan from the campaign, said the change meant his contacts could no longer easily open the red packets he shared. That could reduce how much he is able to earn moving forward.
A Setback for Tencent’s AI Ambitions
The campaign had only been running for four days when the restriction came into effect. Since the strategy relied heavily on WeChat’s massive user base of more than 1.4 billion monthly active users, the sudden change could slow Tencent’s efforts to compete in the fast-growing AI space.
In response, Yuanbao said it was “urgently optimising” its sharing mechanism. The team added, “We will relaunch as soon as possible to ensure a seamless red-packet experience for our users,” according to posts shared on social media.
Workarounds and New Sharing Methods
By midday Wednesday, the original invitation links were replaced with blocks of text that users could still share on WeChat. However, recipients now have to copy and paste the links into the Yuanbao app manually, making the process less convenient than before.
Industry analyst Chen Liteng noted, “From the perspective of platform governance, WeChat’s restriction of Yuanbao demonstrates the consistency and rigour of its enforcement.”
A Look at the Bigger Picture
The Yuanbao campaign, which began on Sunday, offers users a chance to win up to 10,000 yuan through lucky draws and in app tasks like sharing links with contacts. While aggressive referral tactics were common in the past among Chinese tech giants, it is unusual to see such measures applied to a company’s own product.
Before 2021, many major platforms built “walled gardens” to block competitors and keep users within their own ecosystems. For example, WeChat previously blocked links from Taobao and Douyin, while Taobao avoided offering WeChat Pay and Douyin restricted videos featuring Tencent’s game Honour of Kings. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.
These strict practices started to ease after government intervention in 2021, when Beijing moved to curb monopolistic behaviour and encourage more open competition across the tech industry.
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