Recently, the AI large model application "Tencent Yuanbao" under Tencent was banned from sharing red envelope links on WeChat, which triggered heated discussions on social media. Currently, the Yuanbao team has made emergency adjustments and officially launched the "password red envelope" as an alternative solution.

To capture the Spring Festival market, Tencent Yuanbao launched a "10 billion Spring Festival Red Envelope" campaign. The campaign was personally supported by Ma Huateng, with the core logic that users could increase their lottery chances (up to 30 times) by sharing links to invite others to claim them. Due to the widespread dissemination of the links in Moments and group chats, WeChat received a large number of complaints about "disrupting the ecosystem order" and "user harassment."

The official WeChat account "WeChat Daily" clearly responded that the Yuanbao-related activities involved inducing frequent sharing through "task completion." Although there had been internal discussions within Tencent that the campaign had a "no-barrier-entrance" logic and was essentially different from malicious marketing, WeChat ultimately implemented the ban based on existing rules. Netizens joked, "Tencent can be ruthless enough to punish itself," which indirectly proves WeChat's attitude of treating internal products and external applications equally in ecosystem governance.

It is reported that the optimized sharing mechanism of Yuanbao red envelopes has been launched immediately. The Yuanbao official abandoned the directly intercepted link and instead adopted the "password red envelope" format to avoid the risk of being blocked.

Although the red envelope subsidy temporarily boosted Yuanbao's download numbers, user feedback shows that simple incentives are difficult to convert into long-term loyalty. Industry opinions suggest that during the critical period of competition for large models, the true retention of AI products still needs to return to technical capabilities and practical value. This "internal conflict" also exposed the complex game between tech giants expanding new businesses and maintaining core platform experiences.