Banned Influencers Keep Coming Back: China's Platforms Face a Loophole They Can't Close

Chinese influencers who have been banned for bad behaviour are quietly coming back — and the platforms are being blamed for a loophole that lets banned accounts return with a new handle.

The latest flashpoint is an influencer known as "Voice Mule" (语音骡子, real name Tao Yunfei), who was banned from Kuaishou and Douyin in 2019. He has since been reported by another influencer for opening new accounts under other people's identities, streaming again, and insulting public figures. The claim is not that the platforms did nothing — it is that the ban is easy to leave behind.

The Shandong Business Daily, which covered the report, framed the issue as a question of who is enabling the comeback. The article notes that there may be in-fighting within the influencer world driving the report, or an attempt to harvest traffic from the dispute — but the platform's responsibility is the same either way. The paper's argument was liked more than 1,600 times on Weibo.

The phrase that has caught on is "换号复活" — literally "changing accounts to come back to life". Commenters argue that platforms mostly recognise accounts, not people: face verification and real-name checks exist, but the sequence is typically that users dig out the offending account first, and the platform bans it afterwards. If the person behind the account is never punished, a ban is a punishment in name only.

The debate has two trending phrases this time: one exposing "platform regulatory loopholes", and one arguing that banned influencers "cannot simply be left at a ban" — 不能一封了之, a pointed formulation meaning the platforms cannot just ban and move on, but must hold the person behind the account.

For the platforms, the fix is technical: face verification and real-name traceability across re-registrations. What makes the story resonant is the accountability gap that surrounds it — the punishment is aimed at the account, not the person, and the person can always come back.