Do you get health tips on social media? Maybe finance help or some self-education? Have you seen the fictional “Oxford Study” about Asian women and white men, or the hashtags related to ADHD or sinus trouble? Online, there are people screaming about how sunscreen causes cancer or preaching about putting garlic in your nostrils. The unhinged health hacks from social media got so bad that in 2022, the FDA had to issue a frank warning to not cook your chicken with NyQuil after a tweet sarcastically lauding the practice went viral.
In 2026, over a decade into the social media era, regulatory agencies in both China and the U.S. are doing something about the influencer misinformation crisis. And it’s kind of the same thing.
Late last year, the Cyberspace Administration of China issued a sweeping regulation: Any content creator discussing medicine, health, law, finance, or education must prove verified professional credentials before posting or going live. In essence: no degree, no license, no post.
Suddenly, platforms like Douyin, Weibo, and Bilibili were put on the legal hook for enforcement, with fines reaching 100,000 yuan, or roughly $14,000, for violations. And as a result of the new regulation, millions of influencers who built massive followings dispensing skin care tips, investment strategies, and medical advice found their accounts frozen or under review overnight.
On April 3, the FTC published its FY 2026–30 Strategic Plan, following much of the same groundwork. The FTC plan’s first strategic goal targets health fraud as a top enforcement priority, alongside opioid recovery scams and deceptive medical marketing. It commits to pursuing fake reviews, bot-inflated engagement, and purchased followers—the manufactured social proof that allows unqualified creators to appear credible to millions. It puts platforms on shared liability for hosting that deception (but only for branded content), somewhat mirroring China’s model of holding Douyin and Bilibili responsible for what their creators post. But compared with how China’s influencer regulations are going, the FTC’s five-year plan, although a step in the right direction, does leave users wondering how susceptible they are to claims online.
Same problem, different tools
Let’s not kid ourselves: We say we purchased some mouth tape to help with our breathing because of a certain book called Breath by James Nestor, but maybe we saw it while scrolling along a social media platform. When TikTok was almost banned in the U.S., millions of users on the platform called out influencers who had admitted to lying in their videos, thinking it was well on its way out. While they lost face when the app returned from the dark, the hashtags and trends with little scientific evidence still remained.
A striking similarity between the Chinese and American approaches to policing this kind of slop is how both regulations treat platforms. China made platforms legally responsible for verifying creator credentials: If a platform hosts uncredentialed health advice, the platform gets fined. This very thing has been the target of President Donald Trump for years, with his crosshairs set on repealing Section 230, a law that gives social media platforms immunity from what people post online. Now, the FTC’s plan mirrors China’s under its fake reviews rule, which holds both brands and the platforms that host manipulated reviews liable, not just the individual creator.
The plan also dedicates resources to child-directed content, naming COPPA [Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act] enforcement and the newly enacted Take It Down Act as key instruments. China’s rule covers the same terrain from the other direction, requiring verified teaching credentials for any influencer giving academic or tutoring advice. Both governments arrived at the same conclusion: Children are uniquely vulnerable to unqualified voices online, and platforms bear responsibility for what reaches them.
On AI-generated content, the FTC is building machine learning tools to identify deceptive posts at scale. China’s rule requires creators to label any AI-generated material upfront. The similarity continues with bot-inflated engagement metrics: Both the FTC’s five-year plan and China’s new rules ban the use of purchased followers to artificially boost reviews.
In all, China’s approach is preemptive: One has to prove their credentials before they post. The FTC’s approach is reactive, allowing American creators to post health tips or investment opinions without a diploma. The FTC only steps in after the harm is documented—but for both, if the creator lies, they pay up.
