The Fall of an Influencer King

Imagine trusting someone so much you’d buy almost anything they recommended.

You follow their life, you watch their videos, and you buy the products they create because you believe in them.

But what happens when that trust is not just broken, but shattered into a million pieces, revealing a nightmare underneath?

Right now this is the devastating story unfolding in China, centered on a man named Xin Youzhi, better known to his nearly 100 million followers as Xinba.

He is not a simple influencer; he is an e-commerce titan, that can sell millions of dollars' worth of goods in a single night.

Now, his empire is crumbling under the weight of a scandal so horrifying, and yes, also so odd.

His own brand of sanitary pads have been linked to cancer.

To understand the sheer scale of this, you have to understand who Xinba is. In America, we have big influencers, but the world of Chinese livestream e-commerce is on another level entirely. It's like QVC, Amazon, and Instagram Live all rolled into one supercharged, multi-billion-dollar industry. And Xinba was its second-biggest king. In 2023 alone, he reportedly earned a staggering $426 million U.S. dollars. He cultivated an image as a man of the people, promising his massive audience the best deals on the best products.

One of those products was from his own brand, m.password, which sold sanitary pads. He boasted that 10 million women were using them, a testament to the trust he had cultivated. But the nightmare began to surface in March 2025, when a whistleblower raised the alarm. Independent testing on m.password sanitary pads had detected a chemical called thiourea, an industrial chemical and a known carcinogen.

Women began to come forward and a horrifying pattern emerged. News reports now allege links between the pads and over 112 cases of cancer, including more than 10 instances of cervical or uterine cancer, and 35 heartbreaking cases of pregnancy loss. On August 19th, the influencer king abdicated his throne in a livestream, citing a serious lung condition. To millions, it looked less like a retirement and more like a desperate escape.

While this story is unfolding thousands of miles away, the chilling sense of betrayal is deeply familiar. It directly echoes one of America’s biggest public health crises: the Johnson & Johnson baby powder scandal. For generations, Johnson & Johnson was a pillar of trust.

Yet, while the company cultivated an image of gentle care, it was fighting a dark secret. Though the first successful lawsuit was in 2013, with major public verdicts following from 2016 onwards, internal documents revealed the company knew for decades that its talc powder was sometimes contaminated with asbestos, a deadly carcinogen. Thousands of women who had used the powder daily developed ovarian cancer. In both cases, a product meant for feminine hygiene, sold by a name synonymous with trust, became a source of disease and heartbreak.

Xinba’s story is a brutal cautionary tale about the dark side of the influencer economy. It represents a far more sinister breach of trust than simply a disappointing product, it's one that is potentially deadly. Making matters worse, this wasn't an isolated incident for Xinba; it was part of a disturbing pattern of cutting corners and deception, including famously selling sugar water as expensive bird's nest soup.

The Xinba scandal is a gut-wrenching lesson about the unregulated "Wild West" of online commerce and the immense power we grant digital personalities. It forces us to confront an uncomfortable question: In an age where trust is the new currency, what happens when the celebrities were support, betray that trust?

For the countless women betrayed by a man they trusted, the answer is a life sentence of pain and loss.