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TikTok users are reportedly ditching the Chinese-owned app in droves as a possible US ban approaches, many jumping onto the “Goodbye to my Chinese spy” meme in the process. But the kicker is that many of them are choosing to jump onto RedNote. Yup, RedNote is Chinese, too.
Apparently, more than half a million TikTok users have “recently” left the platform in favour of RedNote, all in protest at the imminent US ban. “Our government is out of their minds if they think we’re going to stand for this TikTok ban,” a user called Heather Roberts reportedly said in a video message on RedNote.
Speaking of the ban, the shizzle there is that the US Supreme Court is expected to uphold an earlier lower-court ruling. If upheld, the ban would go into effect on January 19—unless, that is, Chinese owner ByteDance sells TikTok’s Chinese assets, though ByteDance has said such a divestiture “is simply not possible: not commercially, not technologically, not legally.”
Meanwhile, RedNote very roughly is a Chinese analogue to Instagram with added search engine aspects. Its Chinese name, Xiaohongshu, translates to “Little Red Book”, which commonly refers to the famous (or, you might say, infamous) collection of utterances by Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong.
More recently, RedNote has moved into live streaming, too. According to Reuters, it has more than 300 million monthly users, which is pretty big, even for China.
Anyway, by some accounts, the mass exodus has seen US and Chinese social media users connect like never before. CNN says that most Chinese users have warmly welcomed their new US RedNote siblings.
“It feels like so much has changed in an instant. Ordinary people from our two countries have never really connected before,” CNN reports one Chinese user as commenting.
As heartwarming as all that is, it seems a little unlikely that the bonhomie will carry on indefinitely, not least because of similar sentiments shared on the Clubhouse app back in 2021 before Chinese censors stepped in.
As a non-TikTok user with absolutely no skin in this game, it’s all a little baffling. What to make of this “protest” or the fact that users are willingly jumping onto another Chinese app?
It’s likewise hard to predict what might happen with the incoming Trump administration. Fair to say the once-again President hasn’t been entirely consistent with his attitude to TikTok. But then again, Mao himself said, “Contradiction and struggle are universal and absolute.” He got that much right, that’s for sure.
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Kurt Indovina
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