Over half a million ‘TikTok refugees’ flock to China’s RedNote

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STORY: Chinese app Xiaohongshu – or RedNote in the West – has seen a spike in new users from the US, just days before a proposed ban on social media TikTok.

In fact, it topped the free download rankings on Apple’s US App Store this week.

More than 50,000 American and Chinese users joined the room in a live chat called “TikTok Refugees” on Monday, and impromptu cultural exchanges were seen through the app between veteran Chinese users and American newcomers, including Americans asking Chinese for help with math homework. The other asks for help in English.

One “refugee” user named Crystal, who declined to give her last name, posted this introduction:

“I just want to thank you for welcoming us to this app. If we do anything wrong, just tell us because we are used to making videos where we dance and do stupid things.

“Just let us know, and hopefully we’ll be bilingual in a couple of weeks. I mean that’s my goal in life. It’ll help us everywhere.”

TikTok has a US user base of 170 million Americans, about half the population, and is owned by Chinese company ByteDance.

The Justice Department said TikTok poses a national security threat because of the risk that China could use Americans’ data to spy, blackmail or manipulate what is displayed to users.

Creator Gwenna Lithland, who has also taken to RedNote, says she’s treating it like a silent protest against the TikTok ban.

“We, as the American people, feel so silenced and ignored because this here is our opportunity to raise our middle finger in the air and say: ‘No! No, we don’t like this! I did it.” Don’t listen to us!

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“But so far, we’ve begged our representatives, please show us what this security issue is and why ByteDance is more culpable than anyone else. If Chinese-owned, operated, and accessible apps are such a problem, why was RedNote even launched? More Chinese than the Chinese app we’re all worried about right now.

“The novelty will wear off once we get bored of raising that middle finger to the government. We’ll walk around, but for now, I’m just kind of hanging out and consuming.”

Two sources told Reuters that the sudden influx caught RedNote by surprise.

A person close to the company told Reuters that more than 700,000 new users had joined in just two days.

Xiaohongshu is China’s answer to Instagram, geared more toward local Chinese users with little English content.

Sources say the company is now scrambling to find ways to manage English content and build English-Chinese translation tools.

The company wants to capture the sudden rush of attention, which executives see as a potential path to global popularity similar to TikTok’s.

Share prices of some Chinese-listed companies doing business with Xiao Hongshu rose beyond the daily limit on Tuesday.

It all comes as ByteDance’s deadline approaches to sell TikTok’s US assets before January 19, or face a ban.

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