{"id":20215,"date":"2025-01-16T16:30:23","date_gmt":"2025-01-16T17:30:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=20215"},"modified":"2025-01-16T18:34:11","modified_gmt":"2025-01-16T18:34:11","slug":"tiktok-refugees-get-wry-welcome-on-rednote-another-chinese-app","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=20215","title":{"rendered":"TikTok Refugees Get Wry Welcome on RedNote, Another Chinese App"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In their mass migration to the Chinese app RedNote, social media users make a gleeful mockery of the American government.<\/p>\n

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As a TikTok ban looms, hundreds of thousands of Americans casting about for a new video-sharing app have migrated to Xiaohongshu<\/a>, a social media platform that translates as \u201cLittle Red Book,\u201d the American nickname for a classic compendium of quotations from Chairman Mao. It has all played out like a global practical joke on the American government: Threatened with exile from TikTok over concerns of Chinese interference, its users have simply scrolled to a different Chinese app, one whose name evokes the Chinese Communist Party.<\/p>\n

When I downloaded Xiaohongshu, widely called RedNote, it was ranked first among free apps in Apple\u2019s U.S. App Store. (The second was Lemon8, another Chinese TikTok alternative owned by TikTok\u2019s parent company, ByteDance.) I surrendered my phone number, reported my gender and ticked off some of my interests: baby care, calligraphy, snacks. Then I absorbed a selection of the app\u2019s algorithmically selected videos: A girl in a lace veil eating an ice pop the size of her head; a woman preparing dinner in the back seat of a minicar lined with animal plushies; a stirring fan edit of Luigi Mangione court appearances.<\/p>\n

Soon I started to see videos pitched directly at me \u2014 welcome notes created for the American TikTok user who recently arrived on RedNote\u2019s shores.<\/p>\n

Inside the world of Xiaohongshu, the Americans downloading the app en masse have been branded \u201cTikTok refugees.\u201d Its existing Chinese users have jokingly advertised themselves as the Americans\u2019 \u201cnew Chinese spies,\u201d started administering Mandarin lessons and formed in-app group chats for \u201crefugees\u201d to get the lay of the land. They have warned that they intend to collect a tax from foreign users (the price tag: You must share a picture of a cat).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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It\u2019s all a wry commentary on the U.S. government\u2019s crackdown on TikTok, and the relative ease with which users can simply regenerate a similar experience on some other Chinese platform. Together, Chinese power users and American newbies are spontaneously performing a mocking burlesque of national security policy.<\/p>\n

For TikTok users, the decision to banish TikTok specifically from American phones can seem silly. Over the past several years, lawmakers have blamed the app for everything from failing to uphold<\/a> \u201cAmerican values\u201d to promoting pro-Palestinian content among American youth. As if American-owned social media companies like Meta have never sought to mine and exploit sensitive data. As if American-owned platforms like X would never juice their algorithms to reward certain political ideas.<\/p>\n

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In their mass migration to the Chinese app RedNote, social media users make a gleeful mockery of the American government.As a TikTok ban looms, hundreds of thousands of Americans casting about for a new video-sharing app have migrated to Xiaohongshu, a social media platform that translates as \u201cLittle Red Book,\u201d the American nickname for a classic compendium of quotations from Chairman Mao. It has all played out like a global practical joke on the American government: Threatened with exile from TikTok over concerns of Chinese interference, its users have simply scrolled to a different Chinese app, one whose name evokes the Chinese Communist Party.When I downloaded Xiaohongshu, widely called RedNote, it was ranked first among free apps in Apple\u2019s U.S. App Store. (The second was Lemon8, another Chinese TikTok alternative owned by TikTok\u2019s parent company, ByteDance.) I surrendered my phone number, reported my gender and ticked off some of my interests: baby care, calligraphy, snacks. Then I absorbed a selection of the app\u2019s algorithmically selected videos: A girl in a lace veil eating an ice pop the size of her head; a woman preparing dinner in the back seat of a minicar lined with animal plushies; a stirring fan edit of Luigi Mangione court appearances.Soon I started to see videos pitched directly at me \u2014 welcome notes created for the American TikTok user who recently arrived on RedNote\u2019s shores.Inside the world of Xiaohongshu, the Americans downloading the app en masse have been branded \u201cTikTok refugees.\u201d Its existing Chinese users have jokingly advertised themselves as the Americans\u2019 \u201cnew Chinese spies,\u201d started administering Mandarin lessons and formed in-app group chats for \u201crefugees\u201d to get the lay of the land. They have warned that they intend to collect a tax from foreign users (the price tag: You must share a picture of a cat).It\u2019s all a wry commentary on the U.S. government\u2019s crackdown on TikTok, and the relative ease with which users can simply regenerate a similar experience on some other Chinese platform. Together, Chinese power users and American newbies are spontaneously performing a mocking burlesque of national security policy.For TikTok users, the decision to banish TikTok specifically from American phones can seem silly. Over the past several years, lawmakers have blamed the app for everything from failing to uphold \u201cAmerican values\u201d to promoting pro-Palestinian content among American youth. As if American-owned social media companies like Meta have never sought to mine and exploit sensitive data. As if American-owned platforms like X would never juice their algorithms to reward certain political ideas.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20217,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20215"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20218,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20215\/revisions\/20218"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}