Users of China’s spyware-laced social media platform TikTok are reportedly flocking to another app called Xiaohongshu, or “Little Red Book,” in the face of a looming U.S. ban.
Xiaohongshu, which Chinese media is referring to as “RedNote” in an apparent bid to distance it from its Mandarin name – is also controlled by the Chinese Communist Party and is named after all-time murder champion Mao Zedong’s “Little Red Book” of communism.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday unanimously upheld the law signed by President Joe Biden in April requiring TikTok to either separate from China-based parent company ByteDance or face a ban in the United States.
“There is no doubt that, for more than 170 million Americans, TikTok offers a distinctive and expansive outlet for expression, means of engagement, and source of community, but Congress has determined that divestiture is necessary to address its well-supported national security concerns regarding TikTok’s data collection practices and relationship with a foreign adversary,” the Supreme Court said in its ruling.
TikTok claimed it was “not possible technologically, commercially, or legally” to separate from ByteDance, so it will “go dark” in the United States on Sunday.
Disappointed TikTok users flocked to “Little Red Book” as an alternative, making it the most downloaded free app in Apple’s online store last week. Downloads of Xiaohongshu tripled year-on-year across all platforms, with a surge of 194 percent in the past week alone, while Google searches for information on Xiaohongshu surged by 4,900 percent.
The app said it picked up over 700,000 new users between Monday and Wednesday of this week. A hashtag on Xiaohongshu for “TikTok refugees” quickly racked up 250 million views and 5.5 million comments.
Xiaohongshu has amassed 300 million users, the vast majority of them women, since it was introduced in 2013. It was originally designed as an online marketplace called “Hong Kong Shopping Guide” that catered to Chinese tourists, but became a full-blown social media platform as it grew in popularity.
The Wuhan coronavirus pandemic brought an enormous surge in users and boosted Xiaohongshu to $17 billion in market value. The user experience is now a photo and video sharing platform that more closely resembles Instagram than TikTok and it still has online shopping functions, although those are currently limited to Chinese users.
“Xiaohongshu” literally translates to “Little Red Book,” the name of Mao Zedong’s founding document for Chinese Communism. Mao is history’s greatest mass murderer by a fairly wide margin, with up to 80 million victims to his name, many of them slowly and hideously killed by enforced starvation. The founder of Xiaohongshu, Mao Wenchao, has reportedly claimed that the name of the application was inspired by the colors of his alma mater, Stanford Business School.
TikTok users are apparently aware of Xiaohongshu’s ideological underpinnings, as some of the debut videos from self-described “TikTok refugees” are fulminating anti-American screeds from people who clearly saw embracing Chinese Communism as a means of expressing contempt for their own country.
“This is for my fellow TikTok refugees and Americans, behave on this app! You better behave because everyone in China is being so kind to us as we colonize their cutesy tootsy app just because our government sucks,” said a Xiaohongshu post from an American user quoted by CBS News.
“Our government is out of their minds if they think we’re going to stand for this TikTok ban. We’re just going to a new Chinese app, and here we are,” said another quoted by CNN.
“Our government vilifies China, claiming China will use TikTok to turn Americans against the US. We all think that is ridiculous. So as a protest, and with much humor we collectively decided to join RedNote and willingly give our info to China to show our government we don’t care and challenge them,” said a third quoted by China’s state-run Global Times.
One difference noted by Americans migrating to Xiaohongshu was that, unlike TikTok, it actually has Chinese users. The Chinese government maintains a separate version of TikTok called Douyin, a detail whose implications TikTok users do not appear to have pondered very deeply.
The Global Times was pleased to report on Tuesday that Chinese “netizens” are welcoming TikTok refugees with “open arms.”
“Friends who come over from TikTok, I want to say, you are not refugees, you are brave explorers,” one Chinese user declared. Others created welcome videos for American newcomers with tips for using the app and translating Chinese-language posts.
“For so long we really haven’t been able to connect or talk with each other like this, but now we finally can, and it feels so special. This is such a real chance for us to get to know each other and maybe create something amazing together… You are not just welcome here, I really, really hope you will stay,” said a Chinese Xiaohongshu user in a viral post spotlighted by NPR.
Bloomberg News predicted the “Great Leap Forward to RedNote” – a cheeky reference to Mao’s mass-murder spree – would “fall flat” as users currently bleating about the “censorship” of TikTok realize they have leaped into the clutches of one of the world’s worst censorious authoritarian regimes.
“Those equating Beijing’s internet policies to America’s – as broken as they may be – are in for a rude awakening. And they should recognize that their new Chinese friends participating in political discourse are at greater risk when a crackdown inevitably comes,” Bloomberg’s Catherine Thorbecke anticipated.
As other bemused observers of Americans trying to make a statement about “free speech” by using an app named for a foundational work of totalitarian ideology have pointed out, right now it’s all fun and games on Xiaohongshu because the new arrivals are posting cat photos, exchanging recipes, and trashing Western civilization. As soon as one of them attempts to broach a subject forbidden by Beijing or criticizes the Chinese government, they will swiftly discover what censorship really looks like.
Also, for all the well-founded concerns about Western social media companies mining data and manipulating users with algorithms, Facebook and Instagram cannot hold a candle to China’s A.I.-enhanced million-man electronic surveillance army.
CBS News described the information environment these “TikTok refugees” are stumbling into:
Content on RedNote appears to be much more heavily censored than posts on TikTok. A CBS News analysis found that any search for “Xi Jinping,” China’s autocratic president, on RedNote yielded no results whatsoever.
The term “Free Hong Kong” also brought back no results. A search for “Taiwan” will turn up several memes welcoming Americans to the platform, but noting that users must recognize the Beijing-imposed narrative that the democratically governed island just off China’s coast, which the U.S. is legally bound to help defend from invasion, is an inseparable part of China.
A similar search for those terms on TikTok turns up a wide range of political opinions from users, including posts heavily critical of Chinese censorship.
CBS ominously added that Xiaohongshu appears to be recruiting English-speaking censors to handle the influx of Western users who might say things the Chinese Communist Party does not want said. The job listings explicitly state that applicants will spend their days “reviewing” English content.
Some TikTok refugees are exhorting their fellows to avoid political topics – supposedly because they want to be polite to their new Chinese friends, but possibly also because they grasp that talking politics will win them a brief and unhappy lesson in how communist censorship works. That strategy is likely to fail when the former TikTokers discover how many seemingly innocuous topics the Chinese Communist Party considers “political.”
“Welcome, but do not say anything about LGBTQ+. Thank you!” one of Xiaohongshu’s Chinese users chirped to the new American arrivals. That truce is unlikely to hold up for long.
Cybersecurity experts further noted that Xiaohongshu is probably even worse than TikTok for data sharing and privacy violations, and all of its data is stored in Chinese servers, so the app is not even bound by the minimal data protections which applied to TikTok.
A U.S. official told CBS News that Xiaohongshu could be subjected to the same statute as TikTok and given the same ultimatum to divest from Chinese Communist Party influence or be banned in the United States.
Canadian officials, noting a similar flood of TikTok users from their country to Xiaohongshu, also attempted to tactfully warn their citizens about the information-security perils they face.
“Canadians should make informed decisions about their personal data, and consider carefully how it is being used,” said Industry Minister Francois-Pilippe Champagne.
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), which has expressed grave misgivings about TikTok, hinted that it has similar concerns about Xiaohongshu. Despite these warnings, Xiaohongshu became the top free app for Droid and Apple phones in Canada last week, as in the United States.
