Chinese social media app RedNote has quickly become the most downloaded app on the Apple’s US App Store in recent days, ahead of a potential US ban on TikTok.
TikTok’s Chinese owners ByteDance are facing the prospect of the popular app being shut down permanently in America on Sunday, when a US government ban is due to take effect.
The law, signed off by US President Joe Biden in April, requires TikTok to break ties with its China-based parent company ByteDance by mid-January – or else it will be blocked in the country.
The ban is over concerns from some US politicians that ByteDance might share user data from TikTok with the Chinese government, despite repeated assurances from the firm that it would not.
But with so many video-sharing platforms like TikTok on the market, why are its users flooding to RedNote – and what is the app like?
What is RedNote?
RedNote, known as Xiaohongshu in China, is a Chinese-language social media app which is now available in English.
The app, founded in 2013 by Shanghai-based Xingyin Information Technology, is hugely popular in Mandarin-speaking countries and has more than 300 million monthly active users, according to Bloomberg.
While it grew steadily over the years, its biggest boom in popularity came during the pandemic.
It is not exactly a TikTok clone, and has been compared more closely to Instagram.
While it offers short-form videos and images to users via an algorithm like TikTok, text posts and shopping features are also prominent.
The interface is different from TikTok’s in that a video does not immediately start playing upon opening the app, and users must log in to begin using it.
William Wong, a Chinese RedNote content creator who lived in Canada for a decade, has been using the app for around a year.
“RedNote is a mix of Instagram, Pinterest and TikTok,” he told Sky News science and technology reporter, Mickey Carroll.
“But TikTok is heavily focussed on short-form videos. You just keep scrolling and that’s how you consume all the content. But RedNote is more dynamic.”
What is driving TikTok users in the US to RedNote?
If the goal were as simple for US TikTok users as finding another social media platform with short-form videos, then using already popular Western apps like Meta-owned Instagram and Facebook might have been a viable alternative.
But some American TikTok creators – many of whom make a living on the app – have been urging followers to join them in downloading RedNote to send a message to the US government, which they believe is overstepping in its move to ban the app.
One US TikToker said in a video: “Our government, I’m convinced, loves and thrives seeing us unhappy and seeing us struggle and seeing us poor.
“Seeing that RedNote, another Chinese app, which is owned and hosted in China, is the number one app in the App Store today is just beautiful.”
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Another US creator whose video has over 330,000 likes said he was “so proud” of TikTok users for downloading RedNote “as a unit, as a team”.
There are TikTokers making serious points, but the switch to RedNote seems to have become popular largely due to meme culture.
TikToks with millions of views have shown US TikTokers “surrendering” all their data to China and becoming a “TikTok refugee” on RedNote.
Mr Wong said: “I’m thinking a lot of those users [switching to RedNote], they’re not happy with the decision and they’re trying to give a big middle finger to the establishment saying… they’re rebellious, [so] they’re going to go on a very Chinese application – not just TikTok, like an entirely Chinese ecosystem.
“So that’s very American. You know, I kind of appreciate that sort of spirit.”
The potential TikTok ban is also coming at a time when Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta has announced changes to Facebook and Instagram’s content moderation.
One US TikToker posted a video on Sunday, which has 1.5 million likes, of her walking with a suitcase in the snow, with a caption saying she would “rather move to China than Instagram reels”.
How the US influx is reshaping RedNote
RedNote was already an established and hugely successful app in China before US TikTokers caught wind of it.
“One year ago when I first started out on the platform, it was very much focused on the Chinese community,” says Mr Wong.
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He says it was predominantly used by Chinese international students around the globe to share their life experiences studying overseas, and also by some domestic creators in China.
“So it’s very, very Chinese,” he said.
But the RedNote landscape has shifted massively.
“I see so many American content creators,” he said.
The homepage of the app is full of Mandarin speakers welcoming Americans, and Americans introducing themselves.
One post, with nearly 3,000 comments, reads: “I’m American. Do y’all like us? We know y’all not the enemy. Can we all be friends?”
The replies are a combination of people asking about specific English American phrases like “y’all”, welcoming the US users, and making jokes about stealing data.
Although RedNote has been available in English before, some users reported on Monday that it appeared to be more accessible to Western users.
While it all looks friendly on the surface, Mr Wong says he has seen that some Chinese users have “mixed feelings” about the app’s sudden popularity among Americans because they don’t want to see a sudden influx of Western content.
Why is TikTok potentially being banned in the US?
The US Senate last year voted in favour of the Biden administration’s legislation to ban TikTok in the country.
TikTok launched an appeal, arguing the proposal was a breach of the US First Amendment, which protects freedom of speech.
However, the petition was dismissed last month by the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Its judges ruled the government’s ban was constitutional because it was designed “solely to protect that freedom from a foreign adversary nation and to limit that adversary’s ability to gather data on people in the United States”.
And the US Supreme Court has indicated it will accept the ban if the app’s Chinese owners do not sell their stake in the US version of the app before Sunday.
The White House has said the goal is ending Chinese ownership – not banning TikTok.
Both the FBI and Federal Communications Commission have warned that TikTok owner ByteDance could share user data, such as browsing history, location and biometric identifiers, with China’s authoritarian government.
TikTok said it has never done that and would not do so if asked.
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The worry stems from a set of Chinese national security laws that compel organisations to help with intelligence gathering.
It is not clear when the Supreme Court’s final ruling will be delivered, but the ban is due to take effect on Sunday, a day before Donald Trump’s inauguration.
Could RedNote end up getting banned too?
In theory, yes, experts say.
Speaking to Sky News, social media expert Adam Tinworth said: “The legislation that Biden got through the House has, although it specifically names TikTok and Bytedance, provisions where the government can unilaterally apply the same process to any other hostile-foreign-power owned-service.
“So if it ends up everything on TikTok migrating to RedNote, then in theory, depending on how the Trump administration feels about it, [they] could just apply that same legislation straight away to RedNote and shut it down equally easily.”
But lawmakers who crafted the bill said in interviews with The Washington Post that while it could be used for foreign-controlled social media platforms, the core intention of the ban was to target TikTok and its sister applications.
