Does anybody remember the period of chaos after Elon Musk bought Twitter, rebranded it to X, and ‘bird app refugees’ flooded to other text-based platforms like Bluesky, Threads, Mastodon, and even LinkedIn? It looks like the same thing is happening now with a mass exodus from another social media giant.
The US Supreme Court passed a legislation last year that required ByteDance, the parent company of popular social media platform TikTok, to sell its US operations to non-Chinese owners or face a national ban. Ahead of the law’s January 19 deadline, its 170 million American users seem to be scrambling to find a new home for their ‘get ready with me’s, hot takes, travel itineraries, food recipes, and memes.
Xiaohongshu, also known as RedNote or abbreviated as XHS online, is a Chinese social media platform that has rapidly surged to take first place under social networking in the US Apple app store. Often described as Instagram, Pinterest, and Reddit combined, Xiaohongshu is also an e-commerce platform with short video and livestreaming functionalities. Over the past month, XHS users have noticed an influx of American users creating accounts, with hashtags such as #rednote and #TikTokrefugees going viral.
For the most part, XHS’ native users have been amused and generally accepting of the newcomers, with some accounts who are bilingual in English and Chinese stepping up to help translate. Chinese users are jokingly introducing themselves to American newcomers as their “Chinese spy friend” and asking this sudden wave of English speakers to help with their homework, while US users are requesting memes. If existing users notice a surge in cat photos, it’s because a lot of local Chinese accounts are also asking Americans to pay ‘cat tax’ by posting cute pictures of their pets to be accepted into the XHS community.
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Wholesome cultural exchanges aside, XHS was made for the Chinese market in mind, and most of its interface and content is in Chinese, which might limit usage and enjoyment for overseas users. Additionally, content creators who rely on TikTok to make a living will find that Xiaohongshu’s monetisation schemes differ greatly, without creator funds or ad revenue-sharing programmes to offer them the same level of financial reward.
Approximately one-third of all adults in the States use TikTok, including approximately 60 percent of adults under the age of 30 and 63 percent of teenagers. According to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, only 32 percent of American adults support the ban. But unless Bytedance manages to sell TikTok over the next few days, it looks increasingly likely that the wildly popular video app will be pulled from app stores in America. It remains to be seen which social media platform will end up as the next TikTok, and if this new pool of Xiaohongshu users end up finding a home within the pages of the little red book.
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