As TikTok ban approaches, users flee to Chinese app ‘Red Note’

“Hello everyone, my name is Ryan. I am a refugee from TikTok. The US government bans TikTok, so we are looking for an alternative… Very sorry to interrupt you here. We hope we don’t have to stay here too long,” a Xiaohongshu user who uses the name Ryan Martin said in Video clip to publish Yesterday he appeared to be addressing the app’s Chinese user base. He translated the statement into Chinese and used an automated voice generator to read it in the video, which has since been liked more than 24,000 times. “It’s okay, you’re not interrupting. ‘When you’re active, we’re sleeping,’” reads one of the top comments in Chinese.

There are also dozens of live voice chat rooms on the platform where American and Chinese users explain to each other, perhaps for the first time in many cases, how their communities work and clear up common misunderstandings. One of the most popular chat rooms with nearly 30,000 users listening.

While Xiaohongshu is not specifically mentioned in the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Apps Act that the Supreme Court is currently considering and could lead to a US ban on TikTok, the law states that any “foreign adversary controlled app” could face… A similar fate. in the future. In other words, there is no guarantee that Xiaohongshu will not follow TikTok’s lead in being banned by the US government.

The TikTok ban may have thrust Xiaohongshu into the spotlight in the United States, but the app has long been successful in China. Founded in 2013, the Shanghai-based company runs one of, if not the, most the Most of the trendy platforms in China over the past few years that are said to have been created More than $1 billion in annual profits In 2024. Quite simply, it is the most popular app in China that non-Chinese have never heard of.

It also has a large following among Chinese speakers abroad, from overseas Chinese students to Taiwanese to diaspora communities in Malaysia. Restaurants, tourist areas and travel companies All over the world We started noticing the app due to the number of Chinese tourists who rely heavily on it for local information and recommendations shared by their fellow Chinese.

The app is starkly different from TikTok in several key ways. While Xiaohongshu allows users to post short vertical videos just like TikTok, the majority of the content on the platform is photo slideshows paired with text, which is why people often view it as more of a competitor to Instagram than TikTok. The AI-powered grid-shaped app feed (referred to as “grid construction” in professional technology circles) has been so successful at driving engagement that major social media companies like Tencent and ByteDance have copied the design in their own products. Lemon8, another popular social media app developed by ByteDance alongside TikTok, is It is widely viewed as an attempt to imitate Xiaohongshu And its success.