TikTok Influencers Protest Imminent Ban as Demand for Rival RedNote Soars

With TikTok’s ban within the U.S. looming, content material creators are flocking to the Chinese language social media app RedNote to start out once more and, in some circumstances, flaunt their contempt for the U.S. Authorities.

The surge can also be fueled by reviews that ByteDance, TikTok’s mum or dad firm, may promote TikTok to X proprietor Elon Musk.

Regardless of its major Chinese language interface, RedNote has skyrocketed in recognition.

It’s now the highest app on the Apple App Retailer and second on Google Play, trailing solely Lemon8, one other ByteDance product. Presently, over 60,000 RedNote posts carry the hashtag #TikTokRefugee.

On Sunday, TikTok will go darkish, marking the primary time the U.S. Authorities will ban a mainstream social media app. As a substitute of permitting customers who’ve downloaded the app to proceed to make use of it, TikTok will redirect customers to an internet site with data on the ban.

Questions stay about whether or not RedNote can amass TikTok’s 1.5 billion month-to-month energetic customers and whether or not the U.S. Authorities will put the TikTok different in its crosshairs.

In keeping with Randy Nelson, Head of Insights and Media Relations at analytics agency AppFigures, the newfound recognition of RedNote is one other signal of the facility of TikTok and the power of the app to make one other app go viral.

“We’re seeing it occur with an in any other case obscure app within the West that finally is not actually a direct different to TikTok, with a largely Chinese language person base, and indications are that TikTok ‘refugees’ are encountering this disconnect from the choice they have been anticipating,” Nelson informed Decrypt.

“These customers are transferring from one app that is dealing with a ban as a consequence of its nation of origin to a different operated out of that very nation, which, if its profile rises to the extent of a TikTok, may face the exact same destiny.”

Launched in 2013 by Shanghai-based Xingyin Info Expertise and often known as Xiaohongshu—Little Purple Ebook in English—a reference to the e-book of quotes by Individuals’s Republic of China founder Chairman Mao Zedong.

RedNote focuses on life-style content material and product options, contrasting with TikTok’s emphasis on leisure.

The app has been downloaded greater than 3.4 million occasions within the U.S. since January 1, 2017, throughout each the App Retailer and Google Play, in line with knowledge from AppFigures.

The information consists of about 1.1 million downloads in 2024 alone, representing over a 3rd of its complete U.S. downloads.

RedNote continued this upward pattern into 2025 with 260,000 downloads, in comparison with 30,000 in January 2024, a rise of 867%, AppFigures’ knowledge exhibits. As of January 2025, RedNote boasts over 300 million energetic month-to-month customers, primarily in China, Taiwan, and Malaysia.

Rising U.S. person numbers have prompted creators so as to add translated English or Chinese language subtitles to movies.

Getting began with RedNote

The very first thing new customers will discover is that RedNote’s interface is a mix of Chinese language and English. Whereas many app screens are in Chinese language, making navigation difficult for non-Chinese language audio system, signing up is easy.

On iPhones, customers can register with a telephone quantity or their Apple ID. RedNote additionally has a desktop model along with iOS and Android. As soon as registered, customers can set English because the default language, although some options should still show textual content in each languages.

Reactions to the sudden surge in recognition of RedNote within the U.S. have been combined.

“In case you set up 小红书 (RedNote) for worry of a TikTok ban, you’ll immediately morph into an NPC,” the account for the decentralized social media platform Minds wrote on X (previously Twitter).

What’s behind the surge in RedNote’s recognition?

The fast rise of RedNote within the U.S. might sound spontaneous, however in line with specialists like USC Professor of Communications Karen North, the pattern just isn’t as grassroots as social media would have us consider.

“I don’t assume that RedNote simply emerged out of the blue,” North informed Decrypt in an interview. “I consider that RedNote is being promoted. TikTok is actually astroturfing this marketing campaign—it simply would not make sense as a protest towards the US Authorities’s assault on TikTok as a result of it is Chinese language.”

North is a scientific professor and founding father of USC Annenberg’s Digital Social Media program. Through the Clinton administration, she labored for the White Home Workplace of Science and Expertise.

“The concept that there was bipartisan assist for an unpopular motion proper earlier than an election ought to sign that elected officers know one thing severe, and we should always cease and assume or be open-minded in regards to the motive,” North stated.

On April 23, final yr, Congress handed the Defending People from Overseas Adversaries Managed Purposes Act, which requires TikTok’s mum or dad firm, ByteDance, to promote its U.S. operations by January 19, 2025.

U.S. President Joe Biden signed the laws into legislation, together with a provision for a three-month extension if the sale is not finalized by the deadline.

The PAFACA targets not solely TikTok but in addition foreign-owned apps that U.S. policymakers say pose nationwide safety dangers, significantly these from Chinese language firms.

Privateness and social media

North famous that individuals within the US are more and more detached to private privateness, usually saying it doesn’t exist. Nevertheless, she emphasised that privateness legal guidelines range considerably by nation; “It’s their nation, their legal guidelines,” she stated, highlighting the distinction between privateness laws in america and people overseas.

Regardless of this rising public apathy, governments worldwide have prohibited Chinese language social media apps. In 2023, a number of international locations, together with the U.S., the EU, Canada, and Taiwan, prohibited utilizing TikTok on authorities units. Taiwan had already banned RedNotee in 2022 over nationwide safety issues.

“Within the EU, privateness legal guidelines are stricter. In China, particular person customers haven’t got privateness. Knowledge will be collected and saved individually, and that is how their authorities operates. However it’s typically not okay with most of us,” North stated.

“When individuals say privateness would not exist anymore, they’re pondering in American phrases. We have to assume nation by nation as we obtain apps ruled by the legal guidelines of different locations,” she stated.

Edited by Sebastian Sinclair and Josh Quittner