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 begin once more and, in some instances, flaunt their contempt for the U.S. Authorities.

The surge can also be fueled by stories that ByteDance, TikTok’s father or mother firm, would possibly promote TikTok to X proprietor Elon Musk.

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

It’s now the highest app on the Apple App Retailer and second on Google Play, trailing solely Lemon8, one other ByteDance product. At present, 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 an alternative of permitting customers who’ve downloaded the app to proceed to make use of it, TikTok will redirect customers to an internet site with info on the ban.

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

In keeping with Randy Nelson, Head of Insights and Media Relations at analytics agency AppFigures, the newfound reputation 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 various to TikTok, with a largely Chinese language consumer base, and indications are that TikTok ‘refugees’ are encountering this disconnect from the choice they have been anticipating,” Nelson advised Decrypt.

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

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

RedNote focuses on way of life 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 accordance with knowledge from AppFigures.

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

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

Rising U.S. consumer 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 cellphone 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 reputation of RedNote within the U.S. have been blended.

“In the event 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 reputation?

The fast rise of RedNote within the U.S. might sound spontaneous, however in accordance with consultants like USC Professor of Communications Karen North, the development shouldn’t be as grassroots as social media would have us imagine.

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

North is a medical professor and founding father of USC Annenberg’s Digital Social Media program. In the course of 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 concerning the motive,” North mentioned.

On April 23, final 12 months, Congress handed the Defending Individuals from Overseas Adversaries Managed Purposes Act, which requires TikTok’s father or mother firm, ByteDance, to promote its U.S. operations by January 19, 2025.

U.S. President Joe Biden signed the laws into regulation, 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 corporations.

Privateness and social media

North famous that folks within the US are more and more detached to private privateness, typically saying it doesn’t exist. Nevertheless, she emphasised that privateness legal guidelines differ considerably by nation; “It’s their nation, their legal guidelines,” she mentioned, highlighting the distinction between privateness rules 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 nations, together with the U.S., the EU, Canada, and Taiwan, prohibited utilizing TikTok on authorities gadgets. Taiwan had already banned RedNotee in 2022 over nationwide safety issues.

“Within the EU, privateness legal guidelines are stricter. In China, particular person customers do not have privateness. Knowledge will be collected and saved individually, and that is how their authorities operates. But it surely’s usually not okay with most of us,” North mentioned.

“When folks say privateness does 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 mentioned.

Edited by Sebastian Sinclair and Josh Quittner