“TikTok refugees” are exiled to the Chinese application Xiaohongshu

Furious at the thought of a possible ban on TikTok in USAnumerous Internet users in that country go to the Chinese application Xiaohongshu, unconcerned about the use that may be given to their personal data.

The government of outgoing President Joe Biden accuses TikTok, owned by the Chinese group ByteDance, of authorizing Beijing to collect user data and spy on them, something denied by both the Asian giant and the company.

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However, a law approved in April 2024 gives the Chinese group until this Sunday to sell the short video platform under penalty of being banned in the United States.

With time running out, a Chinese application appeared on Monday leading the App Store download list: Xiaohongshu (“Little Red Book” in Mandarin), a kind of fusion between Instagram and Pinterest in which videos like TikTok also parade.

The hashtag “TikTokRefugee” (“TikTok refugee”) had more than 100 million views as of Tuesday night on the app.

“They are trying to ban TikTok because they say China steals data,” but “they do not prohibit any American company from stealing our data,” an Internet user with 264,000 followers tells AFP.

This content creator claims that she preferred Xiaohongshu to American platforms such as Instagram and Facebook which, for her, are applications “for older people” that also “steal personal data and sell them to other companies.”

“That’s why many Americans don’t care now, we prefer China to have our data,” he says.

Other users who present themselves as “refugees” share the same sentiment.

“I know our government is a little racist. But I love you Chinese people. I don’t care if they take my data. Take them,” says Adham, a new user of the application in a video published on Monday.

“Ironic”

For Milton Mueller, a professor at the Georgia Tech School of Public Policy, the phenomenon shows that a ban would be “stupid.”

“It is deliciously ironic that the threat of a ban has a counterproductive effect so quickly, even before its application,” says this expert who presented a dossier opposing the measure to the Supreme Court.

Robyn Caplan, an expert at Duke University in the United States, points out that the possible ban pushes “users to applications with a much less clear separation from the Chinese Communist Party.”

Neither Xiaohongshu nor ByteDance declined to comment for this article.

Professor at the London School of Economics Meng Bingchun affirms that this “exile” reflects the ineffectiveness of Washington’s strategy towards the Chinese technology sector.

She sums it up with the expression “small garden, big fence,” which consists of restricting a small number of technologies considered sensitive to American national security.

But “the garden keeps expanding and the fence is permeable,” he says. “Worse still, in this specific case, those who live inside the fence can migrate to the digital space.”

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“Short term”

Until Monday, Xiaohongshu (also called RedNote in English) was mostly popular among Sinophone Internet users. At the end of 2023, the platform had 300 million monthly active users.

Unlike TikTok’s sister app Douyin or microblogging site Weibo, Xiaohongshu focuses on “lifestyle” content.

The platform has less censorship than others. In it you can find users who publish LGTBI+ content or who discuss positive aspects of women’s singleness, often sensitive topics in China.

The messages published in the application suggest that for older users, the arrival of American refugees offers certain advantages, such as being able to ask for help with homework or translating English words.

“It’s funny and ironic that Americans and Chinese find themselves online because of the US government’s ban on TikTok,” something that “the Chinese government has been doing for decades with American apps,” says Amanda Zhang, 26.

A part-time content creator and student in the United States, Zhang shares with AFP her concern about a possible ban on Xiaohongshu if the platform continues to seduce American Internet users.

But Meng Bingchun considers this phenomenon to be “more of a short-term reaction than a long-term trend.” The question is whether “Xiaohongshu will react quickly enough to keep its new users.”