Tiktok users are waving goodbye to their “Chinese spies” as they abandon the app in favor of another, er, Chinese one.
TikTok users are reportedly abandoning the Chinese-owned app in droves as a possible US ban approaches, with many hijacking the “Goodbye My Chinese Spy” meme. But the most interesting thing is that many of them prefer to switch to RedNote. Yes, RedNote is also Chinese.
Apparently, over half a million TikTok users “recently” left the platform in favor of RedNote, all in protest of an imminent US ban. “Our government is crazy if they think we’re going to support a TikTok ban,” a user named Heather Roberts reportedly said in a video message on RedNote.
Speaking of the ban, the most interesting thing is that the US Supreme Court is expected to uphold the earlier decision of the lower court. If the ban is upheld, it will go into effect on January 19 – unless, of course, Chinese owner ByteDance sells TikTok’s Chinese assets, although ByteDance said such a sale is “simply not possible: neither from a commercial point of view, nor from a technological, nor from a from a legal point of view.”
Meanwhile, RedNote is, roughly speaking, the Chinese equivalent of Instagram with added search engine aspects. Its Chinese title, Xiaohongshu, translates to “Little Red Book,” which usually refers to the famous (or some might say infamous) collection of sayings by Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong.
More recently, RedNote has also moved into live streaming. According to Reuters, it has more than 300 million monthly users, which is quite a lot even for China.
In any case, according to some reports, the mass exodus has brought social media users in the US and China closer together than ever before. CNN reports that most Chinese users have warmly welcomed their new RedNote siblings to the US.
“It feels like a lot has changed in an instant. Ordinary people from our two countries have never really communicated before,” CNN reports, commenting on one Chinese user.
As touching as this may be, it’s unlikely that the bonhomie will continue indefinitely, not least because of similar sentiments that were rife on the Clubhouse app back in 2021, before Chinese censors intervened.
For a non-TikTok user with absolutely no skin in the game, this is all a bit confusing. What to do with this “protest” or with the fact that users are willingly switching to another Chinese application?
Likewise, it is difficult to predict what might happen with the new Trump administration. To be fair, it is worth noting that the newly elected president is not entirely consistent in his attitude towards TikTok. But again, Mao himself said: “Contradiction and struggle are universal and absolute.” In many ways he was right, that’s for sure.