With the U.S. government’s TikTok ban set to kick in on Sunday, Americans have been flocking to an alternative social media platform, but it’s another Chinese app, and experts say it could present the same, if not even more issues. There’s been a surge in U.S. downloads of the Chinese-owned application Xiaohongshu, or “RedNote” as many users call it.
A U.S. official told CBS News on Thursday that RedNote, just like TikTok, could face an ultimatum to divest, or be banned.
“This appears to be the kind of app that the statute would apply to and could face the same restrictions as TikTok if it’s not divested,” a U.S. official told CBS News.
ANNA KURTH/AFP/Getty
CBS News has reached out to Xiaohongshu for comment as to whether the company would agree with that assessment.
What is RedNote?
Xiaohongshu has been the most downloaded free app on Apple’s app store in the U.S. since Tuesday. Analysis by Sensor Tower, a market intelligence firm, showed the platform’s downloads in the U.S. had increased 200% year-on-year and seen a 194% uptick since last week.
QR Code Generator, a firm that provides statistics on trends online, said there had been a 4,900% increase in searches on Google for Xiaohongshu in the U.S. on Monday alone.
Xiaohongshu was founded in 2013 and is a lifestyle platform “where over 300 million users every month share their life experiences,” according to a description on Apple’s app store.
The Chinese photo and video-sharing platform has often been compared to Instagram. It operates as a platform for e-commerce, a manual for tips on travel and fine dining, as well as a vehicle for users to share content from their everyday lives.
Xiaohongshu literally translates from Mandarin to “little red book,” likely a reference to the famed little red book of quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong, the founding father of Communist China.
That reference has not put off the many American users who’ve turned to the app to share their experiences as so-called “TikTok refugees” ahead of the U.S. ban. Videos including a use of the “TikTok refugee” term on RedNote have racked up millions of views and impressions this week.
“This is for my fellow TikTok refugees and Americans, behave on this app! You better behave because everyone in China is being so kind to us as we colonize their cutesy tootsy app just because our government sucks,” one American user account using the name “Savannah” posted on Wednesday. The post had gained almost 128,000 impressions by Thursday.
TikTok, in its international form, is not available to users in mainland China, meaning the U.S. exodus to Xiaohongshu has put Americans in closer contact with Chinese users than they ever had been before. It’s led to some amusing cultural exchanges.
One American “TikTok refugee” with the username “anieladiaz” posted a video asking Chinese users if they had any questions. A Chinese user commented under the post with a screenshot of what appeared to be their English homework. Anieladiaz was happy to provide the answers to the test questions, which they shared in their own screenshot. Other Chinese users have been posting videos in which they teach Americans to use Mandarin slang words.
Is RedNote safe?
The rapid rise in U.S. downloads may be cause for concern for the same U.S. lawmakers who ushered in the ban on TikTok. One cybersecurity expert told CBS News that RedNote may actually represent an even greater threat.
“RedNote was never meant for outside of the China market. All of the data sharing and all the servers to which the data is being shared is in China,” Adrianus Warmenhoven, a cybersecurity expert at Nord VPN, told CBS News on Wednesday. “It means they are exempt from all of these data protections and outside of the view of the American government.”
Warmenhoven said TikTok and its parent company ByteDance had at least stored data in U.S.-based servers, which gave the U.S. government “some modicum of moderation or limitations on data that can be sent to China and how much and in what way.”
He also said RedNote’s terms and conditions lack transparency, which he said presents a huge cybersecurity risk for Americans.
“Its terms and conditions are in Mandarin, leaving non-Chinese-speaking users unclear about what data is collected and how it’s used,” Warmenhoven said. “I’m pretty sure those millions who are moving over are not using Google Translate to read [the terms and conditions] so they don’t know what they are agreeing to.”
The specific U.S. legislation used to ban TikTok — the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act,” which President Biden signed into law last April, grants the federal government broad scope to crack down on foreign social media platforms.
Under the law, Congress can compel a platform to divest its U.S. operations from foreign ownership, and it can be shut down if it qualifies as a threat. The law can apply to any platform that allows users to share content with each other and has more than 1 million monthly active users, is owned by a company located in a foreign adversary-controlled country, and has been determined by the president to present a significant national security threat.
The legislation is currently subject to a legal challenge by ByteDance, which has argued that it’s unconstitutional and violates the first amendment protecting free speech. A ruling from the Supreme Court is pending in that case.
CBS News has asked President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team whether the incoming administration might deem RedNote a national security threat that should be subject to the law. The transition team had not responded by the time of the publication of this article.
Trump has spoken out recently against the TikTok ban. Last month, he said he had a “warm spot in my heart” for TikTok – a reversal from his stance when he last occupied the Oval Office.
The Federal Trade Commission, the agency tasked with enforcing the ban and ensuring that internet service providers in the U.S. and app store companies such as Apple and Google comply with the law, declined to comment.
RedNote is heavily censored
Content on RedNote appears to be much more heavily censored than posts on TikTok. A CBS News analysis found that any search for “Xi Jinping,” China’s autocratic president, on RedNote yielded no results whatsoever.
The term “Free Hong Kong” also brought back no results. A search for “Taiwan” will turn up several memes welcoming Americans to the platform, but noting that users must recognize the Beijing-imposed narrative that the democratically governed island just off China’s coast, which the U.S. is legally bound to help defend from invasion, is an inseparable part of China.
A similar search for those terms on TikTok turns up a wide range of political opinions from users, including posts heavily critical of Chinese censorship.
RedNote even appears to be scaling up operations to monitor content given the vast number of Americans signing onto the app. CBS News found local job listings posted by the company online in mainland China advertising jobs to review English content and promising a monthly salary of between $950 and $1,200.
“Users are not going to a place with more freedom. RedNote is moderated differently, and the algorithm is different from TikTok,” Warmenhoven told CBS News. “You will not get traction or it will not spread politically sensitive issues, or maybe social sensitive issues — especially issues that are socially sensitive in China.”
