Last night, the local “news”, ran an obvious canned “report”, saying words to the effect “people afraid of TikTok being banned are flooding to Rednote.”, with further blather about what Rednote does.
“Rednote” is another ChiCom company. The “report” didn’t even bother replacing the visuals with Chinese writing, and the “analyst” in the piece was Chinese, whose English was heavily accented.
In January 2025, the potential banning of TikTok in the US caused many US users to look for a TikTok alternative, which led to a significant increase in Xiaohongshu downloads. It was the most-downloaded free app in the App Store and #TikTokRefugee became a trending topic. As a result of the influx of US TikTok users to Xiaohongshu, the Financial Times reported that an employee from Xiahongshu stated that the platform is trying to capitalize on the sudden influx of US users and might need to adjust its content review processes if American influencers begin sharing posts. According to The Beijing News, Xiaohongshu announced an urgent recruitment of English content moderators to expand its content moderation team.