Update: The TikTok ban seems more and more likely and RedNote, or Xiaohongshu, has exploded in popularity as American's seek alternatives. In recent days searches for the app exploded 4,900%. It's become the top free app on the iOS App Store and second on the Play Store. Accodring to QRFY, the state of Washington has searched for RedNote the most, while Lafayette, Indiana tops for metro areas.
With the TikTok ban looming, and the prospect of losing access to everyone’s favorite Chinese social network in the U.S., users have started migrating to other platforms. Specifically a lot of people seem to have been switching to Chinese social network RedNote — causing it to skyrocket to the top of the App Store charts.
Odds are you’ve never heard of RedNote, and that’s not surprising. The TikTok competitor has over 300 million monthly users, and functions like a hybrid version of TikTok and Instagram. The only problem is that it’s built for users that speak Mandarin, rather than English, which means the self-proclaimed “TikTok refugees” are going to have to start learning Mandarin if they want to take full advantage of what RedNote has to offer.
The good news is that RedNote seems to have welcomed those new users, and according to the BBC there are 63,000 posts covering the “TikTok refugee” topic. This is a place for new users to learn about the app, and figure out how to navigate the Chinese-language interface.
At the time of writing TikTok is still operating as normal. But, having just failed to convince the Supreme Court that it should be allowed to continue its U.S. operations, TikTok is still on track to be banned in the U.S. The only way to prevent this would be for parent company ByteDance to sell TikTok, and there have been rumors that officials have met to discuss selling the service to Elon Musk — though TikTok has denied this.
What's happening to TikTok?
But, assuming the service isn’t sold to a different entity, TikTok has confirmed it intends to go dark on January 19. Using TikTok will not be illegal, but it’ll be incredibly difficult to carry on using the service — especially since it’ll be pulled from app stores. According to NPR, U.S. users that try to access TikTok will see a pop-up informing them that the service is no longer available in the country.
Officials have also said that anyone still able to access the service may find that it will be “buggy, operate slowly or crash often”. In other words it won’t be the same TikTok you’re able to use today. Hence the migration to the best TikTok alternatives, like RedNote.
BBC News notes that RedNote has faced some of the same criticisms as TikTok, with reports of censorship. Taiwanese officials have also been banned from using Rednote over alleged security risks associated with using Chinese software. But that doesn’t seem to be deterring plenty of people from making the switch anyway.
It’s just crazy, and a little bit funny, that users would rather switch to a TikTok alternative that’s only available in Mandarin instead of using the English language options that are available. Sorry Reels, you’re just going to have to sit in the corner quietly with Threads and whatever's still left of Google Plus.
