The United States Supreme Court upheld the nationwide TikTok ban on Friday morning as the deadline for Chinese company ByteDance to sell the vastly popular video app approaches on Sunday.
While a number of competing apps like RedNote, Instagram and Lemon8 are working overtime to attract soon-to-be displaced TikTok users and creators, one unexpected app has already seen traffic surge in the wake of the ban: Duolingo.
Yes, the language-learning app has been the big winner amid TikTok’s impending demise and it’s mostly due to spite. According to the app, Duolingo has seen a 216 percent growth in users learning Mandarin Chinese over the last year, which is tied to the growing popularity of RedNote.
https://x.com/duolingo/status/1879582775055176008
Obviously there’s a massive dose of irony in the United States banning China-backed TikTok only for its users to flock to another app whose name translates to “Little Red Book“. But that migration has serious real world consequences beyond Google search spikes for Mao’s handbook in the United States.
According to CNBC, Duolingo’s shares rose seven percent on Thursday ahead of the Supreme Court’s decision as RedNote continues to climb up the app store charts.
Learning a whole new language out of spite is the type of revenge Larry David would appreciate if not for the amount of work it takes. We’ll see if it sticks.
