A protest against America’s TikTok ban is mired in contradiction

If TikTok dies, its budding romance with Americans will be worth watching.. (Photo by Antonin UTZ / AFP) (AFP)
If TikTok dies, its budding romance with Americans will be worth watching.. (Photo by Antonin UTZ / AFP) (AFP)

Summary

  • Another Chinese app is not the alternative some young Americans think it is

AS A SHUTDOWN looms, TikTok in America has the air of the last day of school. The Brits are saying goodbye to the Americans. Australians are waiting in the wings to replace banished American influencers. And American users are bidding farewell to their fictional Chinese spies—a joke referencing the American government’s accusation that China is using the app (which is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese tech giant) to surveil American citizens.

It is also a nod to the personalised feel of each user’s “For You Page" (FYP), the app’s algorithmically curated stream of videos. “Thank you to my Chinese spy for perfecting my FYP and understanding me more than anyone else. I will miss you forever," one video signs off.

ByteDance has until January 19th to sell TikTok to a non-Chinese owner, or see the app banned in America. As the chances of a ban have grown, following the Supreme Court’s decision on January 17th to uphold a sell-or-ban law passed last year, self-proclaimed “TikTok refugees" are protesting by downloading Xiaohongshu, a Chinese social-media and shopping app. On January 13th the app—a hybrid of Pinterest, Instagram and Reddit that English speakers have dubbed “RedNote", a shortened version of its translated name, “Little Red Book"—rose to the top of the free-apps chart on Apple’s American app store.

(The name’s cachet in America reflects a degree of generational amnesia, as well as dark irony: the “Little Red Book" was a collection of quotations by Mao Zedong, the founding leader of communist China who presided over famine and mass purges. Xiaohongshu’s founder says the name is a reference to the colour of his former university, Stanford, and ex-employer, Bain Capital).

The American influx to RedNote has both confused and entertained its Chinese users. “We’ve been waiting for you so we can continue our job as a Chinese spy," quipped one. Some Americans are learning Mandarin just to navigate the app.

It might seem puzzling that young Americans are volunteering their information to Chinese social media as a form of activism. In part this highlights changing attitudes towards data collection. In October 42% of Americans aged 18-34 told YouGov, a pollster, that they “don’t worry much about privacy", compared with just 24% of over-55s. Nearly two-thirds of Gen Z and millennial consumers surveyed last year in America by Deloitte, a consultancy, said the benefits of online services—such as entertainment and social connections—outweigh their data-privacy concerns.

Some of Xiaohongshu’s new users cite the Cambridge Analytica scandal to argue that the TikTok ban is hypocritical. “President Xi, you call me up and tell me exactly what data you need. Meta was allowed to sell it, why can’t I?" says Danisha Carter, an influencer based in Los Angeles with 1.9m followers, in a viral TikTok. “We want more of an explanation" for the ban than the risk of data exposure, she told your correspondent.

Choosing Xiaohongshu over an American alternative may be a form of resistance to the TikTok crackdown. But the app is also vulnerable to a ban, says Alan Rozenshtein of the University of Minnesota. While TikTok and ByteDance are the only companies named in the sell-or-ban law, it also covers those that both exceed 1m monthly active users and have foreign owners from one of four “adversary" countries—China, Iran, North Korea and Russia—who hold at least a 20% stake. Part of the law mandates divestment for TikTok and ByteDance with no presidential discretion, but another gives the president the authority to trigger a similar process for other Chinese-controlled social-media apps, notes Mr Rozenshtein.

The law is not the only reason Xiaohongshu’s surge in new users may be short-lived. TikTok’s sister app, Douyin, which is only accessible in China, allows ByteDance to comply with China’s strict social-media censorship rules. Xiaohongshu, whose foreign users were mostly Chinese living abroad until now, was not prepared for American users to flock to it, and currently lacks such separation. Some Chinese users have alleged that posts in English which should have been censored are slipping through filters. Chinese reports suggested the app was making urgent hires for English speakers.

If some of these are censors, American social-media users accustomed to freely shouting their political views online may be in for a rude awakening. “The TikTok refugee phenomenon is an illusion," reckons Meng Chang, a Chinese podcaster and user of the app. “Xiaohongshu is one of the most strictly censored platforms in China." The app tolerates apolitical content such as lifestyle and fashion, but many other topics are subject to censorship. It also currently lacks mechanisms for users outside China to monetise their posts, a large appeal of TikTok and other American social-media apps.

Xiaohongshu’s fate, like TikTok’s, probably rests with Donald Trump. On January 15th the Washington Post reported that the president-elect is weighing how he might suspend the enforcement of a TikTok ban once in office (Shou Zi Chew, the app’s boss, is reportedly planning to attend his inauguration). The president-elect recently proclaimed that TikTok, a platform on which he resonated with young voters ahead of the election, had a “warm spot" in his heart. Xiaohongshu lacks that rapport. But if TikTok dies, its budding romance with Americans will be worth watching.

© 2025, The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved. From The Economist, published under licence. The original content can be found on www.economist.com

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