With TikTok’s ban in the U.S. looming, content creators are flocking to the Chinese social media app RedNote to start again and, in some cases, flaunt their contempt for the U.S. Government.
The surge is also fueled by reports that ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, might sell TikTok to X owner Elon Musk.
Despite its primary Chinese interface, RedNote has skyrocketed in popularity.
It is now the top app on the Apple App Store and second on Google Play, trailing only Lemon8, another ByteDance product. Currently, over 60,000 RedNote posts carry the hashtag #TikTokRefugee.
On Sunday, TikTok will go dark, marking the first time the U.S. Government will ban a mainstream social media app. Instead of allowing users who have downloaded the app to continue to use it, TikTok will redirect users to a website with information on the ban.
Questions remain about whether RedNote can amass TikTok’s 1.5 billion monthly active users and whether the U.S. Government will put the TikTok alternative in its crosshairs.
According to Randy Nelson, Head of Insights and Media Relations at analytics firm AppFigures, the newfound popularity of RedNote is another sign of the power of TikTok and the ability of the app to make another app go viral.
“We’re seeing it happen with an otherwise obscure app in the West that ultimately isn’t really a direct alternative to TikTok, with a largely Chinese user base, and indications are that TikTok ‘refugees’ are encountering this disconnect from the alternative they were expecting,” Nelson told Decrypt.
“These consumers are moving from one app that’s facing a ban due to its country of origin to another operated out of that very country, which, if its profile rises to the level of a TikTok, could face the very same fate.”
Launched in 2013 by Shanghai-based Xingyin Information Technology and known as Xiaohongshu—Little Red Book in English—a reference to the book of quotes by People’s Republic of China founder Chairman Mao Zedong.
RedNote focuses on lifestyle content and product features, contrasting with TikTok’s emphasis on entertainment.
The app has been downloaded more than 3.4 million times in the U.S. since January 1, 2017, across both the App Store and Google Play, according to data from AppFigures.
The data includes about 1.1 million downloads in 2024 alone, representing over a third of its total U.S. downloads.
RedNote continued this upward trend into 2025 with 260,000 downloads, compared to 30,000 in January 2024, an increase of 867%, AppFigures’ data shows. As of January 2025, RedNote boasts over 300 million active monthly users, mainly in China, Taiwan, and Malaysia.
Increasing U.S. user numbers have prompted creators to add translated English or Chinese subtitles to videos.
Getting started with RedNote
The first thing new users will notice is that RedNote’s interface is a blend of Chinese and English. While many app screens are in Chinese, making navigation challenging for non-Chinese speakers, signing up is straightforward.
On iPhones, users can register with a phone number or their Apple ID. RedNote also has a desktop version in addition to iOS and Android. Once registered, users can set English as the default language, though some features may still display text in both languages.
Reactions to the sudden surge in popularity of RedNote in the U.S. have been mixed.
“If you install 小红书 (RedNote) for fear of a TikTok ban, you will instantly morph into an NPC,” the account for the decentralized social media platform Minds wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
The American migration to Xiaohongshu
(RedNote) may be the craziest accidental cultural exchange ever.Hundreds of thousands of users landed in an app not localized or in their language.
One day in, and it’s already considered rude not to subtitle videos in the other language. pic.twitter.com/eG08cH1ID9
— Olivia Moore (@omooretweets) January 14, 2025
Lmao at thousands of people downloading Rednote (the version of tiktok that is actually owned by China) to spite the U.S. government, finding themselves having lovely interactions with the millions of Chinese citizens on the app & inadvertently undoing decades of U.S. propaganda. pic.twitter.com/2OVe06tTpz
— abby (@abby4thepeople) January 13, 2025
What’s behind the surge in RedNote’s popularity?
The rapid rise of RedNote in the U.S. might seem spontaneous, but according to experts like USC Professor of Communications Karen North, the trend is not as grassroots as social media would have us believe.
“I do not think that RedNote just emerged out of the blue,” North told Decrypt in an interview. “I believe that RedNote is being promoted. TikTok is essentially astroturfing this campaign—it just doesn’t make sense as a protest against the US Government’s attack on TikTok because it’s Chinese.”
North is a clinical professor and founder of USC Annenberg’s Digital Social Media program. During the Clinton administration, she worked for the White House Office of Science and Technology.
“The idea that there was bipartisan support for an unpopular action right before an election should signal that elected officials know something serious, and we should stop and think or be open-minded about the reason,” North said.
On April 23, last year, Congress passed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversaries Controlled Applications Act, which requires TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, to sell its U.S. operations by January 19, 2025.
U.S. President Joe Biden signed the legislation into law, including a provision for a three-month extension if the sale isn’t finalized by the deadline.
The PAFACA targets not only TikTok but also foreign-owned apps that U.S. policymakers say pose national security risks, particularly those from Chinese companies.
Privacy and social media
North noted that people in the US are increasingly indifferent to personal privacy, often saying it doesn’t exist. However, she emphasized that privacy laws vary significantly by country; “It’s their country, their laws,” she said, highlighting the contrast between privacy regulations in the United States and those abroad.
Despite this growing public apathy, governments worldwide have prohibited Chinese social media apps. In 2023, several countries, including the U.S., the EU, Canada, and Taiwan, prohibited using TikTok on government devices. Taiwan had already banned RedNotee in 2022 over national security concerns.
“In the EU, privacy laws are stricter. In China, individual users don’t have privacy. Data can be collected and stored individually, and that’s how their government operates. But it’s generally not okay with most of us,” North said.
“When people say privacy doesn’t exist anymore, they’re thinking in American terms. We need to think country by country as we download apps governed by the laws of other places,” she said.
Edited by Sebastian Sinclair and Josh Quittner
