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As TikTok anxiously awaits a Supreme Court decision that could determine whether it will be banned in the United States, users are preemptively fleeing the app and migrating to another Chinese social media platform called Xiaohongshu, which literally means “little red book” in Mandarin. As of Monday, Xiaohongshu was the number one most-downloaded app in Apple’s US App Store, despite the fact that it doesn’t even have an official English name. The second app on the list is Lemon8, another social media app owned by TikTok’s parent company ByteDance that is also experiencing a traffic surge from exiled TikTok users.
During the weekend, a surge of individuals flocked to Xiaohongshu, a platform in China renowned for its travel and lifestyle content, boasting over 300 million users. These new users, who often refer to the app as “Red Note” or liken it to “the Chinese version of Instagram,” identify themselves as “TikTok refugees” and are utilizing translation tools to navigate the predominantly Chinese interface of Xiaohongshu. Some are looking to recreate the communities they had on TikTok, while others have joined the platform out of defiance, aiming to counteract the US government's ban on TikTok due to concerns regarding potential surveillance by the Chinese government.
“I would rather stare at a language I can't understand than to ever use a social media [platform] that Mark Zuckerberg owns,” said one user in a video posted to Xiaohongshu on Sunday. There are a countless number of similar clips in which TikTok refugees introduce themselves and explain why they decided to come to Xiaohongshu, many raking up thousands of likes and comments each. A spokesperson for Xiaohongshu could not immediately be reached for comment.
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Friday from TikTok and the US government, which respectively made their cases for and against a law passed last year that would force TikTok to sell its US operations or be banned by January 19. Experts said the justices appeared to think the law was constitutional and would likely allow it to stay, leaving many users feeling that the app’s days are numbered. While TikTok is unlikely to immediately disappear from people’s phones who have already downloaded it, it could be deleted from US app stores, causing many to panic and look for the next place to go.
Some users are predictably going to Instagram or YouTube, but others say they would like to stick to a platform developed by a Chinese company to protest the decisions by US lawmakers that lead to this situation. “Telling me to download Rednote out of spite over the TikTok ban was the only push I needed actually,” one person wrote on Bluesky. Internet culture journalist Taylor Lorenz also shared a link to her Xiaohongshu account on Bluesky, calling the platform “the hottest new social app in America.”
