TikTok and Xiaohongshu - a refuge in the little red book?

The relationship between the United States of America and the famous entertainment platform TikTok has never been the greates; as mentioned often in the latest articles published in our newsroom, the American state seems to feel a certain anxiety towards the application's Chinese origins. For some years now, the US government seems to have targeted the social network in question, rumouring a potential ban from time to time. Seven years after the rise of TikTok in the US, the ban was finally implemented on 17 January 2025, depriving 170 million users of the possibility to use the platform - for a very short period of about twelve hours.

TikTok, like most current social networks, has a long history behind it. The application is an international offshoot of the famous Chinese platform Douyin, released in September 2016 by the company Bytedance after being developed in just 200 days. Given the immediate success and the exclusively Chinese nature of the original project, the next step was to create an international version, so as to reach the entire global audience. The release of TikTok came a year later, in September 2017, and was followed by the acquisition of Musical.ly, an application with a somewhat similar functioning. The following year saw the spread of Tiktok, accompanied by the merger with Musical.ly, a move that allowed users to keep their original account. As the years passed, the platform was improved month after month, gaining new features and reaching unprecedented levels of fame - in part due to the unfortunate period of the COVID-19 pandemic, a situation that forced people to isolate themselves in their homes, with no external stimuli and no opportunity to go about their daily life.

The controversy, of course, was not long in coming. Given the immeasurable fame of the application and its international nature, the platform became a sort of multicultural hub, with all the advantages and disadvantages of the case. The huge number of users, coming from thousands of different backgrounds, meant that the topics covered within the TikTok landscape were the most diverse - in addition to the most popular topics, such as music, entertainment, gastronomy and personal care, the application was the scene of a variety of political, psychological and professional discussions, loading the online environment with a certain unexpected heaviness, especially considering the original purpose of the social media in question. The dissemination of this unusual content thus led to an unstoppable production of videos on the subject, each with different opinions and information - whether it was about the US elections, environmental disasters or psychological advice, disinformation reigned supreme. 

The multicultural nature of the application is a valuable source of experiences, information and opinions from people in all parts of the world; however, just as it is easy and convenient to share thoughts online and give advice to the viewers, it is equally easy and immediate to spread misinformation, influence the audience and sow panic. The platform soon also became the scene of attempts at political propaganda and, gradually, the various states began to realise the power concealed in the metaphorical hands of the creators and, consequently, Bytedance.  The growing concern found further fuel in the ambiguous privacy policy provided by the company responsible for this worldwide phenomenon: within the policy, it is specified that the data collected include IP addresses, telephone operators, unique device identifiers, typing patterns, location data, biometric data such as facial and voiceprints, as well as the interests inferred by users based on the content they view and create. Although the list may seem exhaustive, the experts' opinion seems somewhat dubious in this regard, as there is still a certain lack of clarity within the regulation, which is not very welcome in such circumstances. Due to this ambiguity, a disturbing rumour began to circulate over time, claiming that China, the home country of the social media in question, was using the platform as a method to collect private data and information on users.  To deal with this possibility, several states decided to remove permission to use the app within their own country, while others opted to remove it from government-issued devices only.

The United States has been quite adamant in its position in this matter: it is unacceptable to even think that US citizens' data could end up in the clutches of the Chinese government, a subject that has become the focus of the issue during the various requests made to Bytedance over the years. The situation has escalated over time, with complaints, Senate meetings and harsh questioning of TikTok's CEO, a Singaporean citizen, bombarded with questions, sadly characterised by tasteless racist assumptions, regarding his potential connection to China.  In 2024, the US House of Representatives passed an amendment that would have banned TikTok completely unless it was spun off from its original Chinese owner ByteDance. Faced with this development, some users began to look around, searching for an alternative to the much-loved platform - something that had a similar interface and, above all, could provide the same kind of entertainment. The intense Sino-phobic sentiment demonstrated by the American state left no particular mark on the psyche of TikTok users, whose only interest became looking for a replacement in the unfortunate event that the application was indeed banned. The average user does not particularly care about the possibility of a foreign government collecting their information; everyone lives their life as an individual, not as a number within a list of data.

This research led to the discovery of Xiaohongshu (lit. ‘little red book’), another application of Chinese origin, currently comparable to a fusion of Instagram, Pinterest and TikTok - characterised, however, by its targeted use in the shopping sphere. Gradually, the platform's name began to make its way onto the international scene, but without gaining a noteworthy following. That is, of course, until the actual banning of Tiktok on US soil, which took place on 17 January 2025 and lasted for the infamous twelve hours. In response to the app's removal, in fact, some 3 million Tiktok users signed up for Xiaohongshu, currently known in the western world as RedNote - the Chinese platform reached the top of the list of most downloaded apps in Apple's App Store. To accommodate the influx of international users, RedNote's moderators worked overtime to translate the content into English, presenting Western audiences with an application already optimised for their use. The flight towards this alternative, still of Chinese origin, was a fusion of the need for a replacement for TikTok with a desire to protest the US government's affront - in the days leading up to the ban, in fact, the hashtag #TikTokRefugee went viral on RedNote, accompanied by several introduction videos by new users, often loaded with ironic overtones, aimed at joking about the possibility that the Chinese government was indeed collecting data via TikTok. ‘I decided to start using Xiaohongshu just to make the process easier, I'll gladly give you my data directly!’

The unexpected turn of events inadvertently set the stage for a voluntary cultural exchange, mainly between American and Chinese users - RedNote's fame, moreover, soon intrigued the rest of the world, especially female users or those simply interested in fashion, personal care, and the like - leading topics within the platform. The US government's relentless attempts to keep China as far away from their precious state as possible made the American people, young, resourceful and eager to maintain their freedom of speech, react in the healthiest way possible - by building up an understanding of Chinese culture, meeting real people, listening to their experiences and building bonds.