TikTok Users Flocks To Chinese Social App Xiaohongshu (apnews.com) 91
hackingbear shares a report from the Associated Press: As the threat of a TikTok ban looms, U.S. TikTok users are flocking to the Chinese social media app Xiaohongshu -- making it the top downloaded app in the U.S. Xiaohongshu, which in English means "Little Red Book" is a Chinese social media app that combines e-commerce, short video and posting functions, enticing mostly Chinese young women from mainland China and regions with with a Chinese diaspora such as Malaysia and Taiwan who use it as a de-facto search engine for product, travel and restaurant recommendations, as well as makeup and skincare tutorials. After the justices seemed inclined to let the law stand, masses of TikTok users began creating accounts on Xiaohongshu, including hashtags such as #tiktokrefugee or #tiktok to their posts. "
I like your makeup," a Xiaohongshu user from Beijing comments one of the posts by Alexis Garman, a 21-year-old TikTok user in Oklahoma with nearly 20,000 followers, and Garman thanks them in a reply. A user from the southwestern province of Sichuan commented "I am your Chinese spy please surrender your personal information or the photographs of your cat (or dog)." "TikTok possibly getting banned doesn't just take away an app, it takes away jobs, friends and community," Garman said. "Personally, the friends and bond I have with my followers will now be gone." Xiaohongshu doesn't even have an English user interface. Reuters reports: In only two days, more than 700,000 new users joined Xiaohongshu, a person close to the company told Reuters. Xiaohongshu [which was founded in 2013 and is backed by investors such as Alibaba, Tencent and Sequoia], did not immediately respond to a request for comment. U.S. downloads of RedNote were up more than 200% year-over-year this week, and 194% from the week prior, according to estimates from app data research firm Sensor Tower. The second most-popular free app on Apple's App Store list on Tuesday, Lemon8, another social media app owned by ByteDance, experienced a similar surge last month, with downloads jumping by 190% in December to about 3.4 million.
I like your makeup," a Xiaohongshu user from Beijing comments one of the posts by Alexis Garman, a 21-year-old TikTok user in Oklahoma with nearly 20,000 followers, and Garman thanks them in a reply. A user from the southwestern province of Sichuan commented "I am your Chinese spy please surrender your personal information or the photographs of your cat (or dog)." "TikTok possibly getting banned doesn't just take away an app, it takes away jobs, friends and community," Garman said. "Personally, the friends and bond I have with my followers will now be gone." Xiaohongshu doesn't even have an English user interface. Reuters reports: In only two days, more than 700,000 new users joined Xiaohongshu, a person close to the company told Reuters. Xiaohongshu [which was founded in 2013 and is backed by investors such as Alibaba, Tencent and Sequoia], did not immediately respond to a request for comment. U.S. downloads of RedNote were up more than 200% year-over-year this week, and 194% from the week prior, according to estimates from app data research firm Sensor Tower. The second most-popular free app on Apple's App Store list on Tuesday, Lemon8, another social media app owned by ByteDance, experienced a similar surge last month, with downloads jumping by 190% in December to about 3.4 million.
As much as I dislike TikTok et al (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:As much as I dislike TikTok et al (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, they're really showing their distaste at authoritarian government and moving to bastion of freedom!
Oh, wait....
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:As much as I dislike TikTok et al (Score:4, Insightful)
You talk about it as if its freedom fighters retreating to a hold out. Its a bunch of addicted losers making crap videos (in portrait mode ffs) for other losers who don't give a damn about the chinese government slurping up all their data so long as they can get their hit of likes.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Actually I was being a bit kind. What you actually meant was "Hur hur, flipping da finger at da gubbermint, hur hur hur, take dat gubbermint!"
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If you want Kumbaya BS visit your local church.
Not my government either but I'd sooner live in the USA than china.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
they're really showing their distaste at authoritarian government and moving to bastion of freedom!
Generally speaking, most people don't care about the abstract concept of uppercase-f Freedom, they care for their own, personal, lowercase-f freedom to do or not do what they want.
For instance, people who want to play as Marvel characters are downloading en masse the Marvel Rivals video-game. The game's chat follows China's censorship rules, so any attempt at typing Tiananmen Square, Xi Jinping, Winnie-the-Pooh, Mao Tse-Tung, Mao Zedong, etc., is blatantly forbidden, the chat itself informing the player the
Re:As much as I dislike TikTok et al (Score:4, Insightful)
... and nothing to do with TikTok users being manipulated so that they have a more positive view of the Chinese government than the general population. It also couldn't possibly be part of a strategy by said government by seeding these migration, oh no, they wouldn't be so manipulative.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Meta being the only alternative
Meta and Xiaohongshu aren't even close to the only alternatives to social networking.There's other social media, marriage, friends, religion, community, entrepreneurship, sports, games, ...
Or maybe sanitize and REGULATE some social media
That already happens to a degree. Going much further is simply censorship and propagandizing. This has been tried again and again, and, in the end, simply become handy tools for power hungry authoritarians - whether they're left wing or right wing.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
One must wonder why America is so bad at influencing its own people, it's literally getting owned by Communists.
Most young people in America don't even believe in Democracy anymore
Re: (Score:3)
Perhaps you should visit some dictatorships then review your comment.
Re: (Score:2)
Most young people in America don't even believe in Democracy anymore
That's easy to understand: democracy failed them, so they're looking for alternatives.
And it isn't like this couldn't be fixed. All democracies need to is finish the job started with their birth during the Enlightenment, when the power structure of unelected kings and nobles, who acted whatever they wanted towards the populace in pursuit of power and wealth, was removed. This removal opened up the Western world to everything good that has happened since (and some bad, but mostly good).
But now there's a bran
Re: (Score:3)
... and nothing to do with TikTok users being manipulated so that they have a more positive view of the Chinese government than the general population. It also couldn't possibly be part of a strategy by said government by seeding these migration, oh no, they wouldn't be so manipulative.
And I'm sure this other chinese app won't have all the exact same things.
Re: (Score:2)
American users call it "Red Note". This article is the first time I've seen it's latinized name.
Re: (Score:2)
Itâ(TM)s only now that most Americans are realizing this.
No, they're not.
That's why they're banning it.
The only solution to manipulation is more speech. Limiting it will never, ever, fix this problem.
Since the dawn of the newspaper, it was known that any particular paper would have its own slant, and the only way for joe schmoe to cut through the bullshit was for him to have access to each and every one of them.
When the Government starts proscribing them, they're already losing.
If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagi
Re: (Score:1)
... and nothing to do with TikTok users being manipulated so that they have a more positive view of the Chinese government than the general population.
Well given the fact that the general population is constantly manipulated to have the view that derp derp China bad by their local government I want to hope that people are being manipulated by TikTok. They may actually end up the smarter and less biased portion of the total population.
Re:As much as I dislike TikTok et al (Score:4)
I hate to break the news to you but the chinese government is bad.
Unless of course you think forced labour and sterilisation of the Uyghur muslims is perfectly ok. Ditto the removal of human rights in Hong Kong after ripping up the agreement with the UK. Ditto the constant threatening of Taiwan.
Oh, but I guess you think thats all just negative propaganda by #EvilWesternGovernments ?
Re: (Score:2)
Ref 1:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UN_Human_Rights_Office_report_on_Xinjiang
Nobody is 'threatening China,', So, in your eyes, when a vessel sails in the INTERNATIONALLY recognized international waters, defined by the law of the seas that CHINA IS SIGNATORY to defines the areas China now claims as international waters, that is threatening? Paranoid much?
"The US has threatened China for decades." So, you mean, when China moved int
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The land where the only way to preserve Freedom is to remove freedoms.
I get your concern over manipulation. Truly, I do.
The problem is that your solution to the problem is to take away a personal freedom. It's flat out Orwellian.
At least the Chinese have the fucking courtesy to not try to surgarcoat why they take their freedoms. Here we tell you it's to preserve your Freedom to vote un-manipulated (correctly?)
It's wrong. Every person pushing for it should be ashamed of themselves.
Re:As much as I dislike TikTok et al (Score:5, Interesting)
It's refreshing to see enough people (carrying critical mass) refusing to just get forced to move to domestic state-approved social media, and just make their own decisions en-masse. As for the chinese app to chinese app migration, it's just hilarious.
The alternative the masses are selecting, doesn’t even have support for the English language. Hilarious you assume 700K aren’t proverbial lemmings, or represents a “critical” mass. AOL still has more users today. Let’s see if the popularity grows beyond an article writer desperate for shit clicks.
Re: (Score:2)
AOL still has more users today
First and second derivatives with respect to time are far more important than the current value, that's a very weak argument you're making.
Re:As much as I dislike TikTok et al (Score:4, Insightful)
AOL still has more users today
First and second derivatives with respect to time are far more important than the current value, that's a very weak argument you're making.
So is labeling 700K users “critical mass”. A CCP-sponsored botnet script could probably shit that statistical falsehood out in an hour. To create “critical” delusions of popularity. Why? Because it works. Every time.
Just ask a Kardashian.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Or, alternatively, did you just spout a truism that any intelligent person would already know, and call that an effective argument?
Re: (Score:2)
Or, alternatively, did you just spout a truism that any intelligent person would already know, and call that an effective argument?
Yes, they did.
And ultimately- it was a salient point.
Using the current value to make any point is a very weak argument, period.
Not as weak as the complete lack of known derivatives- but still very weak.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
It's refreshing to see enough people (carrying critical mass) refusing to just get forced to move to domestic state-approved social media
...and just move to foreign state-sponsored social media?
Please explain why that's better.
Re: (Score:2)
Hehehe (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a little red book printed in China.
It is full of wisdom and bright promises for the future.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
You mean el Bunko's Bible that he hawking?
Re:Hehehe (Score:4, Interesting)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Do they not teach history to the kids these days? Get off my lawn!
Re: (Score:1)
Do they not teach history to the kids these days?
Apparently they don't, otherwise we'd recognize how the United States is in the exact situation that Germany was in 1933.
https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/go-in-depth/germany-1933-democracy-dictatorship/ [annefrank.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Are you trying to tell us that Germany in 1935 was a democratic capitalist country?
Re: (Score:2)
Both played by that exact playbook.
The Fascists labeled people not fascist enough communists, and the communists labeled people not communist enough fascists.
In the end, it was the fascists that burned the Reichstag and outlawed all other parties, and then murdered everyone not fascist enough in their own party apparatus.
I fear any capital C communist, and any little f fascist.
These days, it's social democrats against people wh
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
I am a bit depressed, but not surprised.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The actual name of Mao's book is hong bao shu (the red treasure book), so xiao hong shu (small red book) is not a direct-direct reference, but still...
Re: (Score:2)
The actual name of Mao's book is hong bao shu (the red treasure book), so xiao hong shu (small red book) is not a direct-direct reference, but still...
That's good to know. In popular culture in the US we've mostly called it the "Little Red Book", but knowing what the actual translation is helps.
Re: (Score:2)
It was called "Little Red Book" behind the Iron Curtain (when there was an Iron Curtain) as well, so I guess it is universal. That other little red book was known as the Manifesto :)
Re: (Score:2)
If it is, indeed, a reference to Mao's little red book- what a fucking bizarre and drippingly ironic example of why I don't want the US government trying to curate my information.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
The pests had a wild party, but the maggots complained.
Drooling masses (Score:2)
...did something and it's NEWS.
Much like "content creators" and the sheer volume of garbage they're spamming global networks with - the people who care about this noise aren't worth paying attention to.
Useful idiots once more (Score:4, Insightful)
In the old days, useful idiots had to be taken round show sites in Stalin's autocracy before they would tell the world that the place was wonderful. Amazingly, such people exist to this day: a UK communist party member went to the home of the Uighurs and, having come back, trotted out the Chinese claims that it's a paradise there, there's freedom of religion and noone is being reeducated.
By contrast the new generation of Western Chinese app users have zero knowledge of the horrors of Chinese rule of their colonial possessions such as Tibet and Xinjiang, they just know what they like. And, of course, American social media are banned from China; I've yet to discover why the US government isn't playing that card as a justification for blocking TikTok etc.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
In the old days, useful idiots had to be taken round show sites in Stalin's autocracy ...
These days they go to MAGA rallies.
Re: (Score:1)
In the old days, useful idiots had to be taken round show sites in Stalin's autocracy ...
These days they go to MAGA rallies.
The implication being that "MAGA" free speech and blind justice libertarians are "fascists", and Trump is literally Hitler, eh? While progressive "judge by identity" censorship advocates aren't useful idiots after all.
How clever.
Except for the blindingly obvious fact that today's progressive agenda reads absolutely no different than the totalitarian CCP's Document Number 9. Go ahead, read it.
You'll see that there's not a drop of difference between that document and the average Critical Theory screed.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Or maybe they are comparing it to the actual reality of the horrors in Gaza and now realize US is full of shit.
Re: (Score:1)
By contrast the new generation of Western Chinese app users have zero knowledge of the horrors of Chinese rule
[Citation Required]. The thing is simply using something from China, or not caring about the atrocities committed does not mean someone does know about it.
I've yet to discover why the US government isn't playing that card as a justification for blocking TikTok etc.
Probably because there's nothing to back this up, and because influencers on TikTok are not hosting anti-Tiananmen-Square reeducation challenges to get likes. It turns out people watch stupid videos and understand the difference between that and a history textbook.
You may think TikTok is lame, but kids aren't substituting it for actual education.
Never heard of it. (Score:4, Interesting)
First it was Lemon8 last week. Now it’s whatever this is supppsed to be. Either way, 700K users hardly represents some massive shift. Or the future of child social media. Fucking AOL still has more users than that, Zoomer Boomers.
But yeah, sell me again how it’s the future of your stock portfolio. Lies by any click necessary. And we wonder who no human will remember what it’s like to trust anyone or anything soon.
Re: (Score:2)
Xiaohongshu doesn't even have an English user interface.
Maybe it's not targeted at you...
Re: (Score:1)
enticing mostly Chinese young women from mainland China and regions with with a Chinese diaspora such as Malaysia and Taiwan who use it as a de-facto search engine for product, travel and restaurant recommendations, as well as makeup and skincare tutorials.
Re: (Score:2)
I wonder why you've never heard of it...
Xiaohongshu doesn't even have an English user interface.
Maybe it's not targeted at you...
Uh huh. Ban it from America and see which country bitches the loudest. Any why.
Honestly (Score:3)
Reddit replacement (Score:2)
Re:Reddit replacement (Score:4, Funny)
The Onion [theonion.com]
Re: (Score:2)
I look forward ... (Score:1)
... To their open discussion of COVID origins or Tiananmen Square.
Or even Winnie the Pooh
ban tiktok (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
how do you spell "comedy gold" ... (Score:2)
... in mandarin?
Idiocracy is now fully realized (Score:2)
People are so desperate for mediocrity that they join social media sites in a language they can't even read.
The mind boggles.
Reminds me of prohibition (Score:2)
When there's a thing that's popular, but demonstrably bad...how do you get rid of it?
Alcohol, (specifically alcohol abuse) is bad for the individual and for the community. Because of the latter, it's not a 'personal preference' thing anymore. So, they attempted to regulate it by enforcing a ban.
TikTok is exactly the same. There's nothing wrong with a video posting service. There is something wrong when people are being harmed by that service (ie, dangerous viral challenges, misinformation, spying?) So they
Why do users seek chinese apps in particular (Score:4, Interesting)
But what happens when your 'For you' that was formerly used to get you addicted to a platform slowly switches to content design to destabilize your country or push adversarial propaganda during a conflict ? This is a whole new level of enshittification.
I consider myself left of liberal and quite political, and I only used TikTok for a few weeks before I realized its algorithm was pushing me farther to the left and pushing more and more ideologies that aligned with China's authoritarian communist regime. I can't be the only one. This, plus the fact that this app is very addictive and serves no utilitarian purpose, led me to uninstall the app after just a few weeks. I am very wary of any TV where a foreign government holds the remote and has control over what people know, what they see, and what opinions they are exposed to as they see it.
They have no incentive in using it too heavily until their users are hooked, and it is worth blowing their cover. What about when the time comes ? The fact that hundreds of thousands of users are made to seek Chinese alternatives to TikTok tells me that the first part of this plan is in place.
Re: (Score:3)
I was much more suspicious of TikTok until I found the source of this whole panic. The only reason this is an issue * at all * is because Facebook/Meta paid millions of dollars to lobbyists to fearmonger it.
The most Orwelian EULA I've ever seen (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Except none of the idiot americans that sign up will read it. They literally won't know, or care.
A large chunk of people already have agreed. I sincerely hope they get their asses handed to them. Play stupid games with communist, win stupid prizes.
Ensuring Net Censorship (Score:2)
Just wait till they order that blocked too; except now they can just force the ISPs to block the traffic.
If you flee TikTok for a literal Chinese "Red Book"...you're part of the reason this is happening. Some of us were screaming about this long before politics got involved. We saw just how anxious China was to break in to everything.
It won't be the politicans to blame when China owns us; it will be the fault of the citizens for rolling over over some goddamn silly ass videos.
A nation of idiots.
WTF \. (Score:2)
Loading this comment page, I get "tech.slashdot.org says
This page could not be loaded properly due to incorrect / bad filtering rule(s) of adblockers in use. Please disable all adblockers to continue using the website. (click OK if you'd like to learn more)"
I turned off my adblocker, ads are everywhere, and the option to hide ads is gone now.
F* this. I'll be over on soylentnews instead.
Actual users, or bot runners anticipating the ban? (Score:2)
For the lolz (Score:2)