Pending a Supreme Court ruling, the U.S. government’s crackdown on TikTok might end the app’s availability in U.S. app stores this weekend. The looming ban has prompted American users to seek a new home in another Chinese app, Xiaohongshu, also known as RedNote. Nearly three million “TikTok refugees” downloaded RedNote in just one day, pushing it to the top of the list of most downloaded apps in the U.S. Duolingo also reported a 216 percent spike in U.S. users learning Mandarin Chinese. Part of the “refugees’” motivations for joining RedNote include protesting the U.S. government’s attempts to block their access to TikTok, but Chinese apps of course come with their own heavy dose of restrictions. Yaling Jiang summarized the dilemma brought about by this unexpected turn of events: “The hodgepodge of Western and Chinese users within the ‘Great Firewall’ has created unprecedented regulatory problems that have never been dealt with by either China or the U.S.” Kinling Lo and Viola Zhou at Rest of World described how the presence of American users on RedNote is an existential challenge for the platform’s censors:
Xiaohongshu’s censorship system is likely being greatly challenged, Eric Liu, a former content moderator for Weibo and currently a U.S.-based editor with China Digital Times, told Rest of World.
“The fact that Americans are using Xiaohongshu is already [stepping] on the red line,” Liu said. “This is something that will not be able to last because Americans don’t practice self-censorship.” To comply with Chinese law, the app may need to create a wall between domestic and foreign users, as ByteDance has done with TikTok and Douyin, he added.
[…] “The platform needs to figure out how global it wants to be, how it wants to position itself, and what its globalization or internationalization development plan is in the next few years,” said [Sheng Zou, an assistant professor at the School of Communication of Hong Kong Baptist University], who researches social media and popular culture. [Source]
A straightforward crackdown on the new arrivals may not be inevitable. The Pekingnology newsletter highlighted comments from former Global Times editor Hu Xijin, who argued: "This development should not be viewed primarily as a risk but as a rare opportunity [….] Retaining this wave of refugees is worth our careful consideration and effort." Blogger Xiang Dongliang wrote on Thursday that, based on signals from state media, he had downgraded his confidence in Xiaohongshu launching a separate American or international version of the app (that would exclude China-based users) from 98% to 80%, but he also noted that these probabilities were far from definitive.
For now, censors have already appeared to kick into action. In a post on Chinese Q&A site Zhihu that was later deleted, users shared screenshots showing that RedNote recently instated real-name registration rules that require a Chinese SIM card and thereby kicked a number of foreign users off the app. The hashtag “RedNote is urgently recruiting English content moderators” also spread on Weibo, and screenshots of a RedNote content-moderator job posting circulated online. Highlighting concerns about whether RedNote is capable of controlling the proliferation of sensitive content, The Information reported that “Chinese officials raised the issue with RedNote’s government relations team earlier this week, warning that the company needs to ensure China-based users can’t see posts from U.S. users.” (The company was previously the target of a regulatory investigation in 2021 when Xiaohongshu posted to Weibo on June 4, perhaps unaware of the date’s significance: “Tell me loudly, what is the date today?”) David Bandurski at China Media Project shared more about how RedNote might be deploying censorship to meet the moment:
There have already been indications from sources inside RedNote, as reported by Reuters, who have said the platform is already working on its internal content review capacity to deal with the influx of English-language influencers. These developments, demanded by cyberspace authorities for all services operating in the country, can be expected to roll out along with the extra services RedNote has feted — such as an English-to-Chinese translation function, now in the works, and an “English Corner” that connects language partners.
On Tuesday, as TikTok refugee flows were arriving on the shores of RedNote, the platform announced that it was implementing new measures to ensure content was “upward and virtuous” (向上向善) — not exactly an ethos associated with the TikTok homeland, which has thrived on threading together the inventive and unpredictable. This idea of the upward was also coded in the RedNote announcement for what the CCP terms “positive energy” (正能量), which refers to the need for uplifting messages as opposed to critical or negative ones — and particularly the need for content that puts the Party and government in a positive light. The platform talked about “increasing guidance and support for positive content” (加大对正向内容的引导与扶持). [Source]
The spectre of censorship was also visible from the user end. In one RedNote group chat that was viewed over 30,000 times, “participants discussed censorship and shared tips in the comments on how to avoid being banned from the platform for bringing up politically sensitive topics,” The New York Times reported. Describing the cultural divide between American and Chinese users, one RedNote Chinese user said, “At the end of the day, we ain’t that different”—but the user also used coded language to explain the “rules” of the platform that discourage certain topics commonly discussed in the U.S., as Gizmodo reported. On Thursday, the topic “Xiaohongshu crashed” briefly became a trending topic on Weibo after users reported issues with the app, although it was unclear whether this was due to attempts at content moderation or merely a technical glitch. Western media outlets soon discovered that their searches on RedNote for sensitive topics such as “Xi Jinping” and “Free Hong Kong” yielded no results. At least 546 derogatory nicknames for Xi are among the content that Xiaohongshu censors, according to a hundred-plus-page trove of internal documents outlining how the company complies with official censorship demands, as previously covered by CDT. Those documents also reveal how Xiaohongshu censors “sudden incidents.”
While many Chinese users have embraced the American TikTok refugees on RedNote, some are also skeptical of whether the new arrivals will manage to comply with RedNote’s different standards for content moderation. “Let’s see how many Americans can put up with this censorship system. After a time, they’ll for sure all be gone,” read one post. Initium wrote that some Chinese users have already reported American users for breaching content-moderation rules. Fang Kecheng, an assistant professor at the school of journalism and communication at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, argued that American users would be unlikely to adapt to Chinese platforms’ censorship rules in the long run.
Regardless of how the “TikTok refugee” migration evolves, it has provided a unique opportunity to judge the U.S. and China’s relative standing in the world, particularly through the lens of censorship. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun dodged a question about whether China would step up censorship on RedNote by replying: “We believe that no matter what platforms you use, it’s a personal choice and we encourage and support people-to-people exchanges.” (The question, and Guo Jiakun’s response, were omitted from the official press conference transcript released by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.) Needless to say, Chinese users have no straightforward option of using Western apps such as Facebook, Instagram, X, YouTube, etc. given that they are inaccessible from China, and require a VPN to access. But Chinese pundits are celebrating the temporary soft-power win, acknowledged even by American experts. “When the United States shutters a massive free expression service, which our democratic allies have not shuttered, it will make us the censor and put us in the unusual position of silencing expression […and] make Americans who use TikTok really distrustful of the U.S. government,” said Anupam Chander, a professor of law and technology at Georgetown University and an expert on the global regulation of new technologies. The Biden administration is now reportedly considering ways to keep TikTok alive in the U.S. and slow the user exodus to China. At the Techdirt blog, Mike Masnick summarized the phenomenon as partly a result of the U.S. government trying to combat China’s censorship model by mimicking it:
It’s basically all just people mocking the out-of-touch, censorial US government as it sets up its very own “Great Firewall.”
[…] But the kids who are using TikTok are all pretty clearly aware of just how stupid this all is and are commenting on it the best way they can, spitefully mocking out-of-touch politicians, judges, and the media.
Still, the end result of this nonsense will be an end of an era of American belief in free speech and an open internet. In trying to “protect” Americans from China, our gripped-by-moral-panic political class has made us just like China. The government has decided that the only way to combat China’s techno-authoritarian censorship model is to emulate it. [Source]
