TikTok ‘refugees’ find a new home on China’s Red Note, sparking a cultural exchange

Barring a last-minute reversal, the US Supreme Court’s ruling to effectively ban TikTok will kick in on Sunday, January 19th. In anticipation, American TikTok users seeking an alternative are flooding the Chinese social media app Xiao Hong Shu, now known as ‘Red Note’ in English. Dubbing themselves ‘TikTok Refugees,’ these users are treating the switch as a statement of defiance against the ban.

As of Thursday, January 16th, Xiao Hong Shu became the number one most-downloaded app on the US Apple App Store, overtaking Lemon8 and ChatGPT. The hashtag #tiktokrefugee saw rapid growth on the app, jumping from 2,000 to 77,000 posts in a day, with total views booming from 390,000 to 38 million.

Notably, Xiao Hong Shu does not have a built-in translation feature, so users mostly rely on machine translation to navigate the platform. Hilarity ensues, with Chinese and American users engaging in playful cultural exchanges — helping each other with English and Math homework, swapping pet photos, and hosting ‘Ask Me Anything’ sessions.

Brands are also joining in. B’in Music, the label behind the wildly popular Mandarin rock band Mayday, posted a machine-translated English note welcoming Americans and promoting the band’s upcoming tour stop in Las Vegas. Meanwhile, Duolingo, which reported a 216% jump in US users learning Chinese this week, joked, “Oh, so now you’re learning Mandarin” on X.

The multiple ironies here are worth mentioning. Most blatantly, Americans flocking to another Chinese social media app seemingly undermines the national security rationale behind the original TikTok ban. More subtly, perhaps, is that a new generation of Americans is joining an app whose name — translating to ‘Little Red Book’ — references ‘Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong’, a Cultural Revolution-era book compiling the former CCP chairman’s sayings.

Beyond these incongruities, however, TikTok Refugees are a reminder of the positive power of social media, which has taken a back seat to the more prominent discourse around polarization and brain rot. Chinese and American internet users are openly interacting, most of them for the first time. Amid rising global tensions, these impromptu connections underscore that people are more than their (government’s) politics. Regardless of perceived differences, we all struggle with homework and fawn over cute cats.