Americans are joining the Chinese social media app en masse to protest an imminent TikTok ban.
- American users have flocked to Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu in defiance of security warnings.
- Chinese and American users have engaged in surprisingly friendly conversations about each other’s lives.
- The influx of American users could burden Xiaohongshu’s censorship mechanism, experts say.
Nah, I am on xiaohongshu. Its fucking crazy. Most of the mandarin speaking audience woke up to their app filled with english. There is a running joke on the site now about US citizens “colonizing” the app. It is silly and in good fun but I cannot stress enough how real the influx of users is. Some brits are even moving there because so many Americans they follow did. I have seen multiple chinese citizens have their account jump from a few hundred followers to 30k in an hour or two. I mean you can hop on and see for yourself, it is free. It has actually been really wholesome so far and I hope the vibes continue to be good.
With all due respect, this comment is exactly what a faked “Grass roots marketing campaign” would write. But your account has an extensive post history, so thats a lot more effort than a typical astro turf account.
Also, inflating subscriber numbers and view counts wouldn’t be out of the question either, remember Facebook video…
I just talk like that. Is it so hard to believe that there are plenty of Americans who would flock to a genuinely chinese owned social media out of spite or just bc it is funny? I haven’t even seen an ad on the site so I don’t think they are making enough money to astroturf nor can I find a reason why they’d want to.
Id question the intelligence of anyone who used any app specifically because of a country associated with it when it’s not an app about countries. Going to Chinese apps just because TikTok gets banned is kinda silly imo, but then again I don’t use state-sponsored social media like TikTok or instagram etc
I dont mean that your tone is bot like or anything, just that they would want authentic voices.
I do find it hard to beleive, because look at the reddit and twitter transitions. They either took years (bluesky is only barely starting to gain notability, and I’m not convinced that isn’t also doing astroturfing) or never happened (Lemmy userbase is a rounding error). Getting people to switch social media is very difficult. And tiktok isnt even banned yet.
Also, just because there are no ads, doesn’t mean that no one is propping up the business. Someone is paying to keep the servers running and lights on, and an astro turfing campaign isnt that expensive. Social media companies either grow or die.
So if your liking this new site, power to you, but I suggest you enjoy it while it lasts, because its going to have to become profitable somehow, and that is never good for the users.
Remember that twiiter was not up against a deadline. There was no reason to move to move quickly.
We just had a supreme Court hearing on tiktok yesterday and it didn’t look good for tiktok. That’s why this is more sudden.
Why RedNote instead of loops.video or something? I’m not sure how the influencers decided to go there. Maybe that’s your conspiracy. Or maybe one person thought of migrating to another Chinese app as protest and other people copied them
My conspiracy, if you want to call it that, is that I dont think article is the product of actual journalism. I think Xiaohongshu has paid for that article to be written, to give the impression that the influencers are moving to it, and its the next tiktok. One of the listed authors has never published anything else, and the site isnt exactly a mainstream news site.
It seems entirely plausible to me that someone that uses tiktok a lot saw enough folks talking about it that they thought it would be an interesting story.
Further I feel like:
are not really the sorts of claims that would exist in an astroturf campaign. I mean maaayybe they wanted it to appear more authentic, so they invited the writer to be more critical and portray the app in a revolutionary light that is pretty counter to it’s culture, but I think it’s far more likely to be genuine.
Definitely valid points, and I might be wrong. It definitely isnt a super glowing article, but “flocking to” part of the headline struck me as a bit hyperbolic, which is probably the root of my skepticism.
Fair, I think hyperbolic headlines are just the reality of click-driven journalism :\
There is a shopping tab, and ads are allowed as long as it’s declared I think. Undeclared sponsored content gets bans.
My phone failed whenever I tried to buy something (just testing to see what it would do), and I haven’t seen anything that stood out as an obvious ad.
I suspect it’s looking for alipay or wechat or something.
My roommate mentioned it a few days ago, and I found out this evening that her and her girlfriend are both using it. While it may have started off as an astroturf, it’s legit now.
Just check it out, the volume of engagement is massive enough the FYP page can get very specific and very recent.
There’s even a few Australians like “Yeah, they’re not gonna ban the app, but here’s a kangaroo”
From the article somebody further up posted up, rednote has had about half a million downloads from app stores in the US.
TikTok’s US consumer base is about 136 million if my memory of what was said on NPR a couple mornings ago is accurate.
While I am sure that number will be growing, a lot of the feeling of everybody moving to redhorse appears to be astroturfing.
Like… they had a 50,000 person live event that sounds awfully a lot like like a recruitment seminar/product orientation.
This isn’t organic.
As someone who is experiencing it as it happens, it feels like the most organic thing I’ve experienced on a social media site. I’m sure that a huge part of why I feel the way I do about it is because I’m being served the content I interact with and I mostly interact with english content. However, I see PLENTY of faces I recognize. I don’t think it’s outside the realm of possibility to say that many americans responded to the tiktok ban with spite and chose an actual chinese social media bc fuck em.
To be clear though, it isn’t organic. The American government gave it an impetus.