TikTok Got a Reprieve, but Americans and Chinese Are Still on RedNote
The New York Times
The Chinese social media app, popular in the United States a week after being flooded by TikTok users, has added language translation features.
TikTok got an apparent reprieve from being forced to shut down, but Americans on Monday were still using and downloading Xiaohongshu, the Chinese social media app that surged in popularity last week in anticipation of TikTok’s closure.
TikTok, owned by the Chinese internet company ByteDance, went dark in the United States ahead of a federal law requiring it to be sold or banned on Sunday. TikTok soon came back online after President-elect Donald J. Trump said he would issue an executive order to put off a ban once he took office on Monday.
Many questions remain about TikTok’s fate in the United States. For now, Xiaohongshu, which many people are calling RedNote, is leaning into its sudden celebrity in the United States.
Over the weekend, Xiaohongshu added a feature to let users translate posts and comments between Mandarin and English. On Monday it was at the top of Apple’s ranking of most downloaded apps, a spot it has held for much of the past week.
According to data on RedNote, 32.6 million notes have been posted with the hashtag “tiktok refugee” as of Monday, gaining 2.3 billion views.
Americans on the platform said they planned to keep posting on RedNote, even though TikTok had come back online.
