FWIW, this has driven many users to RedNote, which is even more Chinese in every way, regardless of whether it's even the same kind of platform. I doubt it would ever be anywhere near the same numbers as TikTok (assuming ByteDance didn't sell off) but it does illustrate the trouble with this i.e. cat-and-mouse game.
CCP: let's create 200 apps where each app has just less than 1 million active; and then cross-content across the apps so you are sort of browsing a single site. Maybe China will finally bring federated social media.
I don’t know the details of this app’s corporate structure, but if it’s developed here and user data stays here it would not qualify under the act. Based on the context of your and other comments I assumed it was also a foreign-controlled app
The REDnot is not a "foreign-controlled" app, it's a foreign app, and it does not target the US market. The US citizens chose to use a non-US app. How would US enforce a ban? Send marines to Shanghai and capture CEOs?
REDnote is explicitly "小红书国际版", or "Little Red Book International Version" and is in English in US app stores. It's definitely targeting non-Chinese users.
Oh I misread your comment (read /inside/ rather than /outside/ for some reason), but obviously the same way they’re going to ban tiktok? Make it illegal for the app stores to host.
This is very misleading "news" and it doesn't illustrate anything, a bunch of users installed rednote out of protest, but this is a fully chinese app with 100% chinese content and 99% of users will move to youtube, instagram, etc
According to CNN, roughly 700,000 people have installed Rednote—though that figure only represents those who have tested the app and doesn’t necessarily reflect sustained usage. By comparison, TikTok is said to have around 110 million users in the United States, meaning 700,000 installs amount to less than 1% of TikTok’s user base.
Meanwhile, YouTube’s user numbers in the U.S. are estimated at 240 million, but it’s unlikely to gain many new downloads since almost everyone already has the app.
In my view, it’s unrealistic to think Rednote will replace TikTok.
> 700,000 installs amount to less than 1% of TikTok’s user base.
700k in how much time? RN tops the (Play Store) charts here (EU/Croatia) as well, and anecdotally there's a lot of word of mouth growth. Even though TikTok will not get banned over here.
> It’s unrealistic to think Rednote will replace TikTok.
Possibly, but it does have a foot in the door. It doesn't look like they were ready for western audience so remains to be seen if they can seize on the opportunity.
I am pulling these numbers out of my a* but comparing to the situation in Twitter. People can be enthusiastic to move but if a significant portion doesn't do it in a certain window of time, they'll just drop out of it.
Let's say this portion is around 60% of Tiktok users. So something like 60-70million and window span is 10 days. They need to sustain 6-7 million new US users per day in order to make a successful transition.
Considering that RedNote doesn't allow LGBTQ+ content or "too much skin" to be shown (women-only policy BTW) I don't think it'll end up being very popular with today's TikTok crowd.
Rednote has been shown as the top free app (per Apple’s own App Store in my device at least) for going on a week, so the magnitude may be larger than you imply.
Also, having tried it myself, the algorithm works much like TikTok whereby it learns to show English speakers English content pretty quickly.
Also the general consensus among people who have used IG and TikTok (I personally don’t use IG) seems to be that the former does not at all substitute for the latter, particularly in terms of the subjective “authentic” feel of the content (IG often said to be lacking the community feel of TikTok).
I explicitly stated in a different comment that Rednote will not replace TikTok. I don’t think anyone seriously believes that. It’s subject to the same ban after all.
The interesting aspect here is rather the magnitude of dissatisfaction that a large percentage of users feel towards the other mainstream US social content platforms.
I don't think that's going to happen. The party official seems to be positive about the event overall based on their press release recently. IMO it's going to the opposite direction, where they try to get more foreign users on the platform and have them stay there. If I were a CCP official, I would love to have more soft power by having everyone on a Chinese platform.
A non-trivial number of videos I've seen this week mention also being able to find the creator of said video on Rednote. It is also the number 1 downloaded app in the US iOS store this week. The news may be a logical extreme, but it's not fake.
Having a non-trivial number of videos is not the same as being the replacement platform. Youtube is also being spammend with tiktok users uploading old content. The idea that after the dust settles the majority of 110 million tiktok users will end up using a tightly censored chinese social media platform rather than moving to obvious alternatives such as instagram and youtube seems very very unlikely.
I agree. I'm not sure if I think all of this is good or not. Even if you, a gov't, didn't have an interest in managing your citizens vis-a-vis some platform, it doesn't mean other govt's don't have that interest, so maybe there's some validity to it in that case. But all of that raises even more questions, like "so what?" and "to what end?"
I feel like the protest move to RedNote will be short lived. The censorship there is draconian - if you say even the slightest thing that offends the CCP on red note, you get banned. See this discussion on the subreddit for TikTok (https://www.reddit.com/r/TikTok/comments/1i2wll3/how_to_not_...).
Something I read that’s interesting - RedNote changed the English name to cover their actual name - the Chinese name is little red book, as in the red book of Mao (not sure if true).
> the Chinese name is little red book, as in the red book of Mao (not sure if true)
That is the Chinese name of the app (although I've heard mixed reports on if "little red book" as a term for the book actually common in China). The founder claims it's because of the founder's "career at Bain & Company and education at the Stanford Graduate School of Business" which both use red, but I'm pretty sure it's a pun on his name also being Mao.
Edited for word choice.