US News

I feel like most people are smart enough to realize that the Tiktok ban is purely about censoring viewpoints that don't fall in line with the State Department. So naturally, they want to see what else they're not supposed to be seeing.

Absolutely, there are now millions of Americans who are pissed off about TikTok ban who are now swimming in Communist media.

Despite their best efforts to paint China as the ultimate evil, people are still lining up to try their products. I feel like that says something.

Aren't Xiaohongshu and Rednote the same thing?

Is Xiaohongshu and Rednote not 1 same app? Or is it also separated like TikTok and Douyin?

I'm liking it so far, I do wish they'd give you a way to share stuff outside the app though.

From what I have seen the Chinese users seem to be pretty happy, if not a little confused, from the sudden influx of English speakers. Many are making spy jokes, asking for cat pics, and requesting help with their English homework. I do understand the worry of some Americans being anti-communist or even racist, but that doesn’t seem to be an issue right now and I think this is a great opportunity to expose westerners to China and socialism.

To be fair, I think you might need more context or history on why particular people might not want to deal with US American users. That they cannot filter.

tldr: It's not like the people with complaints are just bigoted and racist against Americans, period. Like, someone (let's call them A) learned English to try to connect to these people, trying to explain things nicely, being constantly met with some entitled imperial corers who call THEM (A) a racist and incoming slurs and harassment; and when inevitably they(A) can't take it anymore, they(A) make frustrated vent posts and the brigade starts screenshotting them(A) out of context and using it as 'proof' of their racism. Also don't think it would change westerners' opinions of China, I think more likely to further "love the people hate the government" sinophobic opinion which is already present in westerners.

On tumblr there have been brigades of usamerican "leftists"/progressives that have consistently been part of harassing campaigns whenever a user from global south speaks about imperial core benefits, usually these campaigners using their own marginalization within the social strata of the usa as a cudgel, applying internal colony* framework etc in a ontological victim manner that isn't dissimilar to "not all men" instead of ever recognizing any privileges conferred. They'll yell "victims can't be oppressors!" when nobody called them overt oppressors for receiving benefits; for pointing out their relative position in global dynamics. These global south users are frequently accused of being white (many are not) and antiblack (again, bad faith reading and generally, lack of reading comprehension) and harassed off of the platform, receiving both anonymous and off-anon racist or transphobic slurs and sexual harassment following the smear campaigns. A couple years ago, these brigades claimed that using the term "US American" was antiblack (despite latin americans, many who are black, also use "estadunidenses") and explained it as "people who use it just want to call us n * rs [hard r]" and many of the leaders of this ring used the tag "K.A.N." (short for kill all n * s) -- putting nastiness in other peoples' mouths that they never said. The latest victim of this was a north korean woman living in south korea who made a post months ago about how it was uncomfortable to see comments under a tiktok video about korean fried chicken where black usamericans were claiming and proud of being the vector of introducing the concept of fried chicken to south korea. She explained that this made her uncomfortable because this vector/relationship is being part of the US military which slaughtered, looted, perused/grew the prostitution industry, and still occupies the korean peninsula.

Lemmygrad has a level of user filtering (the questionaire/application subject to approval) and moderation that a free-for-all environment like tumblr and most other forms of social media don't have. Like, the average westerner who calls themselves "leftist" is still primarily based in liberal epistemology if not just a left-liberal (don't get me started on anticiv "theory" lmfao) and has vibes-based political analysis ("anti-capitalist! don't worry I'm also anti-communist") rather than anything based in dialectical materialism. Sure, it's easy to block individual users, but when people make alts and remake, or have larger followings who unquestionably spread their "callout" posts, that's a different matter.

To be fair I haven't seen the people (mainly MLs) defending global southerners from bad faith readings/callouts say that US-ians migrating to XHS is a "bad" thing. That kind of behavior/harassment is tangential to the XHS topic, but I think it's worth putting into perspective, as a symptom of a larger pattern.

Like, it isn't hard to imagine being fed up with having to constantly tiptoe around victim complex babies who, upon even slightly jostling (not questioning, not challenging) nature of said perfect victimhood, by pointing out their material reality/position, would release hell upon you. And this isn't even covering the chauvinism: where people who live outside the imperial core are just ideas, a construct, an 'easy' rhetorical tool, "anonymized people of the global south"; while US Americans/westerners are the only people that are actually real and matter. Sure, exposure to Chinese people on social media miiiight do something, and frequently I'd even say it gets westerners to "humanize" particular individuals in the fashion of "I love Chinese people but I hate their government, which is totally not run by real Chinese people". But it's not like other platforms -where westerners can also interact with people on the other side of the world- significantly impacted the endemic chauvinist attitude either. I don't use tiktok but when it gets crossposted, I constantly see douyin videos get crossposted to both tiktok and youtube, sometimes with a English language voiceover where the 'splainer actually says it's about China and seems to be trying to give positive exposure about China, but many other times the video might be horizontally flipped (and I do mean this, not just filmed in mirror, like the stamp that has details about the original upload is backwards) and context erased, and since it's a nice content and no mention of China, westerners fawn over the video and make assumptions about it being Japan or South Korea... until they learn it's Chinese in origin. Realistically, American/western users won't change their opinions, they're here to peruse a platform in spite of the tiktok ban and maybe to do their whole "free speech when it's critical of their government" thing. I don't know if the exodus to XHS will even be a lasting move, or just a layover to another platform.

That said I'm not on XHS and don't plan to be (it's instagram on steroids and Not Great for my mental health. Also it's incredibly commercial, like, it's the app you log on to figure out good deals for your next vacation or metro restaurants for schoolmate get together or spa service, at least that‘s the impression I got from hearing cn netizens talk about it.) but some of my friends who are and joined to either immerse themselves in Chinese (learning Chinese) or just want to use Chinese language social media have expressed annoyance that this American wave has washed over their feeds, now filled with English language and chauvinist "me me me". I think they also have a right to be annoyed. So from the argument of "just a drop in the bucket" I think it's already proven to not be the case, at least anecdotally in this moment. I can see Americans jumping on CN makeup trends or whatever but, I just can't imagine even asking these American "refugees" to learn Chinese to interact with the predominant population of the rest of the app, the reverse of people who don't speak English as 1st/2nd language having to learn English to use platforms where most people speak English. (Not that would ever actually happen. English language is part of the education curriculum in PRC, although to varying degrees of fluency of course. Chinese netizens especially younger ones typically have some familiarity with English that Americans as a whole just don't have with Chinese.)

But as others have noted, the Chinese users seem to be fine with it, and having a fun time with it. As I've noted before, the culture of XHS is more like instagram than, say, when a tumblr post escapes ML circles and finds the smol bean imperialist chauvinists, so in that aspect there's probably less imminent butting heads.

*There's been discussion about how internal colony framework was most applicable to the era in which it was coined, ie ~50 years ago, but conditions in the US - particularly routes & methods of assimilation - have changed since then. I am largely in agreement with that view, like systemic disenfranchisement and abandonment (and certainly the case and exception regarding policing) is of course prevalent and obvious when it comes to BIPOC but it's not isolated to just them, rural and post-industrial/rust belt are just as much affected by rotting infrastructure and gutting of services by local leadership shaking hands with privatization.

No idea what made it go viral. That said, I just signed up and I'm digging it, this was literally the first thing in my feed

It's because a lot of high profile tiktok "content creators" are going there and taking their fan base with them.

TikTok is getting banned in the US so a bunch of users are going to Xiaohongshu instead. It’s basically to spite the American government.

It's already been updated with more localisations to accommodate international users.

This is the country that mobilised to be able to build pop-up hospitals and quarantine facilities in 5 days. Now there's a huge amount of soft power settling on their doorstep and all they need to do to reel it in is update software.

I agree with you 100%. In plenty of countries, people will abandon US apps in a heartbeat as soon as their is a replacement available that is suitable.

ah I already had a wechat account so I signed in with that

I've seen so many videos of Americans actually talking to people in China now, and it's just so wholesome.

It's Chinese Instagram, much better than BS Meta product.