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.
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.
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.
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.
I get that it is the most organic thing you have ever felt, but that should be itself something that makes you raise an eyebrow.
A foreign language service that does not cater to you, in a language you don’t speak, and theoretically has none of your prior data is perfectly catering a social media experience tailored individually to you, and doing it on a level that no corporation who has been targeting and grooming you for 20 years has been able to achieve.
Either your comment itself is inorganic and mere advertising promising impossibilities, or you are a genuine person offering such extreme praise but we need to be skeptical here.
You aren’t saying the app is good. You are saying it is the best experience you have ever been provided, and if that is the case, this app has some explaining to do on how they achieved that.
Genuine or not, your thoughts on the matter are weird, so weird that it becomes hard to even respond to.
It really isn’t that good at catering to me tbh. I say it feels organic because I am connecting with people in a genuine fashion that feels abnormal for social media. That is likely due to it being very new and the large rapid influx of americans. If it knew me like tiktok did my experience would be very different but it is still good just inna different way. I understand that americans are very hesitant about using chinese software but I can’t grasp the source of uneasiness. Its just a social media. I like being able to interact with people so different from me.
Thank you for giving me your opinion.
I will try to have an open mind about it going forward.
I am happy with loops for now though. No longer having the algorithm I don’t miss it. I don’t miss 7 ads per hour, all of them for jedi pajamas or dhubai chocolate that costs $50 per bar.