What does one do when their favorite social media application is at risk of being banned due to apprehensions surrounding its affiliations to the People’s Republic of China? Download the most Chinese social media platform available on the App Store, of course! So went the stories of the over three million ‘TikTok Refugees’, who joined the popular Chinese social media application Xiaohongshu, known as RedNote in English-speaking markets. Many joined RedNote as an act of protest against the United States government’s decision to ban TikTok, citing its information-gathering practices as a threat to national security.
Xiaohongshu, founded by Charlwin Mao and Miranda Qu Fang in 2013, served primarily as a space where young Chinese women could discuss life and share beauty tips. The application found major success in the domestic Chinese market, garnering hundreds of millions of Chinese users in just over a decade. Until 2025, however, Xiaohongshu found limited success in the global social media market, failing to compete with behemoths such as Instagram and TikTok. Following the United States’ ban on TikTok, however, RedNote managed to find foreign success in both the United States and in India. Millions of American and Indian users joined the application, protesting against their respective nations’ legislation on TikTok.
For some of these new users, the strict censorship encountered on the platform came as a shock. Compared to most major North American social media platforms, RedNote has quite strict and extensive terms of service. Mirroring China’s own strict censorship of material, RedNote prohibits content deemed to damage the national dignity, honor, or interests of the People’s Republic of China. Some other regulations result from the vast disparity between American culture and Chinese culture. Posts that feature religious extremity, spread ethnic or race-based hate, or that show too much skin, all violate the terms and services of the platform. Furthermore, some LGBTQ+ users report censorship of their posts on the platform. Especially when compared with Elon Musk’s X, RedNote’s censorship is jarring to many American users accustomed to the almost unregulated chaos one encounters on their feeds there.
The CORE Butte High School community seems relatively unbothered by this shift in the global social media landscape, with those interested in social media opting for the more traditional applications such as Instagram and X over the blazing newcomer RedNote. Many students remain absolutely nonplussed by RedNote, with Elijah Ordaz just seeing it as another short-form content platform and not caring about the security concerns that it might pose, “I already feel like my data is with whoever, so I don’t really care.” However, RedNote has existed in the American market for a little over a month, meaning that the true effects of the application on the CORE community are yet to be seen.
