Text size

As TikTok nears closure in the US, American content creators have fled to another Chinese social media app.

Xiaohongshu, known as Red Note in English, rose to the top of Apple App Store downloads on Monday as users flocked to its Instagram-meets-Pinterest-style layout.

“Oh, you don’t want the Chinese to have our very sensitive personal information?” influencer Jen Hamilton asked sarcastically in a video sent to her 3.9 million followers on TikTok promoting her move.

The U.S. government passed a law last year that forced TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, to either sell or shut down the hugely popular platform. It comes into force on Sunday.

While critics of the law argued that it restricted free expression, the US government claimed TikTok allowed Beijing to collect data and spy on users and was a channel for spreading propaganda.

China and ByteDance strongly reject the claims.

Users like Hamilton are not worried.

“It’s impossible how little I care that the Chinese have my data,” she said in her video, telling a joke about a user who “changed his username to his social security number” so that alleged spies “get promoted faster.” could”. “

“Come over,” she said to her fellow “TikTok refugees.”

The fact that Xiaohongshu’s platform is almost entirely in Mandarin doesn’t seem to deter curious Americans.

TikTok has around 170 million users in the USA.

juj/nro/des