Inside the world of Xiaohongshu, the Americans downloading the app en masse have been branded ‘TikTok refugees’. — AFP
As a TikTok ban looms, hundreds of thousands of Americans casting about for a new video-sharing app have migrated to Xiaohongshu, a social media platform that translates as “Little Red Book”, the American nickname for a classic compendium of quotations from Chairman Mao.
It has all played out like a global practical joke on the American government: Threatened with exile from TikTok over concerns of Chinese interference, its users have simply scrolled to a different Chinese app, one whose name evokes the Chinese Communist Party.
