ASA turn off Waiting on the horizonTiktok in America is like the last school day. The British say goodbye to the Americans. The Australians are waiting in the wings to replace the exiled Americans Influencers. American users bid farewell to their fictional Chinese spies, a joke that indicates US government spies accusation China uses the app (owned by bytedance, Chinese technology giant) to monitor American citizens.
It is also a sign of the personal appearance of the “for you” page for each user (The five -year plan), Frozen videos in the application. Thank you to Chinese spy for his mastery The five -year plan More than anyone else understands me. “I will miss you forever,” one of the videos ended.
At BYTEDANCE until January 19 to sell Tiktok to a non -Chinese owner, or seeing the application is banned in America. With the increase in the prohibition opportunities, following the Supreme Court’s decision on January 17 to support the law of sale or embargo last year, who call themselves “Tik Talk refugees” by downloading the Xiao Hongsu website, which is a Chinese social networking application And shopping. program. On January 13, the application – a mixture of Pinterest, Instagram, and Reddit, which the English language speakers called “Rednote”, a brief version of its name “Little Red Book” – to the top of the free application list on the American Apple website. App Store.
(The attractiveness of the name in America reflects a degree of memory loss between generations, as well as the dark paradox: “The Little Red Book” was a group of quotes of Moo Zedong, the founding leader of the Communist Communist who supervised famine and collective cleansing. The name is a reference to the color of his former university, Stanford, the former employer, Payne Capital).
The American flow to Rednote has confused and entertained its Chinese users. One of them jokingly said: “We were waiting for you so that we could continue our mission as a Chinese spy.” Some Americans learn the language of mandarin only to move in the application.
It may seem perplexing that young American youth volunteer their information on Chinese social media as a form of activity. This highlights in part on the changing situations towards data collection. In October, 42% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 34, told the Yugov polls, they “do not worry much about privacy”, compared to only 24% of those over the age of 55. Nearly two -thirds of the consumers of the generation of Z and the millennial generation who were included in the poll in America last year by Deloitte Consulting Company said that the benefits of services online – such as entertainment and social communications – outweigh their concerns related to data privacy.
Some of the new Xiaohongshu users cite the Cambridge Analytica scandal to argue that the Tiktok ban is hypocrisy. “President Shi, called me and told me exactly what data you need. Mita has been allowed to sell, why can’t I be so?” Danisha Carter, one of the influential figures residing in Los Angeles and has 1.9 million followers, says in a wide video on Tiktok.
The choice of Xiaohongshu on an American alternative may be a form of resistance to the Tiktok campaign. But the application is also subject to the ban, says Alan Rosenstein of Minnesota University. While Tiktok and Bytedance are the only two companies mentioned in the law of sale or ban, it also includes those whose number of active users per month exceeds one million users and has foreign owners from one of the four “hostile” countries – China, Iran, North Korea and Russia. – Those who have a share of at least 20 %. Rosenstein notes that part of the law stipulates the withdrawal of investments from Tech Tuk and Bayt Dance without any presidential discretionary power, but there is another part that gives the president the authority to launch a similar operation to other social media applications controlled by China.
The law is not the only reason that may make the increase in the number of new users for Xiaohongshu short -term. The brotherly application of Tiktok, Douyin, which can only be accessed in China, allows by Bytedance to comply with strict social media control rules in China. The Xiaohongshu app, which most of its foreign users were Chinese who lived abroad yet, were not ready for American users to flow, and currently lacked such a chapter. Some Chinese users claimed that the English publications that should have been subject to censorship sneak through the filters. Chinese reports indicated that the application makes urgent appointments for English speakers.
If some of these bodies are supervisory, American social media users who are used to screaming freely about their political opinions on the Internet may be subjected to harsh awakening. “The phenomenon of refugees on the Tech Tuk app is just an illusion,” says Meng Chang, Chinese Bodcast Announcer and App user. “Xiaohongshu is one of the most strict censorship platforms in China.” The application tolerates non -political content such as lifestyle and fashion, but many other topics are subject to censorship. It also lacks mechanisms that allow users outside China to achieve income from their publications, which represents a great attractiveness to the Tiktok application and other American social media applications.
The fate of Xiaohongshu, like Tiktok, may fall on Donald Trump. On January 15th Washington Post I mentioned that the elected president is studying how to suspend the implementation of the Tiktok ban once he takes office (it is said that Shou Zi Chew, the head of the application, is planning to attend his inauguration ceremony). The president -elect, the elected president, announced that Tiktok, the platform through which young voters were resonated before the elections, has a “warm point” in his heart. Xiaohongshu lacks this relationship. But if Tiktok dies, his romantic relationship with Americans will be worth seeing. ■
Staying at the head of American policy with the we shortOur daily news published that contains a quick analysis of the most important political news, and Checks and balanceA weekly note from our writer in Lexington deals with the state of American democracy and issues of concern to voters.
