Technology

Following the announcement on 15 January that TikTok would be banned in the United States on 19 January 2025, hundreds of thousands of TikTok users migrated, and continue to migrate, to XiaoHongShu (‘Little Red Book’, or ‘RedNote’). XiaoHongShu is a Chinese app with a format similar to TikTok, which became the #1 most downloaded app on the Appstore, with 700,000 Western users joining in just two days. On 24 January, 4 days after President Trump repealed the short-lived ban, XiaoHongShu remained at #8 on the Appstore, evidencing its enduring popularity even with the return of TikTok.

This Insight investigates how Western extremists, including neo-Nazis, white supremacists and participants in Saints Culture, capitalised on the migration to XiaoHongShu. They rapidly started sharing extremist content, and even using Chinese language text to pose as Chinese netizens or be understood by a Chinese audience. Chinese netizens’ responses were largely negative, including some grassroots activist reporting of offensive content. Additionally, many monitored far-right extremist accounts and posts were removed within the first week of the migration, indicating that Chinese moderators were aware of and restricting the extremist activity, despite the unprecedented surge in English-language users.