In anticipation of a TikTok blackout on Sunday, users are reportedly migrating en masse to… other Chinese platforms. And they really like it there.
TikTok, the popular short video social media network, is set to be banned from mobile app stores in the US on Sunday, 19 January 2025, under a bipartisan law passed earlier this year.
TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, can avoid the ban by divesting its US business to a company that is not substantially controlled by a “foreign adversary”, which under the relevant US code means specifically North Korea, Russia, China or Iran.
It has no intention of doing so, however.
ByteDance has approached the US Supreme Court to have the ban overturned, but the court has indicated that it probably won’t do so before the deadline, if at all.
Talking heads in the US have long expressed concern over the fact that ByteDance in principle would be required to (and in practice probably does) surrender user data and content to the Chinese Communist Party, should it be asked to do so. They describe it as a spy app, and accuse it of data-harvesting and conducting propaganda campaigns on behalf of the Chinese government.
These claims are unquestionably true, and it is also true that China is a foreign adversary which does not have America’s best interests at heart.
Censorship backfiring
Donald Trump, who during his first term seemed determined to ban TikTok, has changed his mind. He made it a campaign promise to “save TikTok”. He has reportedly been told that he is wildly popular on the platform, and an appeal to his ego is all it took for him to appreciate the propaganda possibilities of keeping TikTok around in some form – perhaps under the ownership of Elon Musk.
Trump is considering an executive order on the day he takes office (the day after the ban comes into effect) to give the company more time to negotiate a divestiture of its American operations, which would nullify the ban.
The law specifically names TikTok and ByteDance, but it could be invoked to ban any other social media platform with more than a million users that is controlled by one of the four named foreign adversaries.
This all reeks of both censorship and political bumbling. It is backfiring, already.
We’re used to authoritarian regimes being paranoid enough to block information or ideas from foreign rivals. That the US is now doing so seems hypocritical at best. Answering the threat of authoritarianism with authoritarianism seems self-defeating.
Users of TikTok don’t care that their data is being sent to China. They don’t care that China is manipulating the algorithm to boost pro-China views and suppress criticism of China and the Chinese regime. And they certainly don’t like being told what they may or may not do online.
Technically illiterate
One wonders what the technically illiterate, geriatric congress-critters thought would happen when they cracked down on a platform that none of them have likely ever used, but which is wildly popular with young Americans. They should have expected exactly what they got: a great big middle finger.
ByteDance responded by announcing that TikTok would summarily go dark on Sunday, even though it is only required to remove the app from Apple and Google’s app stores.
Chinese officials – who clearly call the shots here – have reportedly indicated that they would strongly prefer to retain control of the social media app.
They may be concerned about the algorithm falling into US hands, but they may also be going dark merely to sow mistrust and anger towards their government among Americans who use and love TikTok, perhaps to put pressure on incoming president Trump to overturn the ban.
TikTok CEO Shou Chew is expected to be one of Trump’s guests at his inauguration on Monday. That is surely no coincidence.
Alternative platforms
TikTok users, for their part, are rapidly migrating to alternative platforms. A few are turning back to Facebook, Instagram, YouTube or X, which are all owned by good old all-American billionaires who would never stoop so low as to censor information, promote ideologically-biased propaganda, or spy on users on behalf of their government. (I kid; they all do exactly that.)
Substantial numbers are turning to more obscure short-form video apps, like Clapper and Flip. Some are switching to Bluesky, an X alternative founded by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, where I’m also trying to establish a fall-back position.
Many TikTok refugees, however, are switching to different Chinese platforms. Chief among them is Xiaohongshu, which means “Little Red Book” in an apparent reference to the communist dictator Mao Zedong, but in English is named RedNote.
Despite having been mostly restricted to Chinese users until now, RedNote has shot up the rankings to become the most popular social media app on the Apple App Store and the fourth most popular on Google Play.
Another is Lemon8, an Instagram-like sister app to TikTok which is also owned by ByteDance.
The consequence of this mass migration is, ironically, that young American social media users are getting far more exposure to Chinese people, culture and propaganda than they have ever had before.
We not enemy!
Travel agent and writer Erica Wilkinson wrote a long thread on Bluesky describing this unexpected meeting of two cultures.
She says RedNote users welcomed the influx of American refugees with open arms. Some offered Mandarin lessons. Others asked for help with English homework. Many joked that they were Chinese spies, and were happy to meet the Americans.
And the Americans for the first time experienced a taste of Chinese life through the eyes of actual Chinese people, and found that it was, well, quite nice. They have cheap groceries. Nobody works two jobs. Healthcare is free. Public transport is good.
Users are now asking for real-time translation features to be added to the app.
“I am watching 30 years of propaganda melt away at first contact with actual Chinese folks,” wrote Wilkinson. “Every comment section on RedNote are the Chinese users welcoming the Americans, ‘I’m so glad you’re here! We can be friends now! We are not enemy!’”
Samizdat
Putting up firewalls and banning foreign social media platforms is not likely ever to succeed. There are always technical means to defeat such bans – unless you disconnect the domestic internet from the global network altogether (by which time you have bigger problems than restricted social media).
John Gilmore, one of the founders of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the venerable Cypherpunks mailing list, and the alt.* hierarchy in Usenet, once said, “The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.”
Censorship also turns foreign propaganda into forbidden fruit, which means you’re practically guaranteeing that people will seek it out.
This happened with samizdat in the old Soviet Union: in secret, people widely printed and distributed literature and other written material prohibited by the Communist Party. It will happen again, if countries try to ban services like TikTok.
By motivating American users of TikTok to decamp to other Chinese platforms dominated by real live Chinese people, the US Congress has unwittingly delivered a massive propaganda coup to its “foreign adversary”.
That’s what happens when you try to ban free speech. A little like the Streisand effect, it backfires, and you end up attracting a lot more of what you were trying to ban in the first place.
[Image: Mbappé RedNote.webp CAPTION: An advertisement for RedNote, a Chinese social media platform, featuring French footballer Kylian Mbappé. The text shows Mbappé asking a question on the “Little Red Book”, with a Chinese citizen offering a recommendation for “an excellent restaurant with no queues”.]
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