Comment by tmnvdb 3 months ago
This is very misleading "news" and it doesn't illustrate anything, a bunch of users installed rednote out of protest, but this is a fully chinese app with 100% chinese content and 99% of users will move to youtube, instagram, etc
Fake news.
According to CNN, roughly 700,000 people have installed Rednote—though that figure only represents those who have tested the app and doesn’t necessarily reflect sustained usage. By comparison, TikTok is said to have around 110 million users in the United States, meaning 700,000 installs amount to less than 1% of TikTok’s user base.
Meanwhile, YouTube’s user numbers in the U.S. are estimated at 240 million, but it’s unlikely to gain many new downloads since almost everyone already has the app.
In my view, it’s unrealistic to think Rednote will replace TikTok.
> 700,000 installs amount to less than 1% of TikTok’s user base.
700k in how much time? RN tops the (Play Store) charts here (EU/Croatia) as well, and anecdotally there's a lot of word of mouth growth. Even though TikTok will not get banned over here.
> It’s unrealistic to think Rednote will replace TikTok.
Possibly, but it does have a foot in the door. It doesn't look like they were ready for western audience so remains to be seen if they can seize on the opportunity.
I am pulling these numbers out of my a* but comparing to the situation in Twitter. People can be enthusiastic to move but if a significant portion doesn't do it in a certain window of time, they'll just drop out of it.
Let's say this portion is around 60% of Tiktok users. So something like 60-70million and window span is 10 days. They need to sustain 6-7 million new US users per day in order to make a successful transition.
So what number do we determine it to be a matter of national security? 10 million? 50 million?
I don’t think anyone thinks RedNote will replace TikTok — it’s potentially subject to the same ban after all.
But it illustrates the general dissatisfaction among TikTok users with the other mainstream US social content platforms.
Rednote has been shown as the top free app (per Apple’s own App Store in my device at least) for going on a week, so the magnitude may be larger than you imply.
Also, having tried it myself, the algorithm works much like TikTok whereby it learns to show English speakers English content pretty quickly.
Also the general consensus among people who have used IG and TikTok (I personally don’t use IG) seems to be that the former does not at all substitute for the latter, particularly in terms of the subjective “authentic” feel of the content (IG often said to be lacking the community feel of TikTok).
I explicitly stated in a different comment that Rednote will not replace TikTok. I don’t think anyone seriously believes that. It’s subject to the same ban after all.
The interesting aspect here is rather the magnitude of dissatisfaction that a large percentage of users feel towards the other mainstream US social content platforms.
This may be because RedNote is going to "wall off" US users from the Chinese ones:
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/01/rednote-may-wall...
I don't think that's going to happen. The party official seems to be positive about the event overall based on their press release recently. IMO it's going to the opposite direction, where they try to get more foreign users on the platform and have them stay there. If I were a CCP official, I would love to have more soft power by having everyone on a Chinese platform.
A non-trivial number of videos I've seen this week mention also being able to find the creator of said video on Rednote. It is also the number 1 downloaded app in the US iOS store this week. The news may be a logical extreme, but it's not fake.
Having a non-trivial number of videos is not the same as being the replacement platform. Youtube is also being spammend with tiktok users uploading old content. The idea that after the dust settles the majority of 110 million tiktok users will end up using a tightly censored chinese social media platform rather than moving to obvious alternatives such as instagram and youtube seems very very unlikely.
Looks like you have never used TikTok or RedNote.
Chinese users are starting to caption their videos in English. American users are posting regularly.
It is the number 1 app in my country right now, because of the TikTok ban.
Look up the playstore and you will see. Download it for yourself and you will see.