Comment by adriand 2 days ago
What I love is that apparently tons of Americans are signing up for a different Chinese social video app whose name is being translated as “Red Note”. I would love if the end result of this was another several years of congressional drama about a different Chinese app.
I am afraid this might not last long. There is no official announcement yet for now, to be clear, but still[0].
0. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/01/rednote-may-wall...
> if the end result of this was another several years of congressional drama about a different Chinese app
No need. If it’s Chinese and has more than 100mm (EDIT: 1mm) users, Commerce can designate it a foreign-adversary controlled application and designate it for app-store delisting.
I think the threshold is way lower than that? The "Covered Company" definition mentions 1 million monthly active users for at least 2 of the 3 months preceding some determination.
Also, I wonder who is the foreign-based "reviews" site that lobbied for the exclusion clause immediately following that?
https://www.congress.gov/118/plaws/publ50/PLAW-118publ50.pdf
Hmm, § 2(g)(2)(b) been there since the start [1].
[1] https://www.congress.gov/118/bills/hr7521/BILLS-118hr7521ih....
> “Little Red Book.”
As in Mao's Little Red Book - https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34932800
Can't confirm as I don't speak Chinese but Sharp China podcast says this is a mistranslation, and that the word for Mao's little red book is not the same as the Chinese name for Rednote
Isn't Red Note planning to segregate based on IP to prevent US Influence from those TikTok refugees? The original CN users aren't exactly happy with the newcomers either, and the TikTok refugees themselves are getting quite a culture shock with regards to cultural attitudes to LGBQT or even basic "leftist" activism like strikes and collective bargaining
Anyways, those alternatives are not so algorithmically driven, and especially if it's forcing actual user interaction and discussion that certainly would be good for Americans to understand what the mainland Chinese are really thinking and saying domestically. Because if you go to the actual main discussion forums like Weibo, oh boy it's not going to be pretty.
Honest question: why would an American consciously seek out multiple Chinese apps on purpose?
To be punk rock. The main reason I see thrown around is most younger users don't care if China has their user data and understand that the government is banning it for their own selfish reasons (money).
OP didn't say "for money".
As per Mitt Romney, it was banned because TikTok contained too much anti-Israel content (remember, the push for the ban became really strong very soon after Oct 7 when the genocide began)
Source: https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1787288209963290753
if China has US consumer's data they can do very little harm as they lack enforcement. So its not a big deal to use Chinese owned social media app.
US however, if it has data on US users, has all the means to cause harm to US users, starting from censorship and persecution.
UK and Germany for example are jailing people for social media posts
https://www.standingforfreedom.com/2024/08/think-before-you-...
If your 'opinion' consists of demonstrably wrong accusations to individuals and other proven lies, it is not political speech. Why do you insist on lies being political speech? You can hat your government without lies, I do dislike mine and have no need for lies when talking about it.
This is such a slippery slope. If I post on my social media that I hate my government and its policies - it should be protected as political speech.
You cannot jail people for their thoughts. Unless a person is physically present in public and is inciting violence in person, they do not violate anything
Because deep inside, most people are still children, desperate to declare their autonomy.
The most literal translation of 小红书 is “Little Red Book”, which recalls the famous book of quotes from Mao Zedong: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotations_from_Chairman_Mao_T...
Except that’s not what Mao’s book was/is called in China, it’s a label the US applied to it. In China it’s better known as 红宝书 (Hóng Bǎo Shū) “The Red Treasure Book” or simply “The Red Book”.
Sometimes it’s fun to watch chaos unfold. It’s subjectively entertaining
Because if this sequence of events (one allegedly Chinese-government controlled social media app is banned over apparent ties to the government, so all of its American users immediately switch to another Chinese app whose name can be translated as "Little Red Book") happened in a movie, a reasonable person would balk at how ludicrous and on-the-nose the whole thing was.
It feels like a joke, and if you can somehow create enough space to actually see the humor in it, its kind of funny.
What's interesting is that RedNote doesn't have the same level of segregation as TikTok, so the US and China users are having a lot of interesting interactions. Assum the app doesn't get banned, it'll be interesting to see if the experiences get more silo'd