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Comment by adriand | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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

I think it would be a good thing if average Americans and Chinese interacted more

Maybe then we will see we are all more alike than we are different

seems like a dangerous idea if you're Uncle Sam or the CCP. dogs and cats may realize they in fact enjoy living together. one can hope though, eh?

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....

It’s even better than that. “Red Note” is the softened version. A more direct translation is “Little Red Book.”

> “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

If Wikipedia is to be believed, the Chinese nickname is “Treasured Red Book.” It’s just a coincidence that the English nickname happens to match the literal translation of this app’s name. Still hilarious.

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).

You state that the US gov is banning it for money as if that’s a fact. I’d love to see the evidence for that.

The irony is that China bans essentially all US social media. I guess these users don’t care a ton their selfish bans?

I read it as that's how they think of it. It doesn't actually matter if it's true or not.

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

Freedom.

Americans want freedom of speech without interference from the US government.

TikTok was banned because of sharing anti-zionist videos documenting the genocide of Palestinians.

Americans turn to a dictatorial psuedo-communist government that has direct control over this social media platform so they can get MORE freedom?

I call bullshit.

Chinese social media has pretty transparent upfront censorship regime: dont criticize CCP, adhere to One China Policy, dont push LGBTQP+ propaganda, everything else is allowed.

Americans on red book are surprised to see the actual life in China and are shocked how different it is from american MSM propaganda about China, you can find plenty of these threads on Twitter how tiktok refugees are amazed by how brainwashed they were by US mass media

Ok, so besides not being able to talk about these immediate 3 third rails, we're completely free to talk about anything. What a perfect platform for free speech idealists to flock to.

What in the actual hell, why wouldn't they go to one of the various other free sites that isn't controlled by such an obvious bad actor? Unless of course they don't care at all about that and they're really being quite dumb.

And yes, of course real life in China is different than that displayed in corporate US media. Real life in France, Australia, Nigeria and Svalbard are all different than what is displayed there too. None of that makes it a good idea to be so outrageously stupid as to adopt such a platform.

Please give us some examples of MSM propaganda about China.

Apparently currently they’re posting tons of 3d printed gun content. People are weird.

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-...

>... jailing people for social media posts

More like jailing people for inciting riots by repeatedly and vehemently posting proven wrong information. Freedom of speech is great and all, but you are advocating for freedom from consequences

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

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.

That seems decidedly short sighted to trust your enemy more because your own governments also do harm.

it signifies lack of trust from US citizens in their own government that lied non-stop for decades and kept brainwashing them with one false narrative (like Iraqi WMDs) after another

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”.

I'm pretty sure it would be more a quick "Add this app to the TikTok court order".

Why would you love that?

He’s using sarcasm

It would likely lay bare just how much any of the TikTok detractors actually cared about privacy/security concerns versus cultural ones.

Sometimes it’s fun to watch chaos unfold. It’s subjectively entertaining

Someone wrote, "Because it's punk rock" and I think that sums it up. It's an act of rebellion.

Why do you love this?

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.

It’s a clone being inorganically pushed to fill vacuum.

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