The 90s techno-utopian dream lives on at RedNote (for now)

The US government will officially ban TikTok on Sunday, January 19, unless the US Supreme Court decides to do something to stop it in last minute decision. The looming ban has prompted a large number of TikTokers to migrate to a new Chinese video sharing app called Xiaohongshu—Red note or Red Book, in English – as your total American ruling class shit. And with RedNote maintaining the number one spot in the US Apple App Store for a second day, it’s a fascinating thing to watch.

It’s unclear whether Americans will actually stick with RedNote in the long term, especially if TikTok is saved by a successful sale to an American company or if President-elect Donald Trump somehow intervenes. A Bloomberg report that Elon Musk might try to buy TikTok was quickly shot down by TikTok on Monday night. But it’s really interesting to see how American and Chinese users discuss the migration to RedNote in very techno-utopian terms.

Internet users in the US and China have been separated by a vast digital divide for so long that RedNote users, both old and new, are talking about how this finally feels like an opportunity for real cultural exchange between ordinary citizens in the two countries. Because in the 1990s, the idea of ​​a “global village” where everyone could freely communicate peacefully around the world was a big part of humanity’s technological dream for the future. But things like China’s Great Firewall and the US surveillance apparatus have thwarted that vision.

“It’s so nostalgic for me to see TikTok refugees pouring into red notes,” one RedNote user called Zoe said in a video. “It reminds me of the early 2000s when the internet first made the global village possible.”

Zoe compared it to what people in the 20th century often did pen palsa common way to communicate with random people you didn’t know from the other side of the world. Physical letters were exchanged through the postal service, often coordinated through schools, so that children could practice their language and writing skills while learning about different cultures. Zoe said that her exercise at school was just to pretend that she and her classmates were actually writing with a pen pal, but the idea was the same.

“I remember then. In China, when I was little, when I first started learning English, we would practice writing by pretending to have a pen pal from the United States or the United Kingdom,” Zooey said. “And we write them in English. This is very similar to what is happening at Red Note right now.”

Zoe admits that “it’s a bit chaotic”, but says that in general people are very curious about each other.

“It’s just almost magical that the will to connect and gather can still transcend so many boundaries, especially in an age where the internet is so fragmented and algorithms have built really strong echo chambers that prevent people from understanding each other,” Zoe says, going so far as to call it very magical.

Zoe no longer has to pretend she’s writing to a pen pal. At least not for now. But Zoe knows that this may be an illusion and this brief moment may be gone very quickly.

“Maybe I’m over-romanticizing this, but I haven’t felt like this in a long time. Like, people can really connect and people are genuinely interested and curious about each other,” Zoe said. “I don’t know how long this moment will last. I’m not optimistic, but I really hope it stays for a little while longer.”

Other English-speaking users based in China spoke of their conflicted feelings at seeing an American influx to the app. One creator said he was a TikTok Live host and would come to RedNote (or the Red Book as he called it) to complain about the Americans he met on TikTok.

“The Red Book is also where I can talk about my American clients behind their backs. So I was wondering where to post this stuff now,” jokes the user.

The user also encouraged Americans to start learning Mandarin, a common sentiment that comes up frequently among US-based users who try out the site.

But not everything is serious discussion, of course. There are countless jokes about the growing American interest in RedNote. Many users joked as spies on TikTok and want to continue spying as more US users switch to Red Note. This kind of prank has also been extremely common among Americans on TikTok in recent days and weeks.

Other longtime RedNote users who spoke with the Americans welcomed new users but offered advice on everything from ignoring trolls to using Mandarin if you can.

“We’re not so different after all,” one RedNote user said in English about the cultural divide between American and Chinese consumers. But the same user also spoke in coded language about RedNote’s “rules”.

“Yes, there are rules here,” says the user. “The place is pretty cool, but not without rules. Honestly, I don’t know much about it because I don’t really need it, if you know what I mean.’

The user goes on to say that “the things you should say” in the United States “you probably shouldn’t say here.” The user continues, “See what I’m trying to say here?” while encouraging Americans to “just use common sense.”

The Red Note is not a utopia from the perspective of any American who cares about the ideals of liberal democracy and free speech. The app operates under the rules of the Chinese government, which means you won’t find any criticism of the Communist Party. And China is not a utopia for LGBT people. In recent years, it has been observed a repressions on LGBT advocacy groups from Beijing.

The one area where Americans may find more leeway is on subjects like Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old man accused of killing United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December. Social media sites like TikTok are playing whack-a-mole to suppress content celebrating Mangione but there seems to be no such restrictions on Red Note.

One of the funnier realizations for Americans on TikTok in recent days is that other English-speaking creators they might enjoy around the world aren’t necessarily launched on the platform. As an American user called Mystery of Kyle joked about UK users staying on the platform, saying“We won’t be able to make fun of each other anymore. What will you do without us?’

“It will now literally be a British app. And you guys aren’t many,” he continued. “They’re all in a no-go area with terrible cuisine. What are you guys going to do? Are we talking canned fish? There is a guy called canned fish reviews. He’ll probably be the number one creator on this app when we’re gone.”

Utopian ideals of a global village online have always been romanticized. The US intelligence community literally helped build the Internet from its earliest days in the 1960s and 70swith the NSA and CIA spying on him ever since. The Internet was a creation of the Cold War, and the boundaries of the Web were drawn along those same Cold War battle lines. Eventually, the first Internet node outside the US was set up in Norway for surveillance Soviet nuclear tests.

China, though late to the Internet party, has a government that has been spying on the Internet for almost as long as Americans, recruiting and censoring its population by blocking access to American websites for decades. And now it’s Americans’ turn to learn about serious forms of censorship with the TikTok ban.

If there is a critical mass of Americans on RedNote in weeks, the US government may very well move to ban the app under the guise of “national security” concerns. But with Trump taking office on Monday, a new ban on a Chinese-owned app is unlikely to be front-page news. With everything Trump promised to do on day one — from mass deportations to a serious crackdown on political opponents — another app to be banned would be any other Monday in America.