Ahead of U.S. TikTok ban, Canadians flock to Chinese 'RedNote' app

The TikTok Inc. logo is seen on their building in Culver City, Calif., Monday, March 11, 2024. PTHE CANADIAN PRESS/AP-Damian Dovarganes

OTTAWA — With TikTok facing an imminent ban in the United States, many Canadian users are moving to rival Chinese social media app Xiaohongshu — also known as RedNote — pushing it to the top of download charts in Canada.

The ban is being driven by security concerns about TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance Ltd. Chinese national security laws compel organizations in the country to assist with government intelligence gathering.

On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously upheld the federal law that will ban TikTok starting Sunday unless ByteDance sells it. The court said the threat to national security posed by TikTok’s ties to China trumps concerns about limiting speech by the app or its 170 million users in the U.S.

The looming ban has many users in both the U.S. and Canada installing the Xiaohongshu app, better known as RedNote, which is based directly in China and designed in Mandarin.

Stephanie Carvin, an associate professor of international affairs at Carleton University, said that TikTok at least had some theoretical safeguards, such as assurances that its data would be kept in the United States and not shared with China.

“None of those even rudimentary protections exist with RedNote,” Carvin said.

In 2023, TikTok executives appeared before a Parliamentary committee and told Canadian MPs the app is not controlled by the Chinese government and Canadian data was being stored on servers in the United States, Malaysia and Singapore.

Asked about the increasing use of RedNote by Canadians, Audrey Champoux, a spokesperson for Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne, said in a media statement that “Canadians should make informed decisions about their personal data, and consider carefully how it is being used.”

A spokesperson for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service didn’t directly address RedNote but said its “specific concerns with TikTok arise from its links to (China), and because of this there are national security concerns related to the application.”

The CSIS statement noted that in 2023, China “continued to expand the domestic powers and capabilities of its security services.”

In November, Champagne announced the government was ordering the dissolution of TikTok’s Canadian business following a national security review. The app will remain available in Canada and the company is challenging the shutdown order in court.

But security concerns haven’t deterred users who have made RedNote the most downloaded app in Google’s Canadian app store. RedNote was also at the top of the Apple downloads chart on Apple’s Canadian website as of Thursday.

On Thursday, the Chinese embassy in Canada shared an online post from China’s Xinhua News Agency with a video showing U.S. and Chinese users interacting on RedNote — many of them sharing pictures of their cats.

Former TikTok users have been posting messages on both platforms mocking national security concerns about TikTok, such as jokes about having to say goodbye to “my Chinese spy.” But the exodus to RedNote is also being driven by what Carvin said is an understandable lack of trust in the practices and data protections of big Western social media companies.

Carvin said some of those users argue that much of their data has been stolen or exploited already by algorithms they don’t understand, and they don’t trust Chinese companies any less than North American companies.

She said using RedNote is still risky.

CNN reported Thursday that the platform has been hiring English-language content moderators and that the new users are encountering Chinese-style censorship.

Carvin noted Ottawa still hasn’t provided its rationale for ordering TikTok’s Canadian operations to wind down.

“If these apps are a problem, be open and transparent with Canadians about what those problems are,” she said.

“Ultimately, the reason we’re in this position is a true failure of government policy from particularly Western states with regards to data privacy, with regards to enforcing data protection, and their own failures with regards to being transparent around some of the security issues about these apps.”

The future of TikTok in the U.S. remains uncertain. U.S. president-elect Donald Trump had called on the court to keep the ban on hold until after he takes office Monday. The Republican has said he’ll “save” TikTok but it’s not clear what he’d do.

— With files from The Associated Press

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 17, 2024.

Anja Karadeglija, The Canadian Press