After TikTok was briefly banned in mid-January, American social media users flooded to the Chinese platform Xiaohongshu, known in English as RedNote. According to a report by Forbes, RedNote gained nearly 3 million U.S. users in a single day, skyrocketing from fewer than 700,000 daily active users to approximately 3.4 million. Rednote’s new American users garnered a catchy nickname: “TikTok Refugees.” U.S. media mostly focused on how the TikTok Refugees were warmly welcomed by Chinese RedNote users, fostering unexpected collaboration and cultural exchange. However, the backlash from Chinese users remains largely overlooked.
“I opened RedNote today and suddenly half my feed is in English,” said Vicky Shan, a high school student in Shanghai who has been using RedNote since she was a kid. “It feels like our quiet little community is being taken over by people who don’t even understand the platform’s culture,” Shan said. “If [American users] want to join, they should at least take the time to learn how things work instead of treating this like another playground for internet trends.”
Shan is not alone. Many long-time RedNote users have expressed discomfort, frustration, and even outright resentment at the sudden influx of foreign users.
“I felt like someone just broke into my bedroom. It’s a form of cultural hegemony,” wrote one Rednote user named “Nosnibor” on a forum.
“It’s so unfair that my content received fewer likes than a single comment they left,” complained another RedNote user, frustrated by the surge in engagement favoring the new American arrivals.
These reactions reveal something deeper about the way online spaces function, how communities form, and what happens when an established digital culture is disrupted by the “outsiders.”
The TikTok exodus began as a precaution. Amid growing pressure from U.S. lawmakers to ban TikTok—a Chinese platform with a massive American user base—creators began searching for alternatives. Some moved to Instagram Reels or YouTube Shorts, but others sought something different—an emerging space where they could recreate the close-knit, trend-driven experience, which they had originally enjoyed on TikTok. RedNote, a social commerce platform blending elements of Instagram, Pinterest, and a shopping app, suddenly became one of those destinations. Unlike Western social media, RedNote thrives on detailed posts, polished visuals, and long-form engagement rather than quick, viral videos. Many of its most engaged and popular influencers are young Chinese women who share lifestyle content.
The enormous migration of American users to RedNote in January was not just significant, it was historic. “This was one of the single largest, if not the largest, people-to-people U.S.-China interactions in history,” said Rory Dixon, an international politics student at Georgetown University who co-authored a U.S. News article on TikTok Refugees with Farah Pandith.
Dixon described the TikTok refugees’ move to RedNote as “a protest against American policies and social media.” He noted that younger generations, who grew up after the Cold War, are less aware of the ongoing rivalry between China and the U.S. As a result, their digital migration was driven more by frustration with U.S. policymakers than by any geopolitical considerations.
At first glance, RedNote seemed like a promising new home for TikTok’s displaced users. But what happens when a social media platform’s established culture clashes with the habits of new arrivals? Many RedNote users were quick to voice their discontent. The complaints weren’t just about the increase in English-language content, though that was part of it. Longtime users felt that RedNote had always been a space with a unique aesthetic and purpose—focused on lifestyle tips, shopping recommendations, and personal storytelling, mostly within the Chinese cultural context. When TikTok refugees arrived, they brought a different style of engagement. They started using the app the way they had used TikTok: posting fast-paced, trend-driven content, jumping into hashtags without fully understanding them, and sometimes treating RedNote as an experimental playground rather than an already-established platform with its own norms.
One particularly contentious point was the way some foreign users approached the platform with a sense of entitlement, assuming that RedNote should adjust to accommodate them. While some users made an effort to learn the platform’s unwritten rules and assimilate into the existing community, others demanded more English-language support, different algorithmic recommendations, and even changes to moderation policies.
Consequently, RedNote reacted quickly and released the “translation” function to help foreigners understand the Chinese comments. This rubbed some longtime users the wrong way. To them, it felt like outsiders were barging into their space, ignoring the culture that had already been built, and expecting it to adapt for them rather than the other way around.
This reaction speaks to a larger phenomenon that happens whenever an online space experiences a sudden shift in demographics. Digital communities, much like real-world neighborhoods, develop a sense of ownership among long-term members. They have unspoken rules, shared values, and expectations for how people should behave. When an influx of newcomers arrives, especially if they don’t seem to respect or understand these norms, there’s often pushback. In gaming communities, for example, players sometimes resent “casuals” who change the culture of a game. On Reddit, smaller and more niche communities often resist waves of new users who dilute discussions or bring in outside norms. What’s happening on RedNote follows this same pattern, but with the added complexity of cross-cultural interactions and linguistic differences.
Yet, at the same time, resistance to new users can sometimes veer into gatekeeping or exclusion. Not all TikTok refugees were disruptive; many were genuinely excited to explore a new platform, engage with different content, and connect with a global community.
Dixon argues that for many TikTok Refugees, political angst helped to motivate their exodus to Rednote. America’s post-Cold War youth, unaware of U.S.-China tensions, formed a digital diaspora out of frustration with U.S. policymakers, with many joining Rednote “as a protest against American policies and social media,” said Dixon.
Some Chinese users welcomed the diversity, seeing it as an opportunity for cultural exchange. They took the time to explain RedNote’s etiquette, helped translate key features, and even adapted their own content styles to engage with the newcomers. Others, however, were more aggressive in their pushback, expressing their frustration through dismissive comments, downvotes, and even direct messages telling foreign users to leave.
This divide raises an important question: Should digital platforms remain exclusive to their original communities, or should they evolve to accommodate new users? In a way, both sides have valid concerns. TikTok refugees are searching for a new home, a space to rebuild their online identities and communities after facing uncertainty on their original platform. At the same time, RedNote’s longtime users are trying to protect the culture they’ve built, ensuring that their platform doesn’t lose its essence in the face of rapid change.
What’s clear is that social media migration is not just a technical shift—it’s a cultural and emotional one. Digital communities form real bonds, develop real norms, and experience real disruptions when major changes occur. Whether RedNote will adapt to embrace a more global audience or whether foreign users will eventually move on to another platform remains to be seen.
As for Shan, she hopes TikTok Refugees find their digital home elsewhere. “I don’t understand why people are just casually ‘opening’ the door and letting foreigners invade our space,” she said.
