Some Rednote users reported that their accounts were recently automatically converted from the Chinese to the international version of the site. One American user, who asked to remain anonymous to avoid punishment from the platform, shared with WIRED a screenshot showing that when he logged into the platform in April, a banner appeared that read, “Your account is a rednote account. We have automatically redirected you to rednote.com.”
The user claims that he registered his account with a Chinese phone number many years ago, but suspects that his account was converted due to using a non-Chinese IP address. “I have never sent a message from China. It has always been in the United States. Of course, at first glance you can see that it is an American message in English,” he says.
The impending division
After TikTok avoided a U.S. shutdown by selling a majority stake in its U.S. company, most of the “refugees” who fled to Rednote returned to the video app or other platforms. Those who stayed often did so because they value reading and talking directly to Chinese people living in China. They now fear that a corporate split could destroy one of the strongest bridges between China’s internet and the rest of the world.
Jerry Liu, a Vancouver-based TikTok influencer known for sharing hilarious content about Rednote itself, said in November video that staff at the company’s Shanghai office told him that international users should expect less Chinese content and more North American content in the future. “I feel frustrated. I think it’s just going to be less fun,” he said in the video.
Rednote has already tried the TikTok localization playbook – about three years ago it launched a slew of regional apps with names like Unik, Spark, Catalog, Takib, habU and S’More, each of which served specific countries outside of China, but they failed to catch on. The effort could have been a lesson for the company about the value of its huge Chinese content ecosystem to people in other countries, but as is often the case, regulatory and political considerations appear to have taken priority.
“I don’t want Americans to talk about Coachella. I did it on Instagram, I didn’t join Xiaohongshu to watch Instagram,” says an American user who was recently redirected to Rednote.
Safety concerns
As Rednote goes global, the company is no doubt looking to Chinese predecessors like WeChat and TikTok for ideas on how to navigate the minefield of content moderation and data privacy. So far, its approach is more like WeChat’s.
For over a decade, WeChat has been sorting users mainly based on one criterion: whether they used a Chinese or foreign number to register. This allowed users to cross Tencent’s digital boundary by disconnecting and reconnecting WeChat accounts to different mobile phone numbers.
Jeffrey Knockel, assistant professor of computer science at Bowdoin College, discovered that Tencent censors content on WeChat and Weixin differentlyeven though both platforms are integrated with each other and users can communicate through them. He says Chinese users are subject to a real-time keyword matching filter that aims to censor politically sensitive speech, but “if you signed up for WeChat using a Canadian or US phone number, your messages are not necessarily subject to this type of censorship.”
Knockel says WeChat’s approach to moderating mixed content may have made some people cautious about using the app. “Users are generally distrustful of the platform. They don’t know whether they are being watched and censored,” he says. As Rednote moves in a similar direction, it will be worth watching to see if international audiences have similar concerns.
This is the release Zeyi Yang AND Louise Matsakis Newsletter produced in China. Read previous newsletters Here.