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Jan. 20, 2025 10:58 am ET

U.S. downloads of the Chinese social-media app Xiaohongshu, known to Americans as RedNote, soared last week. Photo: Adek Berry/AFP/Getty Images

It took only about a day for Chinese censors to crack down on posts from Americans who had flooded onto the Chinese social-media app Xiaohongshu.

American TikTok users started downloading Xiaohongshu, which translates as Little Red Book and is known to Americans as RedNote, a little more than a week ago when it looked like TikTok might face a ban in the U.S. Their arrival was greeted by Chinese users and opened an unexpected window for free exchange. American and Chinese Xiaohongshu users have swapped recipes, showed off their homes and compared salaries.

Early last week, officials from China’s top internet regulator told Xiaohongshu to keep a close watch on interactions between Chinese and foreign users and intervene if necessary, according to people familiar with the discussions. The Cyberspace Administration of China asked Xiaohongshu to filter topics that Beijing deems sensitive, including China’s domestic politics, the people said.

One of the first videos Rosetta Hoskins posted on Xiaohongshu showed her eating watermelon slices with candy. Within hours, the 44-year-old Arizonan received a notification in Chinese. Translating it into English, she learned her video would no longer be circulated because it showed cleavage.

Rosetta Hoskins posted this screenshot on TikTok of a notification from Xiaohongshu indicating that her post violated standards.

“I had to realize that not all countries are the same and every country has their own set of rules and guidelines,” Hoskins said. She said she wasn’t upset and would be more careful next time.

Xiaohongshu is a lifestyle app, with most content centered on travel, makeup tutorials, fashion tips and restaurant suggestions rather than political discussion. TikTok isn’t available in China but it has a Chinese sister app, Douyin. American users can’t download Douyin, though; unlike Xiaohongshu, it is only accessible from Chinese app stores.

The interest from TikTok users made Xiaohongshu the top free app on Apple’s App Store last week in the U.S., according to market-intelligence firm Sensor Tower. It said daily U.S. downloads were dozens of times greater than at the beginning of the year.

TikTok briefly halted service for Americans over the weekend, owing to a U.S. law requiring the app to shed its Chinese ownership or shut down in the U.S. It restarted Sunday after the company said President-elect Donald Trump provided assurances to TikTok and its partners that they could keep operating.

Xiaohongshu’s content-moderation team has been working extra hours to review content posted from overseas internet addresses, people familiar with the matter said. Engineers added English keywords to its content-filtering system, which identifies potentially inappropriate content for human review, they said.

The Shanghai-based company has also scrambled to hire English speakers, according to recent job postings on Chinese recruitment websites. One job posting required candidates to be ready to work within three days.

Officials have told Xiaohongshu to prevent Chinese users from seeing content posted overseas, people familiar with the exchanges said. Xiaohongshu didn’t block all content but sought to make it less likely Chinese users would see some American posts, people familiar with the response said.

A social-media influencer filmed a video last week in New York’s Times Square for his new Xiaohongshu account after leaving TikTok. Photo: brendan mcdermid/Reuters

Xiaohongshu and the Cyberspace Administration of China didn’t respond to requests for comment. The Information earlier reported the regulator’s concern about sensitive Xiaohongshu posts. Asked to comment on Americans moving to the site, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said last week that China encourages cultural exchanges.

Most Americans on Xiaohongshu don’t touch on political taboos in China. A number of Americans said in videos and comments on TikTok that their posts were flagged or accounts were suspended on Xiaohongshu for reasons that surprised them, from wearing revealing clothes to posting a video with a TikTok logo.

A man from the Midwest said Xiaohongshu canceled his account and told him he was a Chinese user pretending to be non-Chinese, although he is in fact American and the fluent Chinese in his post was courtesy of ChatGPT.

After signing up for a new account over the weekend, he posted in English on Sunday: “I am an adjuster and my wife works for Costco. I really don’t know why I was banned. But I’m gonna use English only now.”

President Trump signed an executive order delaying the enforcement of a ban on TikTok in the United States and suggested he may explore a deal for the U.S. to have a stake in the app. Photo: Jim LoScalzo – Pool via CNP/Zuma Press

But that alone doesn’t help avoid censorship. On Sunday, his draft post asking about a civil-rights movement in China couldn’t be published.

The influx of users isn’t just a headache for Xiaohongshu, which until now hasn’t had many non-Chinese-speaking users, but also an opportunity. Last week, its management looked at the issue and considered lessons from ByteDance, which established a separate app—TikTok—for users outside China and stores user data locally, people familiar with the matter said. The strategy eases some regulatory problems but is costly.

In many posts, American and Chinese users commiserate about the flaws they see in their respective countries. When Americans complained about their exorbitant medical bills, Chinese doctors and nurses brought up their slammed schedules and low wages. Chinese users were struck by posts about the cost of insulin and delivering a baby in the U.S.

After learning about one American’s take-home pay and disposable income on Xiaohongshu, some Chinese users were shocked by the amount of taxes Americans pay and the high cost of living. “If I were American, I would have caused an uproar by now,” wrote a Zhejiang-based Xiaohongshu user.

Advertising for the Chinese app Xiaohongshu in Bejing. Photo: Adek Berry/AFP/Getty Images

The moment brought back memories for some Chinese who came of age when the internet was less censored. Since 2009, Beijing has blocked popular international social-media apps including Facebook, Instagram and X.

Chat rooms on Xiaohongshu in the past week have been filled with Americans and Chinese practicing English together.

American users were wowed by posts showing Chinese car brands, which are largely unavailable in the U.S., and high-speed rail systems, mostly nonexistent in America.

“I feel like this is the first time a lot of Americans are getting to interact with Chinese people in real life,” said Khalil Bowens, a 25-year-old photographer and content creator in Los Angeles who recently opened an account on Xiaohongshu. “It’s been really beautiful to watch how two communities that would be considered polar opposites have come together.”

“I would like to call it a cyberutopian moment,” a Guangdong-based user wrote in both English and Chinese in a Wednesday post, saying she was moved to tears.

However, some other Chinese users familiar with censorship cautioned, “It may not last long.”