Americans who have joined the Chinese social media platform RedNote in protest of the U.S. government’s looming ban on TikTok have found themselves building new connections across international borders.
“I just want to say it’s so amazing to have you here,” one person, who called himself Abe from RedNote, said in a video on the app, imploring the American “TikTok refugees” to stay with it. “For so long, we haven’t really been able to connect or talk with each other like this, but now we finally can and it feels so special. This is such a real chance for us to get to know each other.”
Because of tensions between the Chinese and U.S. governments, their digital ecosystems haven’t often overlapped. Many popular U.S. apps like Instagram are banned in China, and some companies like ByteDance, which owns TikTok, have built separate apps for the Chinese market and other markets because of rules and regulations.
But user backlash to the U.S. government’s proposed TikTok ban has led to a …