Has the TikTok Ban Already Backfired on US Cybersecurity?

Now that the US Supreme Court has upheld a ban on the wildly popular video social media platform we know as TikTok, its most influential users have decided to retaliate by moving their game over to REDnote, a competing Chinese social media company, thus creating an entirely new, and arguably worse, situation for the nation’s cybersecurity.

The move to the alternate platform is emerging as a pop culture phenomenon. Of TikTok’s roughly 170 million monthly users in the US, more than 3 million have already headed over to REDnote. Chart-topping rapper Doechii announced her account, with 2.5 million followers, was headed over to REDnote just days before the Supreme Court ruling. Bunnie XO, wife of country music star Jelly Roll, with 7 million TikTok followers, has already declared her love for Mandarin Trap music after spending time on the app. The term “TikTok refugees,” referring to new US users, is trending on REDnote, according to data. Searches for REDnote have spiked 100% over the past three months, and a recent “TikTok refugees” live chat attracted more than 50,000 users across the US and China.

Meanwhile, native Chinese speakers on the app are teaching their new group of US users how to correctly pronounce REDnote’s Mandarin name, “Xiaohongshu,” which directly translates to “Little Red Book,” sharing the same name as…