Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu, also known as RedNote, is scrambling to recruit English-language “content reviewers” after being flooded with anglophone users styling themselves “refugees” from a looming U.S. ban on TikTok.
According to multiple media reports in Chinese citing a recent recruitment ad from the company, Xiaohongshu is now looking for people to vet posts for compliance with China’s plethora of censorship requirements in English, due to a massive influx of people posting in that language.
The exodus from TikTok has seen an estimated 700,000 new users, many of them young Americans, seek a new home on Xiaohongshu, using automated translation tools to bridge the language barrier and swapping memes and stories about each other’s countries.
TikTok could be forced to shut down its U.S. operations as early as Jan. 19 if its Chinese parent ByteDance doesn’t sell it.
With its focus on restaurant recommendations, grocery hauls and baby-related tips, Xiaohongshu may have seemed an unlikely new home for disgruntled Generation Z “TikTok refugees.” But the social media app has shot to the top of app store download charts in the past few days.
While much of China’s online censorship works through automatic blocks and filters for politically sensitive keywords, “content reviewers” in China typically vet content by hand, choosing to delete anything that could get the company that publishes it into trouble with the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s powerful Cyberspace Administration.
Content reviewers will be based in the central city of Wuhan and receive a salary of between 9,000-13,000 yuan (US$1,227-1,773) a month, including night shifts but no weekends, and work an eight-hour day, according to a screenshot of the ad cited by multiple media reports.
The company offers “holiday benefits and birthday gifts to bring you family-like warmth,” as well as “team-building, travel, development, coffee and cake,” according to the ad, which wasn’t obviously dated but was widely cited by media including Ningbo Evening News and Phoenix.com.
Running afoul of censorship
There are some signs that some new RedNote users have already run afoul of Chinese censorship.
The citizen journalist X account “Mr Li is not your teacher” posted screenshots showing that some American users had posts deleted or their accounts shut down.
“On Jan. 15, an American “TikTok refugee” posted on Xiaohongshu: ‘Hello everyone, I am a lesbian from the United States.’ Subsequently, the post was deleted by the platform and the user account was banned,” the account said, with a screenshot of the original message.
Another user wanted to know whether Marxism was taught in China, but the post was later deleted, according to a screenshot.
Users also had brushes with hate speech.
Another post by “Mr Li is not your teacher” showed a screenshot of a Jewish user who wanted to hear from Jews in China, and received a photo of a peeled boiled egg shaped like the head of Adolf Hitler in reply, as well as a comment referencing “concentration camps.”
“It is disappointing for this to be the first comment I receive on this app,” the user replied under the egg photo. “I am hopeful that this is not representative of general Chinese views towards Judaism.”
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Meanwhile, a Xiaohongshu blogger currently in the United States who asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals said that English content on Xiaohongshu would still need to be censored “according to the framework of mainland China’s policies, and social and cultural background.”
She said the company could crack down even harder on overseas users for fear of appearing soft.
There is also a possibility that the company could tweak its algorithm to ensure that overseas-based content is seen only by users living overseas, effectively fencing off users in China from the incoming wave of “TikTok refugees,” she said.
‘In a really difficult position’
Olivia Plotnick, founder of the Shanghai-based social media marketing agency Wai Social, said Xiaohongshu never intended an overseas expansion, unlike TikTok, the international arm of Chinese video-sharing site Douyin.
“They are incredibly surprised by this influx of new users, and they’re trying to deal with all of the content that is now flooding the platform,” she said, adding that Chinese users are starting to feel “a little bit annoyed” at the influx of TikTok-style videos in their feed.
“This puts [Xiaohongshu] in a really difficult position, because they need to comply with Chinese internet regulations and I think this kind of brings us to [the question,] is this going to last?” Plotnick said.
“They’re going need to start censoring posts, and when that happens, I don’t think American users are going to be very happy about that.”
She said the authorities could decide not to allow overseas downloads of RedNote at all, in order to protect the experience of their existing user base in China.
“There’s not really a clean way that this ends,” she said. “Either way, it’s going to be quite messy.”
For the time being, state media are welcoming the “refugees” with open arms, at a time when the state propaganda machine is churning out positive stories about Sino-U.S. friendship ahead of the Jan. 20 inauguration of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump.
“Friendship between countries lies in the friendship between their peoples,” official Chinese Communist Party newspaper the People’s Daily said in a commentary published Jan. 16, citing President Xi Jinping.
“We have reason to believe that economic globalization and the interconnectedness of the online world ... will only bring us closer, so that we move forward hand in hand,” it said.
“We shouldn’t call them TikTok refugees so much as global villagers ... they’re not wandering: they’ve found a new home.”
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun didn’t comment on the TikTok refugees directly, but told a Jan. 15 news conference that social media platforms are a matter of personal choice.
“China has always supported and encouraged people-to-people and cultural exchanges with other countries,” Guo said.
Translated by Luisetta Mudie.