As TikTok nears banning in the United States, many Canadian users are turning to rival Chinese social media app Xiaohongshu, also known as RedNote, propelling it to the top of the download charts in Canada.
The ban is driven by security concerns over TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance Ltd. China’s national security laws require the country’s organizations to help the government gather intelligence.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday unanimously upheld federal law that will ban TikTok starting Sunday unless ByteDance sells it. The court said the national security threat posed by TikTok’s ties to China outweighs concerns about limiting the free speech of the app or its 170 million users in the United States. United.
The impending ban has prompted many users in the United States and Canada to install the Xiaohongshu app, better known as RedNote, which is based directly in China and designed in Mandarin.
Stephanie Carvin, an associate professor of international affairs at Carleton University, pointed out that TikTok had at least some theoretical safeguards, such as assurances that its data would be kept in the United States and not shared with China.
“None of these protections, even rudimentary, exist with RedNote,” Carvin said.
In 2023, TikTok executives appeared before a parliamentary committee and told Canadian MPs that the app was not controlled by the Chinese government and that Canadian data was stored on servers in the United States, Malaysia and in Singapore.
Asked about the growing use of RedNote by Canadians, Audrey Champoux, spokesperson for Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne, argued that “Canadians should make informed decisions about their personal data and carefully consider how of which they are used.
A spokesperson for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) did not directly address RedNote, but said its “specific concerns about TikTok arise from its ties to (China), and because of this, “there are national security concerns related to enforcement.”
The CSIS statement noted that in 2023, China “continued to expand the national powers and capabilities of its security services.”
In November, Mr. Champagne announced that the government was ordering the dissolution of TikTok’s Canadian business following a national security review. The app will remain available in Canada and the company is challenging the closure order in court.
Far from being discouraged
-However, security concerns have not deterred users who have made RedNote the most downloaded application in Google’s Canadian application store. RedNote also topped Apple’s download charts on its Canadian website on Thursday.
The Chinese embassy in Canada shared an online post from China’s Xinhua news agency on Thursday with a video showing American and Chinese users interacting on RedNote, many of them sharing photos of their cats.
Former TikTok users have posted messages on both platforms mocking national security concerns surrounding TikTok, such as jokes about having to say goodbye to “my Chinese spy.” The exodus to RedNote is also driven by what Ms. Carvin called an understandable lack of trust in the practices and data protection of large Western social media companies.
According to her, some of these users claim that much of their data has already been stolen or exploited by algorithms that they do not understand and that they trust Chinese companies no less than North American companies. .
Using RedNote is always risky, she said.
CNN reported Thursday that the platform has hired English content moderators and that new users face Chinese-style censorship.
Ms. Carvin noted that Ottawa has still not provided the reasons why it ordered the closure of TikTok’s Canadian operations.
“If there are problems with these apps, be open and transparent with Canadians about the nature of those problems,” she said.
“Ultimately, the reason we find ourselves in this situation is a real failure of government policy in Western states, particularly when it comes to data privacy, data protection enforcement, and their own failures in terms of transparency on certain security issues concerning these applications.
The future of TikTok in the United States remains uncertain. US President-elect Donald Trump had asked the court to suspend the ban until he takes office on Monday. The Republican had maintained that he would “save” TikTok, without specifying exactly what he would do.
— With information from the Associated Press
