Rednote draws a line between China and the world

Some Rednote users reported that their accounts were automatically switched from the Chinese version to the international version of the site recently. One US user, who requested to remain anonymous to avoid being penalized by the platform, shared a screenshot with WIRED showing that when he logged into the platform in April, a banner appeared saying “Your account is a rednote account. We have automatically redirected you to rednote.com.”

The user says he registered his account with a Chinese phone number years ago, but suspects that his account was diverted due to the use of a non-Chinese IP address. “I’ve never posted anything from China. It’s always been in the United States. And obviously, with one look, they can see that this is an American publication in English,” he says.

Split looms

After TikTok avoided a shutdown in the US by selling a majority stake in its US business, most of the “refugees” who fled to Rednote returned to the video app or to other platforms. Those who stayed did so often because they valued reading and speaking directly with Chinese people living in China. They now worry that splitting the company could destroy what has been one of the strongest bridges between the Chinese internet and the wider world.

Jerry Liu, a Vancouver-based TikTok influencer known for sharing funny content about Rednote itself, said in a video in November that employees at the company’s Shanghai office told him that international users should expect to see less Chinese content and more North American content in the future. “I feel frustrated. I think it will be less fun,” he said in the video.

Rednote has experimented with TikTok localization guides before, launching a slew of region-focused apps about three years ago with names like Uniik, Spark, Catalog, Takib, habU, and S’More that each catered to specific countries outside of China, but they failed to catch on. The effort could have been a lesson for the company about the value of its massive Chinese content ecosystem to people in other countries, but as is often the case, regulatory and political considerations appear to have taken priority.

“I don’t want to see Americans talking about Coachella. I did it on Instagram, I didn’t join Xiaohongshu to see Instagram,” says the US user who was recently redirected to Rednote.

Security concerns

As Rednote goes global, the company is no doubt looking to its Chinese predecessors like WeChat and TikTok for ideas on how to navigate the minefield of content moderation and data privacy. So far, its approach appears to be very similar to WeChat’s.

For more than a decade, WeChat has categorized users based largely on one criterion: whether they use a Chinese or foreign number to sign up. This allowed users to cross Tencent’s digital borders by unlinking their WeChat accounts and relinking them to different mobile phone numbers.

Jeffrey Knockle, an assistant professor of computer science at Bowdoin College, found that Tencent censors content on WeChat and Weixin differently, even though the two platforms are integrated with each other and users can communicate across them. Chinese users are subject to a real-time keyword matching filter to monitor politically sensitive speech, but “if you sign up for WeChat using a Canadian or American phone number, your messages won’t necessarily be subject to this kind of censorship,” he says.

Knockel says WeChat’s approach to moderating mixed content may have made some people wary about using the app. “Users generally don’t trust the platform. They don’t know if they are being monitored and censored,” he says. With Rednote moving in a similar direction, it will be worth monitoring whether international audiences end up having similar concerns.

This is an edition of Ziyang and Louise Matsakis Made in China newsletter. Read previous newsletters here.