State media hailed RedNote's success among American "TikTok refugees" as a repudiation of U.S. government "demonizing" of China's development.

Americans have shown that they won’t take national security threats at face value. They want the details. Lawmakers reportedly gathered for a top-secret briefing on the risks posed by TikTok before voting in favor of the bill back in March. At the time, the protestors outside Capitol Hill who opposed the ban were not made privy to its findings.

RedNote, known as Xiaohongshu in China, is owned by a Shanghai-based company and raises similar questions as TikTok.

This looming TikTok ban has over 170 million US TikTok users (who have named themselves "TikTok Refugees") scrambling for a replacement app. And that's what these users have seemingly found in Xiaohongshu or RedNote — a Chinese-owned social media app that has already risen to #1 on the US App Store.

After years of rejecting the idea of a sale of TikTok’s US assets to an American buyer in order to avert a ban, China and ByteDance may have found an owner they could live with: Elon Musk.

Officials at TikTok said they could not be expected to comment on pure fiction when asked about rumors China was looking into having Elon Musk acquire the social media platform.

Challenges came in tandem with TikTok’s success. U.S. officials expressed concerns about the company’s roots and ownership, pointing to laws in China that require Chinese companies to hand over data requested by the government. Another concern became the proprietary algorithm that populates what users see on the app.

TikTok said it will be “forced to go dark” on Sunday, Jan. 19, unless it receives a “definitive statement” from the outgoing Biden administration that the app’s tech partners won’t be penalized under the divest-or-ban bill.

The U.S. is inching closer and closer to a potential TikTok ban — with the nation’s highest court upholding a law that’s set to halt new downloads of the app starting Sunday. But many questions around what exactly this ban will look like,

The logos for TikTok and RedNote, known in China as Xiaohongshu, are seen in this illustration taken Jan 15, 2025. [Photo/Agencies] SACRAMENTO, United States - Driven by fears of a potential TikTok ban starting Jan 19,