alt Hacker NewsThe kids flocking to another Chinese app just to avoid using Reels, Shorts, or whatever abomination is on X continues to be so funny to me. Looks like a long game of whack a mole starting.
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Under a million kids moving over to RedNote for a week or 2 means nothing. There is no whack a mole. Tiktok algo is the sauce, nothing else has the sauce. People enjoyed the sauce.
The big one is called RedNote, and it's actually fairly well done.
Can confirm. I had no idea about RedNote till my 18yo niece sent me a link to download it.
I think it's a troubling sign that American cultural decline is much broader and deeper than Trumpism.
The Red Note nonsense is just a meme, somewhat fittingly. First, because the only place you see coverage of all the "kids flocking" is... on TikTok itself. It's always a red (heh) flag when your source for big important events comes only from the affected parties.
But secondly because Red Note is subject to exactly the same regulation as TikTok, for exactly the same reason. There's no protection or loophole there, this app is just a district court injunction away from a ban too. Literally no one cares, they just love to meme.
It isn't really whack-a-mole though, because despite the media coverage there is no "TikTok ban bill." Instead it's a "Hostile nation can't own majority stakes in media companies in the US" bill, and this SCOTUS ruling sets the precedent that can be enforced on as many entities as required.
On a more amusing note the Chinese did NOT expect a bunch of Americans to show up on RedNote, and they're not thrilled so far. It seems that sharing details of how to organize labor unions, protest against your government, 3D print weapons, and so on wasn't what they were hoping for either. There's allegedly talk of them siloing off the new joins from abroad.
Any parent (and even us non-parents who've spent a lot of time around kids) know that the best way to get teenagers to stop doing something, is to start doing it yourself. If you forbid them to do something, it's basically inviting them to try their hardest to do it anyways.