Get the latest gossip

As TikTok Ban Nears, Users Test Alternatives

TikTok users are testing Rednote and Lemon8 before a potential U.S. ban. They are currently the most popular free downloads in Apple's App Store.

RedNote, which was founded in 2013, is much bigger: Bloomberg recently reported that it has more than 300 million monthly active users and that it made $1 billion in profit in 2024. “I’ve been concerned, literally for years, that because TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese firm, and every company — based upon Chinese law — has to be first and foremost loyal to the Communist Party of China, not to their shareholders or customers, that TikTok has posed a national security concern,” Sen. Mark Warner said earlier this month. At the Supreme Court hearing, Justice Brett Kavanaugh claimed that China could use data harvested from TikTok to “develop spies, to turn people, to blackmail people.” And Chief Justice John Roberts asked how the court was “supposed to ignore the fact that the ultimate parent [company] is, in fact, subject to doing intelligence work for the Chinese government?”

Get the Android app