When Congress passed the TikTok ban, I figured I’d check out Xiaohongshu, aka RedNote, China’s answer to the social media app that’s suddenly flooded with protesting American “Tiktok refugees.”

The first few hours scrolling through the app felt like stumbling into a cozy corner of the Internet.

The interface was mostly in Mandarin, but the content spoke a universal language: cute pets, travel photos (Chinese cities look fantastic), people welcoming TikTokers, and enough Chinese food videos to make anyone hungry at 3 a.m.

Then, I posted my first photo, and that’s when things got weird.

Within minutes, my inbox exploded with messages from supposedly American users. The first red flag? Usually, dozens of cute girls don’t bombard me with solicitations to connect.

Another strange thing I noticed was that every account had a Nigerian IP address, clear as day in their account details—though you’d miss it if you were only looking at the English words in their bios.

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Author: Jose Antonio Lanz