Summary
Many Americans are migrating to RedNote, a Chinese-owned app based in China, raising significant privacy and security concerns.
Experts warn that RedNote, based in China, is subject to Chinese laws, including the Personal Information Protection Law and Data Security Law, which grant the government rights to request data and cooperation with intelligence operations.
Enforcement of these laws is often opaque. Analysts highlight risks of data collection, algorithm manipulation, and censorship on RedNote.
Critics argue the U.S. lacks comprehensive privacy laws, driving users to platforms like RedNote that may pose even greater risks than TikTok.
I thought that was kind of the point… people started using red note because it was openly what the government fears Tictoc could be as a form of protest.
What’s next a news story that says people printing out their browser history and dropping it off at the chinese embassies, might be giving their private data to china?
If that’s true then people are more stupid than i thought
Oh they are. Albert Einstein: Two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, but I’m not quite sure about the universe yet.
Boo hoo! The US can’t spy on it’s people anymore because everyone got wise and switched to foriegn apps.
This has nothing to do with the security or privacy of the people. They’re pissed because they’re losing power over them.
On a side note, everyone that has joined REDnote is waking up to the lifetime of propaganda the american government has been feeding them. This past week has been wild.
there’s genuinely been some class consciousness getting into play
i saw some users from both countries compare prices of eggs and vegetables, and they even did the necessary math of accounting for average wage and cost of living. the chinese users are not allowed to talk about their politics (sadly; this is a bad thing) but they are allowed to talk about foreign politics and they are probably bigger fans of Luigi Mangione even than i have seen in English speaking social media. there are candid discussions of queerphobia as well in its different social (and for the US, political too) manifestations between countries.
The funny thing is at any point the US government can ban the collection of personal user data. It could just be illegal for any company to do this in the US.
But like you said, it’s just about the US wanting to spy on its own citizens but not wanting other countries to.
Look at the companies with the highest market cap in the US and just start counting how many make money from selling personal data. The US will never implement wide sweeping privacy laws. To the detriment of everyone.
“it’s okay when we do it” —the US on literally everything it criticizes in other nations
got wise and switched to foriegn apps.
The Chinese aren’t the ones firing people for posting pro Palestinian things on social media or attacking protestors on college campuses or protecting white supremacists in Oregon or Washington. That’s our agencies, our cops.
First of all: US companies and agencies will be assholes about what you post, wherever the content is hosted. Same for Chinese companies and agencies.
Second: I’m not advocating for using US state-controlled social media. But China-controlled social media is not any better, and I certainly wouldn’t call switching to it “getting wise”.
Particularly switching to one that’s known to inject keyloggers into its webviews, especially when keyloggers seem to be a staple of Chinese state surveillance.
As we can see, the vendor finally sat up and took official notice of this severe, privacy-affecting software bug on June 25th–only five days before Wu, who has previously tweeted about a vulnerability affecting the same Sogou software, was paid a visit by Chinese authorities.
Wu explicitly drew this connection in my discussion with her:
Five days after Tencent (Shenzhen) admits to the IME vulnerability, the Chinese person (in Shenzhen) who originally publicized it suddenly gets dragged in by the cops and forced offline.
NONE of them could read English to see my account does not even make China look bad, it was all Baidu fucking translate and demands why I was talking about Signal and the keyboard
Her account concluded with an unsettling revelation about the risk she would face if she were to continue tweeting: having already received two “strikes” from the authorities, a third could mean a years-long prison sentence.
I had to sign and fingerprint a “confession”.
Ya but when it’s posted on a social media they can’t control and you aren’t American, they can’t stop it. It’s why videos of the genocide were all over Tik Tok but not US social media. The US does the same things, but with Instagram and similar (even in your first article it shows they have that capability and worse. Which checks out, I’ve had Instagram and FB make ad suggestions for things I’ve searched on completely different apps or web pages, or sometimes just something I’ve talked about.)
I would argue that Chinese controlled social media is better if you’re trying to get past US censored channels and surveillance and you live in the US. Same if I was in China, I’d be saying the about US social media probably.
Of course fediverse service would be the best case scenario.
I just learned from red note that Chinese people don’t pay property taxes. Once they pay off their mortgage, they just own their home. I’m definitely the one living in a third world country.
I doubt the Chinese are going to sell our information to insurance companies to raise our rates like every company in America
Someone go make green note, blue note, yellow note, all the notes!!!
Someone did. You can write words on them. They come in a pad. Sometimes sticky!
But they don’t have directions on how to 3d print a gun, and absolutely no references to Tiananmen Square!!
Doh
Just doh
I think the Chinese hackers inside american isp’s hardware etc are a way bigger risk…
Given they just use backdoors put in in order to allow warrantless surveillance by the NSA and FBI, they’re not a threat.
The US government’s position on this can be summed up as “massive unaccountable US tech firms having all of your data and manipulating public opinion via their black box algorithms is okay, but Chinese companies doing that is a national security concern”. I call BS. The degree to which China is actually a US adversary is being massively overstated by the US government as they see this as a threat to US geopolitical hegemony and America’s ability to propagandize its own citizens. I have spent some time on RedNote (Xiaohongshu) and all I have seen is friendly cross-cultural exchange and discussion between these supposed ‘adversaries’.
I have spent some time on RedNote (Xiaohongshu) and all I have seen is friendly cross-cultural exchange and discussion between these supposed ‘adversaries’.
Do you really not understand the difference between “Chinese people” and “Chinese government”?
have spent some time on RedNote (Xiaohongshu) and all I have seen is friendly cross-cultural exchange and discussion between these supposed ‘adversaries’.
Nobody is saying the Chinese people and American people are enemies or adversaries.
Remember that time that China bombed a US ship in the Mediterranean though, to try to trick us into a war with Egypt?
Wait, that was “Israel”.
I want to take it even further down, what effect does China harvesting my data have? I’m a poor white man working in a school in the Midwest with extreme left beliefs. I’m not privy to government Intel, I don’t when go to school board meetings. All I watch is redstone tutorials and goblin-core videos. I’m not saying I’m a default demographic, but if you take the entire digital footprint of everyone I know, you’re getting terrabytes of wasted space. You can’t even use it to radicalize us because we use it for escapism, not news. Not that that’s an option, I’d happy sell out this shithole for a stable job and dental, but I don’t see China sending me any pizza parties.
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I think they said all the needed was pizza + dental and they’d sell out. No need to manipulate a hungry man, just tell him what to do to get some food.
exactly this. I’m already killing myself to afford a bed to sleep in, I’d gladly sell out this shithole if I’m given the chance.
The US government doesn’t want us to see how well people are living in China off a mid income. How good their infrastructure is. How everyone is healthy and benefitting from their government instead of being repressed and used as a resource.
How good their infrastructure is.
and benefiting from their government instead of being repressed
Had my there for a second. I thought you were being serious.
Keep believing what your owners want you to believe.
I’ve been to China a few times and while some of their infrastructure is amazing a lot isn’t good or safe. Don’t get me wrong though, each time I go to China the improvements to amenities and quality of life for locals always seems to be improving. Locals have to work hard to get what they get in life versus me in my western job doing 8-4 each day.
The fact that it’s improving at all makes it a better place than the US. At this rate the america is going to look like mad max in a few years while the chinese chill under their vast solar arrays.
I’m not American
You might as well be. You’re probably in one of our vassal countries if you’re still falling for US propaganda.
Stop spewing more Chinese propoganda. “Benefitting from their government instead of being repressed and used as a resource”. You’re talking about China here? A totalitarian government with absolute control over everything.
Benefitting so much that they can’t even talk about politics or their own country’s dark history without being re-educated.
“Stop spewing more Chinese propaganda.”
Proceeds to spew US propaganda lol.
US propaganda has been focused on telling people nonstpp how Muslims and Chinese are all just busy hating the US because of their “muuh freedom” and their greatest whishes is to take that “freedom” away. Also they are all underdeveloped peasants according to the propaganda.
The greatest danger to that propaganda model is normal people talking with each other and realizing people are just people with people problems. Doesn’t matter where in the world you are. The average person will worry about paying their bills, their work, the health of their family and how their kids do in school.
People in warzones care about staying alive and overcoming their attackers, but even then most people who have been at the end of American barrels or barrels allied to the US just want to be left the fuck alone in their own countries. Very few actually want to destroy the US, despite having their family members murdered by the US or its Allies. (Same goes for people dealing with Russian, French or other foreign military attacks)
Very simple, they can track a lot of your online activity (as well as of course what you watch on TikTok) and any of this could be used for future blackmail.
Or I’ll spell it out. 15 years from now you are at middle management position in a defense contractor and some stranger reaches out to you and says they’ll dump a bunch of insanely embarrassing shit from your 20s - think evidence of infidelity, porn playlists, etc - unless you do this simple thing, send them some plans now and then or pass along a password. Nobody will ever know.
No not you specifically, you’re boring. Whoever is in positions they find interesting.
Yeah. A ““security risk”” of all us fucking slaves realizing what a raw deal we’ve got.
Security risks, like interacting with Chinese people and undoing decades of our propaganda
Funny how people downvote this even though it’s honestly true lmao
It has Israeli investors so any pro-palestine content won’t last long!
I doubt it. These things are controlled by the CCP and the CCP is loving the way Israel just keeps exposing Western hypocrisy.
The news tends to drive things like this, so I don’t know how many people are really “flocking” to this Chinese application. This is also so artificial. Forces are driving this and people don’t seem to notice.
Regardless of the number, I’m completely baffled. They don’t even understand why the US government is doing this in the first place.
These silly folks are jumping off a sinking ship and grabbing steadfast to the first piece of flotsam that they found… which amusingly suffers from the same exact problems that the ship did in the first place. It will inevitably suffer the same demise. It’s crazy that those holding on don’t seem to understand that.
If you want to keep TikToking or whatever it is people do on that platform, you should join the closest Western version, preferably owned by a multi-billionaire in the US. Their platforms will be protected no matter how much data is stolen and how much privacy is violated. The goal wasn’t to stop the communist Chinese government, but ensure that Americans maintain a stranglehold over these vices so that they can benefit from them. People are being used and just don’t care.
It sure would have been nice if more people join the fediverse in response to things like this, but alas… it’s not quite mature enough yet. They can’t look for something like Loops because it just isn’t ready. They go to things like BlueSky, completely oblivious to the fact that it can’t be what they really want. They don’t even know what they want. They just follow the lemmings before them.
Someday this will change for the better. Maybe. Perhaps not.
I’ll never understand short form video and influencers and everything else around that. Somehow I’ve managed to do just fine at life without ever using TikTok, but for others it seems to be the end of the world… at least that’s what the media seem to be making it into.
I mean… perhaps this is unintentionally the begining of something good and they just don’t realize it yet.
Good luck TickTockers. Even if the platform remains, you’re still being taking advantage. The opportunity is now, and you’re blowing it. Something completely entrenched has finally been disrupted. You could take advantage of something better, but you’re choosing not to.
If you want to keep TikToking or whatever it is people do on that platform, you should join the closest Western version, preferably owned by a multi-billionaire in the US. Their platforms will be protected no matter how much data is stolen and how much privacy is violated. The goal wasn’t to stop the communist Chinese government, but ensure that Americans maintain a stranglehold over these vices so that they can benefit from them. People are being used and just don’t care.
I think this shows a misunderstanding. A lot of the switch to Red Note is conscious of this. That’s why people deliberately chose to go to a Chinese app, knowing that the goal of the TikTok ban never had anything to do with its stated intentions. People on TikTok have been laughing at “Senator, I’m Singaporean” for months.
It’s a large enough movement that the app has added a translate feature and English/Spanish interfaces. It’s actually somewhat annoying to some of the Chinese folks there, and as someone who wants some language immersion, it’s hard to find comment sections without a lot of English conversation.
Everyone knows that US corps Hoover up as much data as they can get from us, so it’s hard to care about data getting to the Chinese government - it’s not like Meta would say no to selling them data. With Cambridge Analytica and the surveillance states building up in the south to make sure women don’t cross state lines for an abortion, the CCP knowing that I’m trans and have lots of gay sex is much less dangerous than my state government knowing that.
The goal wasn’t to stop the communist Chinese government, but ensure that Americans maintain a stranglehold over these vices so that they can benefit from them.
Both. It can be both. And the influence by the CCP is absolutely real.
I feel like this can be true, but if it is… they’re dropping the ball in so many other places that genuinely matter.
No shit but Americans are god damn stupid and petulant morons that don’t think anything but being angry that one of their circus sideshow was being taken away from them.
No shit
Someone: and they just hand over their SSN to you?
Zuckerberg: Stupid fucks
