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RedNote’s American audience fell sharply after TikTok returned and President Donald Trump delayed enforcement of the law that could have forced the app offline. Similarweb estimated that RedNote—listed in U.S. app stores as Xiaohongshu—reached 32.5 million U.S. daily active users on January 19, 2025, then dropped 54% to 14.9 million the next day. That supports the headline’s basic claim, but “dumped” is shorthand: the available data measures reduced activity, not confirmed app deletions.
What happened to RedNote?
The RedNote surge was driven by the approaching TikTok deadline. Between January 13 and January 19, American users searched for an alternative, joined a highly visible “TikTok refugee” movement and began experimenting with a Chinese social platform that overlaps with TikTok but is not an identical product.
On January 19, the statutory restrictions affecting TikTok were scheduled to take effect. TikTok briefly went offline in the United States for roughly 14 hours, according to Similarweb. The following day, January 20, Trump signed an executive order directing the attorney general not to enforce the law for 75 days. The order was a delay in enforcement—not a repeal of the law or a permanent cancellation of the divestiture requirement. The White House order also said providers would face no liability for covered conduct during the specified period.
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The numbers show a reversal, not a total collapse
Similarweb’s estimate is the clearest measure of the immediate reversal: RedNote’s U.S. daily active users fell from 32.5 million on January 19 to 14.9 million on January 20. TechCrunch reported the same broad pattern, while another estimate cited by TechNode put Monday’s figure at 16.25 million. Those numbers should not be averaged together; they may reflect different measurement windows, coverage or updates to the underlying estimates.
Sensor Tower separately estimated that RedNote’s average U.S. mobile daily active users declined about 17% between January 20 and January 22 compared with January 13–19. By Thursday, Similarweb reportedly estimated 3.4 million U.S. daily active users. That was still a 133.8% week-over-week increase, but far below the January 19 peak.
The distinction between the metrics matters:
- Downloads or installs measure new installations, sometimes including reinstalls depending on the provider’s methodology.
- Daily active users measure people using the app on a given day.
- App-store rankings show relative chart performance, not the total size or engagement of an audience.
- Uninstalls would measure deletions, but the cited evidence does not establish how many people removed RedNote from their phones.
RedNote remaining near the top of the U.S. app charts while its daily activity fell is therefore not contradictory. A burst of recent downloads can keep an app highly ranked even as many new users stop opening it regularly.
How large was the initial migration?
The estimates vary because they measure different things and cover different time periods. Sensor Tower estimated approximately 3 million U.S. RedNote downloads in the two weeks before TikTok’s brief shutdown. It also estimated that U.S. downloads rose 300% during January 13–19 compared with the preceding 30-day period.
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Sensor Tower estimated that the United States represented 18% of RedNote’s global downloads in January 2025 month-to-date, up from 2% in January 2024. TechCrunch cited an estimate of roughly 700,000 new U.S. users in two days, while an Appfigures estimate put January 2025 U.S. installs at 818,000. These figures are not interchangeable, and none proves that every installation became a regular user.
Why did Americans join RedNote?
The migration had several overlapping causes:
- Practical substitution: people wanted somewhere to go if TikTok became unavailable.
- Political protest: some users opposed the attempt to ban or force the sale of TikTok and deliberately chose another Chinese platform.
- Community continuity: joining together made the move feel like a collective event rather than an individual app switch.
- Curiosity: American users were interested in interacting with Chinese users and seeing a different online culture.
- Rejection of obvious alternatives: some users did not regard Instagram Reels as an appealing replacement.
There was also a privacy contradiction. Some users who objected to government action against TikTok moved to another Chinese-owned platform while expressing less concern about potential data risks. That does not prove that Americans stopped caring about privacy, or that RedNote is more or less secure than TikTok. It shows that, for some participants, protest, entertainment, curiosity and access to a familiar kind of social experience temporarily outweighed those concerns.
Why did the pause weaken RedNote’s appeal?
The most plausible explanation is an incentive reversal. Before January 19, TikTok users faced the prospect of losing a service that contained their social connections, recommendations, saved videos, creators and established habits. Once TikTok resumed and federal enforcement was delayed, starting over on RedNote no longer seemed necessary for many people.
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RedNote introduced additional friction. It is better described as a Chinese social and lifestyle platform with short-video and recommendation features—not simply “Chinese TikTok.” Its content ecosystem is strongly oriented toward the Chinese market and includes lifestyle recommendations, shopping, image posts and community discussions. Much of the interface and content environment is Mandarin-oriented, so some American users relied on translation tools. TechCrunch reported a 216% increase in U.S. Duolingo usage during the migration period, although that does not prove language alone caused RedNote’s decline.
Moderation practices, account verification, discovery systems and cultural context may also have felt unfamiliar. The novelty of cross-cultural interaction generated attention, but novelty is not the same as durable retention.
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The timing strongly supports a connection between TikTok’s return, the 75-day enforcement delay and RedNote’s fall in activity. Still, the pause was not the only factor. The statutory deadline had passed, media attention shifted, the novelty may have faded and users had more time to discover that RedNote was not a one-for-one TikTok replacement.
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The episode is therefore best described as a sharp decline in measured U.S. activity after the TikTok enforcement pause—not as proof that millions of people permanently deleted RedNote.
The wider scramble for TikTok alternatives
RedNote was not the only beneficiary of the uncertainty. Clapper, Flip, Likee, Bluesky and other services climbed U.S. app-store charts. Appfigures estimates cited by TechCrunch put January U.S. downloads at 646,000 for Clapper, 580,000 for Flip and 283,000 for Likee during the first part of the month.
VPN apps also attracted attention, although TechCrunch reported that using a VPN did not unblock TikTok’s mobile app while it remained affected by the relevant distribution restrictions. Language-learning services benefited from the RedNote moment as well.
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1Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute2Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors3Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesThese surges show how quickly a political or legal shock can redirect app-store attention. They do not, by themselves, demonstrate permanent market-share changes. The same emergency conditions that produced the downloads also made the migration unusually volatile.
The larger lesson about platform loyalty
The RedNote episode was less a normal product comparison than a deadline-driven experiment in platform dependence. Users protested, explored alternatives and briefly formed a new online community. But when TikTok remained accessible, its existing network and recommendation advantages reasserted themselves.
That does not mean the RedNote migration was fake. Millions of people may have genuinely joined, posted, translated content and interacted across national boundaries. It means that attention, downloads and daily use are different stages of adoption. A crisis can create a huge audience spike without creating the long-term habits, creator economy and social graph needed to displace an incumbent.
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