What is happening:
Due to massive grassroots backlash to the looming TikTok ban in the US, millions of users are currently creating accounts on Xiaohongshu aka “Little Red Book”. It is currently the top trending app in the Apple App Store.
Why it is special:
This is truly an unprecedented development. Never have regular American and Chinese netizens had the ability to mingle so freely. Even more unprecedented is the fact that most of this early conversation will be regarding backlash to the US itself. This presents us with an opportunity to appeal to a large swath of (mostly young) Americans at the same time.
What the goal is:
We have recently had several chats on this site about how to actually turn posting/effortposting into something positive. Several ideas have been floated regarding Agitprop and how to encourage the creation of engaging content, and many people agreed on the idea of Agitprop contests. That is what we will be trying to do here for the first time ever.
The contest/rules are quite loose here and definitely open to change, so feel free to give your input:
‼️In an effort to help shepard the rapidly growing disgruntled and pliable new English speaking audience on Xiaohongshu, the leftist post or comment for English speakers on Xiaohongshu that garners the most interactions before January 19th at 5PM GMT will be featured on c/agitprop.‼️
Simply submit by linking the post or comment in the replies of this post. Please try to include some kind of watermark that identifies it as a Hexbear user. Ideally if you can link back here we can foster a few new users as well. Good luck my fellow posters
As of now there are no submissions, so if you’d like to participate just comment a link to your post! Of course, feel free to reuse your own Hexbear posts, and if you want to use somebody else’s post reach out and ask permission first.
This is a kind of "fuck you" action. Could it cause the same thing? Yes, but its clear from the posts from USians moving to Xiaohongshu is contrarian on purpose. Its clearly an app for Chinese people, by Chinese people.
People are already moving to Xiaohongshu, we don't need to motivate them. My TikTok feed was full of posts about moving there, and how funny it is. The opportunity here is that this app will not tolerate the western propaganda about China. If what I'm seeing from English posters in the app holds true, many of them are curious and asking questions.
It's Instagram. It has a shop in the same way that TikTok also has a shop. Definitely would not classify this as a shopping website since that is not what you go to the website for.
I can't speak for the original poster, but, If TikTok users are willing to use this app, even out of protest, it means that they are at least open-minded enough to accept information about China that they otherwise might not accept else where.
You also have to remember this is a bipartisan issue for American people. A lot of conservatives and a lot of liberals used TikTok and many of them operated small businesses that sustained them and that is going away. The people mad about TikTok going away crosses both political perspectives and as a result they are collectively angry at the government collectively.
Only people not using TikTok believe that this action is in the best interests of national security. Everyone who was enjoying their time on the app or making a living on the app understands that there is no national security threat. At a minimum, they agree that this is a form of censorship. They probably will debate on what exactly is being censored though.
This is how I interpret the idea that the TikTok base is pliable. They are currently primed with anti-government sentiment.
You hit every point that I was going for!