Cute cats. Fit checks. Travel vlogs. Luigi Mangione latte art. Americans who downloaded RedNote saw it all this week, as they fled to the Chinese social media app in advance of an imminent (or not ) TikTok ban.

English language content has flooded RedNote, whose default language is Mandarin, with Americans posting introductions to themselves and kicking off cross-cultural discussions: How much do you pay for groceries? What Chinese slang do I need to know? Do you have any opinions about the state of Ohio?

Qian Huang, a professor at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands who studies Asian youth and digital culture, said that she originally downloaded RedNote to keep up with Chinese trends. “But this week, I woke up and my feed was not the usual feed any more,” Huang said. “It was all English content. That was a bit of a weird feeling for me.”

Despite concerns about data privacy, the app shot to No 1 in US app stores on Tuesday, with more than half a million downloads from new users, after a supreme court hearing on TikTok’s future last week. The tech reporter Ryan Broderick noted on his Garbage Day newsletter that Black TikTok beauty influencers had seen RedNote’s potential for makeup tutorials and trend-spotting before the hearing.

RedNote is primarily a video-sharing app, though users can also share photo galleries accompanied by questions to spur discussion in the comments. A lot of the content looks similar to what you’d find on Instagram’s Explore page: posts from Chinese influencers and regular people about what they eat in a day, or how they exercise, or what they’re wearing. The app’s Chinese name, Xiaohongshu, translates to “little red book”, a reference to a collection of the Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong’s favorite sayings.

Much like TikTok’s famous scroll, RedNote has “a very specific algorithm, where what you see is very much tailored to your taste”, according to Huang. She also said the app puts a heavy emphasis on e-commerce, with embedded shopping options that cater to a largely female audience. In the past two years, the Shanghai-based startup that owns RedNote has made steps to reach male users.

In China, a digital firewall blocks most internet users from foreign search engines and social media sites like Google, Facebook and WhatsApp. Social media is strictly regulated, and the government has targeted certain bloggers and their followers for making critical or dissenting comments. New RedNote users may feel that the impending US TikTok ban is comparable to Chinese government censorship (though calling themselves “TikTok refugees” certainly speaks to a uniquely American flair for the dramatic).

While China has its own version of the TikTok app, called Douyin, RedNote is notable in that the app is unified rather than split into two versions; Chinese users intermingle with users from the rest of the world. Jiali Fan, a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge who studies RedNote, said that many longtime users of the app feel this is their first time interacting with Americans online.

“Chinese people always feel like they live in the only country that has really restricted internet spaces,” Fan said. “Now, Americans are experiencing the same with [the TikTok ban], so now we can all relate, we all have the same struggles and problems.”

In one popular meme, Chinese users demand a cat or dog “tax”, meaning cute pet photos, from new American users. Chinese teens have asked Americans for help with their English homework. Influencers give Mandarin lessons for translating essential social media slang such as “Girl, you look so stunning” or “lmaoooooooooo”.

In one early fumble, a Shanghai-born man named Jerry, who now lives in Vancouver, was misidentified as the app’s CEO by an American reporter after he posted a friendly welcome video to his RedNote followers. Jerry had to post another video clarifying that he is, in fact, “just another normal guy”.

Luigi Mangione, who has been charged with murder in the shooting of the UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and pleaded not guilty, is also a hot topic on the app. Chinese influencers cosplay as Mangione in court, or post “makeup tutorials” for how to emulate his mugshot. There are Luigi fan edits, Luigi latte art and explainers on due process from people who think he’s been subjected to an unfair trial by the media.

“That’s just because he looks good,” Fan said, echoing the canonization by some in the US who see Mangione as a folk hero. “If you want to be famous on Xiahongshu, you have to be beautiful. It’s just how the algorithm works.”

Much of the humor on RedNote comes from Chinese influencers lightly roasting Americans while welcoming them to the app. “Don’t worry, we are not like the Americans. We will not tell you to go back to your own country,” Yvonne Du, an established influencer with more than 650,000 followers on the app, said in English in a video.

Other users joke about being “Chinese spies”, riffing on concerns from US politicians about the Chinese government using TikTok to access Americans’ data. Anti-TikTok politicians probably won’t like RedNote either; cybersecurity experts say the app collects extensive personal data, which it can share with third-party platforms or the Chinese government.

“A major red flag is the app’s lack of transparency – its terms and conditions are mainly in Mandarin, leaving non-Chinese-speaking users unclear about what data is collected and how it’s used,” said the cybersecurity expert Adrianus Warmenhoven of NordVPN in a statement. “Beyond privacy, there are concerns about content censorship. RedNote’s content moderation policies may align with Chinese government standards, potentially stifling free speech and exposing users to biased information.”

One anonymous US official told CBS News that RedNote could face the same restrictions as TikTok does unless it divests from a Chinese-owned company.

It seems that most interactions between Americans and Chinese users so far have been inquisitive and mutually respectful. “This is the first time a lot of the Chinese internet has been exposed to a global audience to some extent,” Fan said. “People are feeling very excited about this kind of direct and unfiltered communication. But also, we don’t know how long this will last, or what government will make the move to do something about it. We just have to enjoy it right now.”