WINTER PARK, Fla. – The clock is once again ticking for TikTok. The social media app was taken down for about 12 hours over the weekend to comply with a new law.
Shortly before the Jan. 19 deadline for TikTok to shut down, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a previous ruling that allowed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act to take effect.
After being sworn into office on Jan. 20, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to delay the ban for 75 days to give the app’s owner, ByteDance, time to find an American owner.
CNN reports several groups are considering putting in bids, including YouTube and TikTok star MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson.
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Chinese officials are also entertaining a possible sale of a portion of the tech to billionaire and close Trump advisor Elon Musk, according to Bloomberg News.
ByteDance must sell the app because of its ties to the Chinese government.
Ruonan Zhang, an assistant professor of communications at Rollins College, commented on the situation.
“Some legislators think that TikTok is being forced to cooperate with the Chinese government when it comes to some issues with national security,” Zhang said. “Second is the content recommendation algorithms. People have concerns about what type of content is being pushed to their feed.”
Many social media users downloaded a similar app called RedNote in the days before the TikTok ban was supposed to begin.
“A lot of TikTokers call it RedNote; its official translation, the literal translation, is ‘Little Red Book,’” Zhang explained.
She continued, “In my personal thinking, it’s a combination of TikTok, Instagram, Tumblr, and Pinterest. So, they also have the mechanism of pushing things that you might be interested in to your feed.”
Zhang notes RedNote will likely run into some of the same problems as TikTok.
“For people who have concerns for security reasons, I don’t think that’s going to solve the issue because Little Red Book is also a Chinese-owned social media app, because the rules of TikTok will apply to Little Red Book as well,” she said.
Zhang says it’s just a matter of time until lawmakers decide to put RedNote under the same scrutiny as TikTok.
Zhang believes this will likely change the way people use social media, creating what she calls “Social Media Hoppers.”
“They can jump from one platform to another platform to another platform. As a free market, if there is a tangible need for the users to use a social media app like TikTok, they’re going to keep producing similar social media apps with different names. This time it’s RedNote; the other time might be BlueNote, and that might happen,” Zhang said.
“Because I do have RedBook (RedNote) on my phone, I have been a heavy user of it for several years already. I do see this popular trend on the app that Chinese internet users are welcoming guests from all over the world, especially from America, and they are making specialty videos just for the U.S. audiences. In the comment section, there are people who talk to the Chinese guests saying they want to learn English. ‘Can we talk? Can we communicate?’ And there are American users who are using Chinese P.E. to communicate with the Chinese internet users,” Zhang added.
A U.S. official told CBS News that RedNote, just like TikTok, could face an ultimatum to divest or be banned.
“This appears to be the kind of app that the statute would apply to and could face the same restrictions as TikTok if it’s not divested,” the official said.
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