In the days leading up to the TikTok ban in the U.S. on Sunday, U.S. users flooded the Chinese app RedNote, which offered a similar experience to their favorite short-form video app. The app, which is listed in the U.S. App Store under its Chinese name Xiaohongshu, quickly became the No. 1 free app in the U.S. But after Trump paused the ban, use of RedNote in the U.S. rapidly declined. By Monday, RedNote had lost over half its daily active users in the U.S. after reaching a high of 32.5 million daily actives on the day of the ban.
If, at the time of this measurement, there was still half the peak US traffic then that’s still 16m Americans slightly less naive. If that number continues to decline by ~half every week, we still have (imagining) two million Americans who are less likely to support a president who decides to add Cuba back to the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism.
This isn’t a windfall, but it is not insignificant.