Furious at the prospect of a US government ban on social media platform TikTok, American users have flocked to another Chinese-owned app in droves, many with a defiant message: “Take my data!”TikTok has become another battleground showcasing China-US tensions, with President Joe Biden’s administration accusing the app of allowing Beijing to collect data and spy on users — claims denied by China and TikTok’s owner ByteDance. The United States passed a law last year forcing ByteDance to either sell the platform or shut it down by January 19.With that deadline looming, Xiaohongshu — a lifestyle-focussed Instagram-meets-Pinterest alternative — surged to the top of the Apple App Store downloads on Monday.The hashtag “tiktokrefugee” had more than 100 million views by Tuesday evening.”They are trying to ban TikTok because they said China is stealing information. They don’t ban any American company from stealing our information,” user penguinpepperpia, who has more than 264,000 TikTok followers, told AFP.  The content creator downloaded Xiaohongshu rather than return to US platforms such as Meta’s Instagram and Facebook, which they characterised as apps for “older people” that also “steal your personal information and sell it to other companies”. “That is why many Americans don’t care anymore and we would rather let China have our information,” said the user.Other “refugees” shared similar sentiments.New Xiaohongshu user Adham said in a video posted on Monday: “I know our government is a little bit racist, but Chinese people, I love you guys. I don’t care if you take my data. Take it.”- ‘Deliciously ironical’ –  The phenomenon showed how “foolish” the TikTok ban was, Milton Mueller, a professor at the Georgia Tech School of Public Policy who filed a brief in opposition of the ban to the US Supreme Court, told AFP. “It is deliciously ironical that the threat of a ban is backfiring so quickly, even before it is put into place,” he said.”It does seem as if the TikTok ban is pushing users towards other apps that have a much less clear division between the Chinese Communist Party and the app itself,” Duke University’s Robyn Caplan said.Neither Xiaohongshu or ByteDance commented on the situation when asked.What the phenomenon showed was that the Biden administration’s strategy towards Chinese technology of “small yard, high fence” was not effective, said the London School of Economic’s Meng Bingchun. “The yard keeps getting bigger, and the fence is leaky,” Meng said.”Worse still, in this case, those living within the fence can be migratory in the digital space.”- Short-term reaction? -Until Monday, Xiaohongshu — or RedNote in English — was popular primarily among Chinese-speaking users. It boasted 300 million monthly active users at the end of 2023. Unlike TikTok’s sister app Douyin or the micro-blogging site Weibo, Xiaohongshu skews heavily towards lifestyle content.It is seen as facing relatively less censorship than other platforms: users can be found posting LGBTQ content and discussing the merits of women remaining single, topics often considered sensitive in China.For “native” Xiaohongshu users on Monday, the influx of Americans was a head-scratcher but also provided an unexpected opportunity for cultural exchange.Some even asked for help with English homework.In public group chats on the platform, new users asked for translations of slang terms, as well as keywords to search for content they wanted.”It’s funny and ironic that the Americans and the Chinese are meeting online under the circumstance that the US government is banning TikTok… similar to what the Chinese government has been doing for ages to American apps,” 26-year-old Amanda Zhang told AFP. The part-time pet content creator, who studies in the United States, said she was worried the US government might move to ban Xiaohongshu too if it gained enough traction.It remains unclear what the long-term implications of the shift will be. Xiaohongshu’s main challenge to retaining these new users is translation, Caplan said. LSE’s Meng added: “My hunch is that what we are witnessing now is more of a short-term reaction than a long-term trend.”The question now is whether there will be a critical mass of these refugees to achieve the desired network effect for the platform, and whether Xiaohongshu will respond quickly enough to harness the new users.”

US President-elect Donald Trump would have been convicted for his alleged effort to overturn the 2020 election result if he hadn’t been re-elected four years later, said a report by then special counsel Jack Smith released early Tuesday.In a case that never went to trial, Trump, who returns to the White House on Monday, was accused of conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding.However, the US Department of Justice’s “view that the Constitution prohibits the continued indictment and prosecution of a President is categorical and does not turn on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the Government’s proof, or the merits of the prosecution, which the Office stands fully behind,” said the report, which was released after midnight.”Indeed, but for Mr. Trump’s election and imminent return to the Presidency, the (Special Counsel’s) Office assessed that the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial.”The proceeding referred to in the charges was the session of Congress called to certify President Joe Biden’s election win that was violently attacked on January 6, 2021, by a mob of Trump’s supporters who stormed the US Capitol.Smith, who was special counsel appointed to investigate Trump, dropped the case after the Republican won November’s presidential election, citing the Justice Department’s policy of not prosecuting a sitting president.Trump, 78, hit back on his Truth Social platform soon after the report’s release, calling Smith “deranged”, and adding that he “was unable to successfully prosecute the Political Opponent of his ‘boss’.””To show you how desperate Deranged Jack Smith is, he released his Fake findings at 1:00 A.M. in the morning,” Trump added in another post.Trump’s attorneys had earlier urged US Attorney General Merrick Garland not to release the report, calling the plan to disclose it “unlawful, undertaken in bad faith, and contrary to the public interest.”- ‘Change the results’ -Smith’s report details Trump’s alleged efforts to persuade state-level Republican lawmakers and leaders to “change the results” of the 2020 election.”Mr. Trump contacted state legislators and executives, pressured them with false claims of election fraud in their states, and urged them to take action to ignore the vote counts and change the results,” according to the report released by the Department of Justice.”Significantly, he made election claims only to state legislators and executives who shared his political affiliation and were his political supporters, and only in states that he had lost,” it said.In addition, the report alleges Trump and co-conspirators planned to organize individuals who would have served as his electors, if he had won the popular vote, in seven states where he lost — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — “and cause them to sign and send to Washington false certifications claiming to be the legitimate electors.”They ultimately “used the fraudulent certificates to try to obstruct the congressional certification proceeding,” the report says, adding that Trump had “engaged in an unprecedented criminal effort” to overturn the election results “in order to retain power.”The report says Trump’s untruths included dozens of demonstrably false claims that large numbers of ineligible voters, such as non-citizens, had cast ballots, and that voting machines had changed votes that had been for him.Trump, however, knew there was no fraud that would affect the election’s outcome and that he had lost, according to the report, in part because then vice-president Mike Pence and his advisers told him there was no evidence for his claims.The report says that, on January 2, 2021, days before election tallies would be certified, Trump called Georgia’s secretary of state and pushed him to “find 11,780 votes” — Biden’s margin of victory in the southern state.When the state official refuted Trump’s false claims, the then-president threatened him, the report says.Trump faces separate racketeering charges in Georgia over his efforts to subvert the election results in the state. That case will likely be frozen while he is in office.The special counsel office concluded that “Trump’s conduct violated several federal criminal statutes and that the admissible evidence would be sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction.”Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, dismissed another federal case against the former and future president last year — over Trump’s handling of top secret documents after leaving the White House — but charges are still pending against two of his former co-defendants.Smith left the justice department last week, days after submitting his final report as special counsel.In another case, a judge sentenced Trump to an unconditional discharge on Friday for covering up hush money payments to a porn star despite the president-elect’s efforts to avoid becoming the first felon in the White House.