It took only about a day for Chinese censors to crack down on posts from Americans who had flooded onto the Chinese social-media app Xiaohongshu. American TikTok users started downloading Xiaohongshu,

China’s internet companies and their hard-working, resourceful professionals make world-class products, in spite of censorship and malign neglect by Beijing.

President Trump hasn’t moved, yet, but has already ordered administration not to interfere in social media moderation China appears to have softened its stance on the possible sale of TikTok’s US operations and is now perhaps open to the idea.

As self-described " TikTok refugees" pour onto the Chinese social media app RedNote, also known as Xiaohongshu, some foreign netizens are already running up against the country's extensive censorship apparatus. Newsweek reached out to Xiaohongshu with a request for comment via a general contact email address.

His tune changed, to put it mildly. After briefly meeting with Jeff Yass, a billionaire American investor in the app (and major Republican donor), in March 2024, and himself joining TikTok in June 2024, the president-elect urged SCOTUS to pause the looming ban in an amicus brief filed on December 27. It read, in part:

A U.S. ban of TikTok began to take effect on Sunday, capping a high-stakes battle that pitted the federal government against one of the nation's most popular social media platforms.

If the U.S. believes TikTok is a clear and present danger to ... or anyone else’s — should be countered with state censorship, rather than counter-speech, marks an ideological abandonment ...

The app had more than 170 million monthly users in the U.S. The black-out is the result of a law forcing the service offline unless it sheds its ties to ByteDance, its China-based parent company.

TikTok's services are restored in the U.S. after President-elect Donald Trump pledged to sign an executive order to save it. It's been a wild 24 hours to say the least — starting with TikTok preemptively shutting down the app for users from 10:30pm on January 18.

As a result, searches and demand for VPNs in the US spiked significantly. The search term "VPN" rose significantly overnight from Saturday, 18 January, into Sunday, 19 January, 2025, but did see a sharp reduction throughout the day on Sunday.

Less than 24 hours after going dark on 19 January, TikTok is back online. In a statement on X, TikTok said that it is in the process of restoring service. The platform also thanked Donald Trump "for providing the necessary clarity and assurance to our service providers that they will face no penalties providing TikTok to over 170 million Americans and allowing over 7 million small businesses to thrive.