U.S. TikTok servers went down for roughly 12 hours over the weekend, starting on the night of January 18. American users are now reporting a spike in censorship of political commentary and criticism since the app has been back up and running in the States,

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,

President Donald Trump's flurry of day-one actions included a reprieve for TikTok, the creation of a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an order on social media "censorship," a declaration of an energy emergency, and reversal of a Biden order on artificial intelligence.

A number of social-media posts claim that the Chinese-owned app is blocking content that is critical of the new president.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and TikTok’s CEO Shou ZI Chew both attended the inauguration, alongside former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, the first tech boss to hitch his wagon to Trump.

After a US law temporarily forced Americans to find a new home for their short-video habit, TikTok clone Likee saw a surge in usage.

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.

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

In a historic development, Chinese-owned social media platform TikTok has become the center of a bipartisan bill to ban the app nationwide in the name of national security. Xiao Qiang, a research scientist at the UC Berkeley School of Information and a prominent scholar in the study of state censorship,

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 ...

TikTok isn’t the villain here. It’s a symptom of a much larger issue: the lack of clear, enforceable rules for data privacy and security. Instead of banning the app, the government should focus on fixing the system.

As TikTok users flock to RedNote, there are several considerations, including the privacy of your data. Here’s what you need to know.