Inauguration day for the new US president, January 20, 2025, proved to be a unique moment for global activity on social networks. While flocks of European users left the social media platform X, the US government’s wavering on banning TikTok provoked a great migration of American souls to China.
The takeover of Twitter by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk triggered an earthquake in the world of social networks. Twitter had already become a kind of indispensible agora. Musk denounced excessive government intervention and called for a drastic reduction in content moderation with the introduction of self-regulation by users themselves (so-called “community notes”.) He said that his aim was to protect freedom of expression in the spirit of the First Amendment to the American Constitution. Recently, Mark Zuckerberg, head of Meta (Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, etc.), sided with Elon Musk as a defender of freedom of expression, saying that content moderation on his networks had become excessive. As long as it does not violate the law, according to Musk and Zuckerberg, free expression should be allowed. One can see this as a healthy libertarianism, or, on the contrary, one can wonder whether this philosophy of freedom isn’t too idealistic.
Like Black Boxes
A Pew Research Center study published in 2024 found that, in 2022, the Twitter/X platform had about 65 percent Democratic and 31 percent Republican accounts and that this ratio had shifted to 48 percent and 47 percent in 2024.1 We could take this as merely a balancing of the left-right relationship. However, when Musk declared his support for Donald Trump, suspicion grew that he was actively promoting right-wing accounts to support the Republican Party. This suspicion of algorithm manipulation is based on metrics but not on solid evidence. Are the observed trends organic or manipulated? Ultimately, all these platforms are like black boxes, which is why the European Commission launched a formal investigation into X and other platforms in 2023. It sounds funny, but we could ask whether an “organic” or “ethical” label, like we use in agriculture, should be introduced for social networks.
Elon Musk’s comments on the domestic policies of some European countries simply exacerbated the situation. The controversies culminated in a boycott of the platform by media, institutions, politicians, and intellectuals, with the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) even developing a migration tool called “HelloquitteX” to help people leave the platform. The boycott was scheduled for January 20—the day of the inauguration of the new US president. There are few statistics on the real impact of this boycott, but you could read a lot of messages like: “I just did my #eXit!” or “This X account will be inactive from now on to form a united front, to not let the public debate be hijacked, and to build an alternative together.” Are we witnessing an “archipelagizing” of networks? Will the digital world, despite its promise of universality and global networking, actually promote fragmentation into islands?
Flights to China
At the same time, there was a reverse phenomenon occurring with the TikTok app—the Chinese platform for sharing short videos that had over 1.5 billion users. Since 2020, the US and Europe have been concerned about TikTok and were trying to organize a ban. The first step, in 2023, was to ban TikTok from the work smartphones of employees of the federal government in the US, the European Commission, the European Parliament, and other national institutions in Europe. Here, too, evidence of manipulation and data theft is slim. Nevertheless, this line of reasoning prevailed, all the way to Romania, where it was used at the end of 2024 to cancel the presidential elections. The secret service is said to have reported a possible Russian manipulation of the TikTok app, although without providing any solid evidence.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, the US Supreme Court confirmed the ban on TikTok. The ban was set for January 19, 2025. Surprise: when they learned of TikTok’s impending closure, millions of US users turned to “Xiaohongshu,” an entirely Chinese app similar to Instagram that is very popular in China. In January 2025, Xiaohongshu, now called “Rednote/Xhs” in the West, became the most downloaded app in the US. Over three million new users joined in a single day. These US users called themselves “TikTok refugees’,” and Chinese users were more than happy to welcome them, striking up conversations and offering to accompany them. “I would like to be your Chinese friend,” “I give Chinese lessons,” “Welcome, Tiktok refugees!” Many of these Americans, who previously had a rather negative image of life in China, saw their prejudices crumble. Many shocked or touched users testified to a feeling of finally breaking out of a bubble and opening their eyes. An unexpected cultural encounter took place between millions of Chinese and American users—a wind of mutual sympathy. And yet, the TikTok ban lasted only one day! On January 20, the new US government decided to lift the ban for a certain period of time. However, the phenomenon of migration to Rednote/XHS has already taken place.
Does Europe Want to Play Along?
The migrations of flocks of souls in the virtual world are a reality because today, the virtual has become real. It leads to real feelings, thoughts, and decisions. Yes, “the digital party has only just begun,” as Peter Sloterdijk suggested on January 27 in the Frankfurter Rundschau.2 Europe protests a lot, but does it really want to play along? On the one hand, American culture, which advocates radical freedom of expression in the name of individuality; on the other hand, Chinese culture, which imposes stricter restrictions on freedom of expression in the name of collectivity. And yet, these two cultures seem to want to meet each other. Europe is paralyzed between these two poles and has no corresponding platforms. What impulse does Europe have between the individual and the collective? What innovative socio-technologies should develop from this?
Translation Laura Liska
Image “The Chinese app Rednote conquers the hearts of Americans” —a post on X.
Footnotes
- Colleen McClain, Monica Anderson and Risa Gelles-Watnick, “How Americans Navigate Politics on TikTok, X, Facebook and Instagram.” Pew Research Center, 12.6.2024.
- Michael Hesse, “Philosoph Sloterdijk über die Zukunft der KI: ‘Die digitale Party hat gerade erst begonnen.’” [Philosopher Sloterdijk on the future of AI] Frankfurter Rundschau, 27.1.2025.
