When Congress passed the TikTok ban, I figured I'd check out Xiaohongshu, aka RedNote, China's answer to the social media app that's suddenly flooded with protesting American “Tiktok refugees.”

The first few hours scrolling through the app felt like stumbling into a cozy corner of the Internet.

The interface was mostly in Mandarin, but the content spoke a universal language: cute pets, travel photos (Chinese cities look fantastic), people welcoming TikTokers, and enough Chinese food videos to make anyone hungry at 3 a.m.

Then, I posted my first photo, and that's when things got weird.

Within minutes, my inbox exploded with messages from supposedly American users. The first red flag? Usually, dozens of cute girls don't bombard me with solicitations to connect.

Another strange thing I noticed was that every account had a Nigerian IP address, clear as day in their account details—though you'd miss it if you were only looking at the English words in their bios.

Each account also features details in Mandarin, and if you take the time to examine it, you realize that every RedNote account automatically lists the country of origin, with a country code, for the registrant.

Take "Bbyelizabeth0" (ID: 26204885628), who slid into my DMs claiming to be a 28-year-old American woman looking for friends.

Her profile showed a stunning woman executing your typical influencer poses, including my personal favorite: The boudoir mirror selfie.

I was sad to learn, however, via a reverse image search that the account had stolen the profile photo and videos from @curlygirlxoxo, an Instagram model with 140,000 followers who mixes fitness content with OnlyFans promotions.

Is nothing sacred? Worse, the video “she” posted on RedNote was pilfered from TikTok.

The real model is probably unaware her identity is being used to scam people halfway around the world.

I tried to contact her on Instagram but didn’t get a reply. She was also active on Onlyfans, but since I’m poor, I didn’t contact her there.

She probably doesn’t care that much—influencers suffer from impersonations all the time, and social media sites do little to combat scammers.

The scammers' playbook became even more clear after the next two messages. "Nancy Adonis" (ID: 26207772180) and "Dana Michael2" (ID: 11558103341) hit me up within seconds of each other. Both accounts had Nigerian IP addresses and mirror-image bios: "live and let live" and "happiness is free."

Their conversation starters could've been copy-pasted: "Hello!" followed by "Do you speak English?" and the inevitable "Where are you located?"

These weren't just random attempts. The scammers had clearly done their homework, using digitally altered photos that were just different enough to slip past reverse image searches.

But their compressed videos—probably downloaded and re-uploaded multiple times to avoid exact visual matches—gave away the game.

I chatted a bit with Nancy Adonis. She told me she was living in Boston.

What a coincidence! I told her I was spending my vacations in Boston, too.  I asked her to be more specific about where in Boston she lives.

She told me she moved to Okinawa, where she takes care of the military personnel in a hospital. Had I stepped into a World War II time warp?

To clarify, she gave me her address so we can meet once she comes back.

Apparently, she lives in a bar: The Karltan Bar, to be more specific. The perfect girlfriend?

Another interesting case was a scammer who'd built an entirely fake persona using content from Rockstar Kristin, a food and travel influencer from Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania.

The real Kristin has 83,500 Instagram followers and posts about global cuisine. The fake version just wanted to know my location and loved my smile.

RedNote (left) vs the original Instagram post (right).

I reached out to the original Rockstar, Kristin, to alert her about her stolen identity and confirm whether she was the person behind the account.

After all, it is possible that she traveled to Nigeria, bought a phone line, registered her account, complimented my smile, and then traveled back to the U.S.

Sadly, she didn’t respond either.

The scammers are exploiting a perfect storm: a sudden influx of Americans protesting TikTok's ban, coupled with language barriers that make people grateful for any English conversation and an interface foreign enough to make users doubt their instincts.

Many don't even realize RedNote has an English translation option—it's just buried deep enough in the settings to make new users feel lost.

Take this next example. The normal UI shows random Chinese characters and appears as if the profile is from the U.S., according to the bio.

However, upon translating the characters, you can see the real country of origin is Nigeria.

People are starting to notice these oddities. "Be aware of scams. This app is the wild wild east now," warned a RedNote veteran posting under ID: Daya Redneck, mixing English and Mandarin in his warnings. "Don't send your personal data, all jokes aside."

MissKatherine, an American RedNote newcomer, shared her own brush with the scammers.

"I had someone saying they're American with fake pics, but the IP was from Nigeria," she said. When I checked her followers, I found more accounts using the same script, all hiding Nigerian IP addresses behind stolen American identities.

The flood of new users to RedNote shows no signs of slowing. The app hit the top spot in Apple's App Store and cracked the top 10 on Google Play within days of the TikTok ban news.

(I doubt TikTok will be banned since incoming U.S. President Trump seems more favorably disposed to the app and invited TikTok's CEO to the Inauguration.)

In the meantime, I suppose it’s possible that Nigerians really love the RedNote app, and there’s nothing seriously larcenous here.

Though Nigeria is not part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative development initiative, it receives enormous money from China. It is one of the country’s key economic partners.

Still, RedNote’s environment feels pretty scammy and infested with weird bots. If you want to hang out there, use the simple translation tool and some common sense.

Now, if you excuse me, I need to go talk to a hot married woman in my area who wants to give me a million dollars.

Edited by Sebastian Sinclair

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