Chinese users were also helping their new social media friends navigate China’s strict censorship. Don’t post any photos involving nudity or guns, they advised.
Americans have posted videos taking Chinese viewers along for a shopping trip to Walmart and talking about how much it costs to take their four children to dinner. The conversations have brought up topics that are often considered sensitive online in China, including whether people can be open about their sexuality and the long hours that many work. On a video about how people in China’s tech industry work long hours, commenters in the United States shared their job schedules working on oil rigs, in hospitals and at Taco Bell.
Although Xiaohongshu is extremely popular in China, especially among young women in big cities, the company has kept a low profile. It has not updated its English-language company news page in almost two years.
Xiaohongshu has posted nearly a dozen job openings every day for the past week on its recruitment website. Among the positions listed were one for an engineer to work on the platform’s “content security emergency response capability construction.” It is also looking for someone to be in charge of content security risk assessment and analysis, and interns with “excellent written and spoken English skills.”
