The TikTok ban lasted less than 24 hours, yet it caused a ripple effect across users who relied upon the social media app, from a variety of protests, shifts in social media culture and an uncanny change in recommended content.

On Jan. 18, TikTok users received a message saying they were unable to watch videos on the platform. This lasted until the next day, when the Trump administration signed a 75-day extension. During this period, a digital migration took place among Americans who used the app. Majority of users moved to Instagram to watch Reels, while others went to the app Rednote.

When TikTok returned, many people came back, but others stayed away. TikTok was a very different place than users had left it, as our editorial board discovered. The app was filled with politics and calls to protest. Even corporate companies were pushing these ideas, like Ben and Jerry’s, who posted and pushed content about the People’s March on Washington, D.C. Meanwhile, those who migrated to other platforms found their own strange things.

For users who switched from TikTok to Rednote, the transition was so widespread that Chinese users labeled them as ‘TikTok Refugees.’ Rednote, also called Xiaohongshu, is a Chinese social media and e-commerce app often labeled as Chinese TikTok. However, this site has a very different online culture compared to TikTok. It provides a window into Chinese culture, as the people post of their ordinary lives. Many, including members of our editorial board, found this window to be very interesting and insightful, as the U.S. Government often paints China in a certain light. Seeing China through the lens of its own citizens surprised many users.

Another shocking aspect of Rednote was how much data it requests from users. The pp requires users to provide: birthdays, names, country location, what the user likes and in order to comment the user needs to put in their phone number. As a way to stick it to the government, who claimed that TikTok was giving information to the Chinese government, people downloaded Rednote to openly and directly give personal information to China.

Instagram Reels also saw a large cultural shift. Many former TikTok users found Instagram to be a wild-west-like place, with loose laws and many loopholes. Many users, and even those on our editorial board, encountered a surge of graphic, extremely violent, sexually explicit and even pornographic content on the app, which was loosely veiled by a few seconds of a seemingly safe image and then followed by a lengthy explicit video.

With such a prominent change in social media, a surprising number of cultural waves continue to ripple. People have been exposed to graphic content, learned about other cultures, and engaged in government protests. Now, with less than two months before TikTok’s extension expires, who knows what is to come after that.