The recent, if short-lived, ban on TikTok showed an alarming amount of support for the Chinese-controlled social media platform – and a complete disregard for any potential threat. When it seemed likely the platform would shut down in January last year, thousands went to RedNote (a Chinese alternative) and joked they were “Chinese spies” on a mission to troll the US government, making fun of the national security fears lawmakers had warned about. Even when it became clear that the platform was collecting and storing information, Gen Z didn’t seem to mind.
“It’s a post-Snowden and post-WikiLeaks generation that throws its hands up in the air and says, ‘we don’t care about the Chinese spy, everyone has our data,’” Elizabeth Ingleson, an international history professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science told…
