One Ivy League-educated social media influencer warned TikTok has taken an “ominous turn” in the wake of the war in Israel, going so far as to re-label Gen Z “Generation Terrorism.”
“You really have seen since October 7th, especially, the algorithm seems to have taken a bit of an ominous turn. You’re really seeing Gen Z become Gen T, Gen Terrorism. And I saw that not just as a joke, but as a reality,” comedian and TikTok star Zach Sage Fox said on “America’s Newsroom” Tuesday.
College campuses across the U.S., including Columbia and Yale, have illustrated an alarming rise in anti-Israel sentiment among younger Americans. The wave of protests has come alongside the spread of hate speech and antisemitism on social media since Hamas’ attack.
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TikTok has become a major outlet for sharing news and information alongside other social media apps, raising concerns over misinformation, hate speech and censorship.
“All the social media platforms have a misinformation problem. This isn’t just TikTok, but when you are speaking to young people, when I’m interviewing them on the streets about the misinformation they’re hearing right now, it is…90% of it is coming from TikTok,” Fox explained.
According to a Pew Research Center study from Nov. 2023, 44% of Americans between 18 and 29-years-old get their news through TikTok. In addition, TikTok is an information source for 42% of those who are high school aged and younger, as well as 60% of Democrats or individuals leaning left.
While Fox acknowledged there is a lot of good which can come from platforms like TikTok, he knew “we were making a deal with the devil.”
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“The moment for me [when] I started getting terrified was when you saw Gen Z supporting Osama bin Laden. I mean, this has gone in a crazy direction. There’s Holocaust denialism rampant throughout the app. This is where you’re seeing the most misinformation.”
In the last few months, Fox has shifted his platform to focus on “combat[ing] antisemitism and anti-Israel propaganda.”
Much of this determination stems from Fox’s visit to Auschwitz a few years ago. While at the concentration camp, Fox was approached by a man in a wheelchair whose family was “massacred” at Auschwitz during the Holocaust.
The touching exchange was captured on video, and Fox made a promise to the man he is now living out on his platform.
“You see us hugging and crying and I told him, I said, ‘I promise I will make sure that nothing like that ever happens again.’ But when I said that promise, I meant it. I really meant it. But it was hard to imagine that it would really come into play like this,” Fox said. “That what we’re seeing on these college campuses, especially right now, could actually happen. I never understood how the Holocaust could happen. I knew it did happen, and I knew why, but it felt like a dystopian past. It didn’t feel like a present.”
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“It’s no coincidence that you are seeing Gen Z, like the Z stands for ‘zombie.’ They are just repeating everything they’re seeing online. And I’m not just here to criticize Gen Z because free speech is super important. I’m a comedian. But it’s not fair to young people who are so impressionable – these are the most impressionable people in the world. So I feel bad for these college students, too, because they’ve been brainwashed by something that is out of their hands, and sadly, right now, outside of our government’s hands, to be able to rein it in,” Fox added.
As Congress weighs legislation to crack down on TikTok, Fox said while he is “conflicted” given his success on the platform, ultimately the social media network needs to be sold to an American company to better allow regulation.
