Gen Z is that generation as far as technology is concerned.
Irrespective, the Gen Z protesters have achieved something, even somewhat rare given how inflexible the BJP-led government has been when it comes to fixing accountability of its office bearers.
Yet, it needs to be said: when it came to using technology during the political protest, the Gen Z protesters at Jantar Mantar were unwittingly naive.
The government might have agreed with CJP protesters, it does not look to be in the mood to not do a postmortem.
advertisementIf you look at websites like EFF and Wired, which have published digital hygiene guidelines for protesters, you will realise that Gen Z activists of CJP would score F on this aspect.
On Monday Abhinav Bisht, a content creator who went viral with his Instagram reels for documenting and supporting CJP protests, saw his account suspended. He created a new account and started gaining followers again. But it reveals something. Bisht is not the only one whose social media or WhatsApp accounts have been impacted in recent days because of their support for CJP protests.
Read Full Story
When you grow up with something, you also tend to take it for granted. Gen Z is that generation as far as technology is concerned. They have grown up with it, with the phone screen, with Gram, with YouTube and live streams, with Discord and Reddit. When they run into tech issues, they do a Google search. When they need a solution, they install an app or an extension. Most of the time they do it mindlessly, without really understanding what they are doing and how. That is how they use tech, natively and naively. In private. In public. And when they are out protesting at Jantar Mantar, they do the same. They use the tech but rarely understand its nuances.
This is not an attempt to rain down on the victory parade of CJP, even though I find the “victory” rather superficial and more bluster than substance. What this “victory” really means, I believe, is in the category of Time Will Tell. Irrespective, the Gen Z protesters have achieved something, even somewhat rare given how inflexible the BJP-led government has been when it comes to fixing accountability of its office bearers. So, a victory nonetheless. Kudos boys and girls!
Yet, it needs to be said: when it came to using technology during the political protest, the Gen Z protesters at Jantar Mantar were unwittingly naive. The only saving grace for them was that the Indian government was, and has always been, even more pathetic in the way it tried to deal with technology. Hence, the fiasco called Bitchat.
To understand the point I am making, consider the news after the “victory”. The government might have agreed with CJP protesters, it does not look to be in the mood to not do a postmortem. I have a feeling that different government officials and law-enforcement agencies are looking at the digital trail left behind by protesters. The objective could be to prepare the government to deal with similar protests better in future, or to simply figure out instances where a clear legal case can be made against the protesters.
And the protesters have left plenty of clues. Few of them wore masks, a cardinal sin for protesters in this age of face surveillance and ubiquity of cameras. Compare that to how protesters in Hong Kong went about their dharnas a few years ago. Or how students in the US colleges protested in 2024. You will see a stark difference. The digital hygiene exercised by Delhi protesters was abysmal, most notably visible in how many of them were deliberately posing in front of Delhi Police surveillance vans.
advertisement
If you look at websites like EFF and Wired, which have published digital hygiene guidelines for protesters, you will realise that Gen Z activists of CJP would score F on this aspect. Instead of minimising the digital footprints, whether in terms of location trails or in terms of posting revealing details in public on websites that almost always work directly with governments, the Gen Z protesters of India exercised zero caution.
The saving grace for them is that the Indian government has always been a blundering fool when it comes to dealing with technology. It knows only one way to deal with something that it doesn’t understand: strike it with a ban hammer. It tried to do this to apps like Bitchat, which are decentralised and open-source that can let people in a huddle chat without needing internet.
But in ordering a ban on an app like Bitchat that can be distributed easily and can be endlessly copied from server to server, the Indian government made itself a laughing stock. Its order to Github seeking a ban on Bitchat was such a joke that Jack Dorsey smiled and leaked the notice on X. That is because Bitchat, just like countless other tools, is made specifically to break free of centralisation and hence censorship. In the middle of CJP protest, the Indian government tried to ban Bitchat.
advertisement
There are a number of such tools on the web. From Tor to Signal, to more advanced tools like Lantern and Psiphon, the world is full of tech solutions that are widely available on the web and allow people a surprising amount of flexibility and anonymity in how they communicate.
In a way, the internet is an anomaly in the history of humans. With some dumb luck, and some pluckiness from the likes of Phil Zimmermann, by the mid 2000s the world of personal tech became a genie that somehow came out of the bottle. Or as Edward Snowden wrote in his memoir, “A little bit of math can accomplish what all the guns and barbed wire can’t: a little bit of math can keep a secret.”
advertisement
The governments across the world realised it a little late. Although, since the mid 2000 they have made effort to put the genie back in the bottle, and thanks to large tech companies have somewhat succeeded. But to enterprising users, the world of tech can still be relatively unrestricted and anonymous.
The tech can’t be fully contained. The apps can’t be completely blocked. The content, in some way or other, can’t be stopped from flowing. And definitely not with a notice drafted by some under secretary in a Kartavya Bhavan room.
In fact, the more a government tries to openly and publicly attempts to restrict something, the more it adds to the Streisand Effect. In 2006, singer Barbara Streisand sued a photographer for clicking a photo of her Malibu mansion. Before she filed the case, less than 10 people had viewed and downloaded the photo from the website where it was hosted. After her case was filed, the photo was shared widely with hundreds of thousands of people seeing and downloading it.
The way the world of tech works, the Indian government needs to understand the limits of its power and reach. There are things it cannot do, actually no government can because in many cases the technology is commonplace, decentralised and watertight. In such instances when the government tries to do something, it only makes things worse for itself. We have seen it again and again. We saw it last week with Bitchat. Before that we saw it with Telegram.
As I see it, in the matters of tech the CJP protests were an exhibition of dumb and dumber. In future both parties would have to get a little smarter about it.
- Ends
