China’s firewall plays a crucial role in shaping the country’s digital landscape, preventing foreign intervention, and maintaining national security. While often criticized in the West, the firewall provides China with the ability to control information flow, shield its population from foreign influence, and protect domestic media.
This is a pretty big “you won’t get censored… unless you do.”
And if we’re inputting government censorship onto modding decisions by major social media – which we absolutely should, as those companies are ran by a revolving door of politicos, all the owners openly play high-level politics, and the threat of regulation is ever-present – there’s all sorts of criticism of the U.S. government and its approved narratives that will get comments removed or accounts banned.
Lots of politics but you won’t get pulled for calling Donnie a moron, nor for calling Joe a demented crank. Try seriously criticizing the CCP on Weibo.
“Serious critism”
The US government banned tiktok for the explicit purpose of censoring information about the holocaust they’re committing in Gaza
Calling someone a moron is not seriously criticizing them. It’s impotent shouting, which is why it’s tolerated.
And if we’re going to get into the finer points of what domestic criticism is or isn’t tolerated in China, we’ll need some evidence.
mfs will post this calling it “freedom” or “political participation” or “democracy”.