With rednote being a thing, all the usual dronies of the 1.6 billion dollar army have come out to say “but muh ccp censorship”
To begin, this was a very sudden influx of users onto the site. No shit some of the censorship is heavy handed.
Secondly, Chinese censorship just seems bad because it’s more honest. Yeah, you get banned for being a dipshit and you get banned for being a rightist and wrecker. (Being arrested or visited by the police is a rare occurrence at best and a fabrication at worse. Not to mention that JT was visited by and intimidated by the American Gestapo for his supposed free speech too) Over here you might not get banned for it, except in the cases where you do (see:reddot and africa stream for instance), but there’s also ways they suppress views without banning people. Age restrictions, aforementioned intimidation, algorithmic suppression, etc. These are just unofficial forms of censorship that aren’t as obvious as outright bans. This isn’t even mentioning how free speech absolutism is really an American obsession. It’s not a thing in Europe and other parts of the world.
There’s also the “both sides badddd” argument to this (im looking at you piratesoftware), but again, look at the past 20-30 years. From the mmr scandal to lynchings to J6, etc. You’re really going to sit here and be like “oh but slippery slop”
“Both sides bad” isn’t a good analysis, because the US really is the Great Satan, considering the world system, class relations, racism, and indigenous genocide.
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What I’m curious about, and have not yet asked on 小红书, is whether there is an online space that kids aren’t allowed in so that people can talk about things that they don’t want kids to be exposed to, but isn’t illegal.
LGBTQ topics come up first. Their excuse is, hey, we don’t want kids seeing that, but it’s totally fine if you are and it’s not illegal. So I wonder if there’s a place that you can talk about that stuff that is age restricted.
On a separate note, to keep everything in one comment, I do think that America brains have some issues with censorship that they don’t understand. Sure, the government doesn’t have that many rules around censorship, but every single platform does, and you’re gonna get kicked off or banned from one platform or another for saying certain things. It’s just that in America, those things are inconsistent, and you can get banned for whatever reason the CEO wants you to be. This just fractures our online environments and creates tribalism, which leads to more infighting, not less.
Agreed, and given that some degree of censorship is necessary, there are bound to be mistakes. Many might see their policy on discussion of illegal drugs a mistake, for example, but there are plenty of platforms people can discuss that subject, and the rules are plainly stated.
After the opium wars, it’s really not unreasonable for China and its people to prefer not to allow the subject of illegal drugs to be discussed.