I'm talking to my very neoliberal friend and I'm basically praising China and saying I'd want to move there and she's all "But they censor all the internet!" and I'm honestly at a loss because I don't know enough about their internet situation to have any strong arguments. Is the internet heavily censored in China? Is using VPN not allowed? What's up with their whole internet vibe?
It is heavily censored, but most censorship is done by individuals and copyrights holders, same as in the west. For example, there was a notorious round of book bans last week, but it was initiated by a famous author using his leverage to coerce his publisher, which is sort of a monopoly to ban other works. Because the company owns the copyrights the authors can't go elsewhere. I don't remember who this guy is or what got banned, because it was relatively limited. There was a much more infamous banning wave started by the dog shit soul land author a few years ago.
The thing is, this happens in the west all the time, and the problem is not political, it's material, in that the book market rewards few participants and many authors have to agree to onerous terms. Tho the authors that get popular may tend to be dog shit because they flatter liberal values like the 3 body problem. But it's probably mostly random.
So if you are concerned about censorship you should be against copyright and for a welfare net for authors, and better contracts for authors.
POSIWID