In the early hours of Feb. 7, China’s powerful internet censors experienced an unfamiliar and deeply unsettling sensation. They felt they were losing control.

Feb 7 was the exact day Woodward recorded Trump saying the virus was worse than the flu and very dangerous. Tapes that wouldn't be released for months. Not released, not in a book, not leaked, nothing until the end of the summer. This is while the NYT, which propublica cites, was scolding China over valuing secrecy over safety.

according to confidential directives sent to local propaganda workers and news outlets.

Which the US has too. Our confidential directives and propaganda workers are privatized.

They ordered news websites not to issue push notifications alerting readers to his death. They told social platforms to gradually remove his name from trending topics pages.

How many times has Facebook, twitter, or reddit manipulated shit to remove certain narratives? It happens all the time.

They lay bare in extraordinary detail the systems that helped the Chinese authorities shape online opinion during the pandemic.

While the entire US media helped Trump's admin shape opinion as well.

At a time when digital media is deepening social divides in Western democracies,

Yeah why is that?

I could itemize the whole shitty article but it's just so fucking exhausting. It's one thing to report China bad. I don't even care about that. It's that they report it with such urgency, as if there is a crisis happening. They also report on it so sanctimoniously as if the sole purpose of Western media isn't to be privatized propaganda. The US media helped sell wars, genocides, atrocities on a level that makes this shit look quaint. China asking state media not to report on corona like a world-ending event and not to make the party look bad is nothing compared to something like making everyone think there's weapons of mass destruction. Giving platforms to war mongers like McCain and then lionizing them when they die. The US media is so fucking entrenched in intelligence and the deep state it's not even funny. But because they're private companies, it's actually free press.

These people have facilitated murder on an industrial and global scale for decades yet the only thing Western journalists do is report breathless sensationalism to drum up support for more murder. The same fucks who love this shit being out there also kill journalists. We have it on video. They will fucking drop a bomb on you when you go cover the next war you dipshits. They'll mag dump on your crew because you were carrying a tripod. They'll let Saudi Arabia slice you up. But goddamn you still go do the footwork of imperialism.