**The novel perspective on Sino-US censorship inspired by the RedNote**

In the United States, censorship tends to focus on the most extreme rude comments and posts (which is basically what racism, sexism, queerphobia, etc is). And even then usually this censorship is performed by private companies with zero or near zero input from the government.

Something like the Tik Tok ban is relatively new, and has to do with American fears about Chinese hacking and influence on our country, along with the political elites seeing viewpoints they find horrendous being commonplace on the platform. To my knowledge, this is not a common form of censorship in modern America, but it is one that might continue into the future

The essence of what you said is correct.

The underlying reasons though are not quite clear. In US, the underlying socioeconomic political system is "adversarial", as in everything is about you against someone else. You compete for resources, jobs, etc.. So, speech in US is viewed also in that "adversarial" light. It's allowed to be "adversarial", competing in the "market place of ideas", with limits (1. don't incite violence, 2. don't cause so much hostility to provoke others to violence, 3. national security, etc.)

In theory, China's censorship works with similar standards. But China's overall socioeconomic political system emphasizes on "non-adversarial" or cooperation approach. So, if someone's speech is viewed as mainly designed to provoke adversarial reactions from others, as would be reasonably understood by objective 3rd parties, then such speech are generally not allowed. (Because the benefit of such speech are so minimal and the harm of adversarial confrontation could be so high).

It would be overly simplistic and inappropriate to draw a stark, binary comparison between content moderation practices in China and the United States. In reality, different content platforms in China have nuanced approaches to censorship, with variations primarily concerning hate speech, advertising content, misinformation, and content that might conflict with societal moral norms. Many dimensions of content moderation aren't strictly regulated by law, but instead depend on each platform's desired community atmosphere.

For instance, some platforms take a more permissive approach to hate speech, viewing their space as an arena for viewpoint collision - recognizing that such controversial topics can generate significant user engagement. Conversely, other platforms maintain a much stricter stance, considering such content harmful and potentially intimidating to users who want to share personal experiences.