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"