>>> I don't see how this is a productive point. "Democracy is best" is 1) what the US government wants you to think, and 2) an idea that they can manipulate the information environment to promote.
>> I don't see how this is a productive point. "Democracy is best" is 1) what the US government wants you to think, and 2) an idea that they can manipulate the information environment to promote.
> Can they? The US government has very limited "hard" control over what information is published, e.g. there are no banned books in the US and it would be impractical for the government to try to impose any such ban, in stark contrast to the PRC.
Yeah, the massive amount of information control in China has no parallel in the US:
1. Almost all media is state-owned, and those that aren't are required to follow state directives about what and what not to cover (https://chinadigitaltimes.net/china/directives-from-the-mini...)
2. Huge numbers of people employed to implement social media censorship (https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/jun/29/the-great-firew...: "A considerable amount of censorship is conducted through the manual deletion of posts, and an estimated 100,000 people are employed by both the government and private companies to do just this.")
3. Ditto for books and other publications (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_censorship_in_China#Mainl...: apropos quote "In 2021, the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China announced a ban on books in school libraries that engage in 'Western veneration'").
4. Requirements that every single website account, network connection, and phone number be traceable to an particular individual's ID (typically implemented by requiring phone number validation). This encourages self-censorship (https://www.lawfareblog.com/shrinking-anonymity-chinese-cybe...).
5. The actual 50 cent party (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party)
6. Etc.
Sure you can mad-lib a Western country into my comment, but the comparison is facile.
