China’s restrictions on free speech scare me…

I see people complain about free speech restrictions in China with this deep paranoid fervor. And then I see them dismiss free speech restrictions on Reddit or Facebook or YouTube or TikTok or Twitter as personal problems created by trolls and losers.

Case in point...

Three months after Tired_Thumb learned of the government investigation, a New York poll worker named Paigelynne Gonyea received a voicemail from a man identifying himself as an agent with Homeland Security.

“We were just calling you in reference to a post that we believe you made on Instagram where you doxxed an ICE agent back in January,” said the caller.

Shortly after, two agents from ICE OPR arrived at the voting site where she was working.

They held printed screenshots from her account, she said, including the post in question. The agents flipped by it quickly, she said, but she caught one thing: The post included a photo of Ross, the immigration officer who killed Good.

The file that agents were holding also contained Gonyea’s address, date of birth and what looked like a picture of her taken at airport security, she said. They told her to take down the post and asked her to sign a letter acknowledging she had been informed that she “may” have violated federal law with her social-media account.

Of cousre, I'm not living in China. So my fear of Chinese restrictions on free speech are minimal because the Chinese government isn't the one I have to worry about.