what's unprecedented is that the government couldn't buy it out and make themselves a mega client with personal backdoors for metadata and controlling discussion via opaque TOS violations.

plenty of other platforms were once places where people organized and shared information, but the US ultimately controlled the places where they were hosted directly or through vassal relations.

the PRC has no such relationship with the US and has developed its own, novel platforms that humans like. the geopolitics is what's new and it makes the censorship tactics new.

the government had to step in to overtly ban since it couldn't quietly subvert and coopt it or force ISPs to send threatening letters by opening them up to liability for the sharks of extremely large capital formations. or just straight up paying ISPs off to throttle types of traffic.

to examine the recent history of the internet and platforms rise & falls with a critical perspective seems to reveal the game doesn't change, just the players and the technologies. 20+ years ago a VPN tunnel was a relatively obscure tool mostly used by corporations to provide off-site access to authenticated users accessing secured network resources. now it's the ballgame for bypassing restrictive licensing agreements. a hilarious hijacking.

shit people used to buy movies and software, now they buy the right to subscribe to a platform that can change terms or go dark whenever. and they think this is normal/acceptable.

the cool parts of the internet have always been wackamole for monetization or, when that doesn't work, destruction. I still remember when the cops were raiding and seizing TBP servers every few months, even though the courts never ruled in the state's favor. pure attrition.