We never had free speech online. Only the illusion of it. I've noticed, especially recently, that most websites that allow commenting will shadow ban comments

We never had free speech online. Only the illusion of it. I've noticed, especially recently, that most websites that allow commenting will shadow ban comments they disagree with, even if it's not trolling or abusive. The scary part is that most people don't even see this and just assume that all of the comments they see are the only ones on the site. This can create the false sense that a larger number of people have a particular viewpoint. This sort of censorship and controlling behavior absolutely effects the outcome of our elections and is much worse than anything Russia can even dream of. The Chinese government knows this well and in addition to online troll campaigns, they fund our media companies directly and will pull funding if these companies don't toe the line. With Covid ripping through the profits of many of these media companies, now is the time they will buy them up in mass. We all should be prepared for an online future of CCP controlled media and influence.