I don't know about China in particular, but I find youtube censorship to be particularly deceitful.
If you make a comment, and it is censored for some reason, perhaps the video owner blocked you or whatever, the comment still shows; TO YOU. When you are logged in, you can see your comment.
But no-one else can see it.
Log out, or logon as someone else, and your comment is simply not there.
I found a similar thing with facebook. If you join a group, and are then banned for some reason (I'm not sure the exact mechanism), you can no longer see the group - it's as though it doesn't exist; it doesn't show in searches, etc. But log out, or logon as someone else, and there it is.
This 'customized view of reality' seems to me much more dangerous than simple censorship.
If you make a comment, and it is censored for some reason, perhaps the video owner blocked you or whatever, the comment still shows; TO YOU. When you are logged in, you can see your comment.
But no-one else can see it.
Log out, or logon as someone else, and your comment is simply not there.
I found a similar thing with facebook. If you join a group, and are then banned for some reason (I'm not sure the exact mechanism), you can no longer see the group - it's as though it doesn't exist; it doesn't show in searches, etc. But log out, or logon as someone else, and there it is.
This 'customized view of reality' seems to me much more dangerous than simple censorship.