[m9731526]

Over these years a lot of words and characters got banned, some with good intention like to stop lewd or not-suit-for-kiids content from spreading, most other times with intention to stop people from talking about things CCP not willing to let people discuss about.

If you can read Chinese, you will found that on some forums people are like talking with magic spells, in extreme cases, whole paragraph or article is composed of word/characters that pronounce same but looks different, or just looks similar enough so people understand what it implys.

Even if Chinese is my native language I can't read ciphertext of that level.

Talking about censorship, I'd like to share my 2 cents. For some time I had been actively browsing Zhihu (a Chinese knowledge sharing social platform), even posting and talking with the users. It's around a decade ago, the censorship back then was much looser. I am a Taiwanese, we even talked about a political incident which is basically Taiwanese people protesting about the ruling signing CSSTA... some Chinese agree, some do not, some just left hatred comments, but people back then was really talking and sharing opiinion. You find no more stuff like this now, the censorship got strengthened over years, a lot of topics are risky and people would rather not talk about it.

[dumb1224]

I share your sentiment. I couldn't agree more with the funny and sad cipher text. Zhihu could have been a good site for idea exchange but it too became obvious a target. I was very envious of online forum culture in Taiwan such as PTT and you never know there may be many chinese netizens from the mainland posing and hiding in disguise.

I think what you are saying about censorship is true but it's also because we are facing unprecedented challenges both online and in real life. The traditional academic settings of intellectuals on various sites are not the same anymore. I won't say what is better or not but I hope more communications will eventually bridge gaps. If you're skeptical about the relationship between Taiwan and the mainland, look at Republic Ireland / Northern Ireland. It could be much worse until eventually an ambiguous agreement arrived. Sometimes people just need a bit cool down to communicate.