spicy take regarding chinas firewall:
by forcing citizens to use their own countries apps(baidu instead of google, weibo instead of Amazon, wechat instead of like everything), they’ve prevented the export of value/money/data to other countries, and instead kept it for its own citizens.

Do you or your family and friends feel freedom-constrained by the firewall, or is everything good?

I tell them about cool apps they can’t use
they’re like “cool, how do I set I up?”
im like “pay $10 a month for vpn”
then they’re like “eh such a hassle idgaf”