Systems that accomplish the same goals already exist in the US, but typically not through official channels. For instance, because of the first amendment, you can't block web sites or censor media in the US. The workaround here is a system much more complex than the Great Firewall of China, and involves ownership and connections with media outlets, influence of editors by said owners and also by threatening to withhold access to key officials, propaganda campaigns, smearing of anti-establishment figures and narratives, planting journalists, internet sock puppet accounts, forum manipulation, AI algorithms for closed-loop influence and sentiment analysis, and social media filter bubbles. In the US, the idea is to achieve the same effect as censorship while convincing the public that they arrived at the desired conclusion themselves.

What's more American than privatizing everything, including our own oppression?

Some of those things might be true. But you won't have your life ruined from saying bad things about the president or government.

So I'd say the West in general are in an objectively better position in that regard.

No but you can have your life ruined for wearing a chinese-style dress. Or atleast get bullied by couple thousand faceless people on the internet.

People are digitally tarred and feathered every day in the US, even if they don't take part in social media. Reddit alone has dozens of "bullying" communities, where random people are subjected to ridicule. 4Chan is a whole other level.

When people take part in social media, they only make themselves a more likely subject of the bullying (e.g. twitter's ability to pile onto someone, like a teenager wearing a chinese-style dress).

Certainly we need to work on the problem of toxic online communities and cybe bullying, but surely industrialised and coordinated state bullying, censorship and humiliation is at another level?

Espciallly give the that China has exactly the same problems of toxic communities and bullying anyway. It’s not as if the West has a monopoly on that, so somehow these some sort of balance between the two.

The difference is that those people aren't backed by the government.

You mean like the now-dead mugshots.com site that would post information about people accused, but not convicted of crimes, then make their money through extortion -- charging $500 to take down the photo?

Edit: the site is still alive, but the owners have been arrested: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/may/18/mugshot-phot...

Lots of companies, in states that allow it, will make a hiring decision contingent on passing a credit check

Well you better get to work, because the precursors to this are all in place already.

too late.