The discussion being entirely banned on Weibo also implies that it's deliberate.

Try searching "李嘉诚发声" and you'll get a message saying "According to relevant laws, regulations and policies, this page is not found"

Don't they just block anything that even barely mentions HK independence?

Actually, HK independence is deliberately mentioned a lot in Weibo.

They want to paint the protesters as pro-HK independence but in fact this is not one of our five demands.

And of course they block all the stuffs that make the HK gov and police look bad.

> The discussion being entirely banned on Weibo

I have also noticed sharing videos WeChat seems to be on whitelist mode 2 nights ago.

Speculation is that there were heavy traffic for sharing globally resulting in all videos on WeChat were temporarily shadow banned until individually approved.

Didn't they block Winnie the Pooh images because it had come to represent Xi Jinping? Those images maybe weren't deliberately provocative when produced as a children's cartoon, but the context made them so. Sane thing could happen here?