Why Twitter’s “censorship” is not the same as China’s

Close your eyes and imagine a world where any social media post or account could be removed without explanation at the behest of a Trump administration. That’s censorship.

Twitter banning an account? That’s debatable.

When the company confirmed on Jan. 20 that it had locked the account of China’s embassy in the US due to a tweet defending Beijing’s policies in Xinjiang, many on China’s Twitter-like Weibo were quick to mock the US company. “What is freedom of speech? It is that the Weibo account of the US embassy in...