Blowing Off Steam

From How to criticize the government on Chinese social media:

The blog Tea Leaf Nation has written about a fascinating Harvard study that shows what posts get censored in Chinese cyberspace and why. The blog post (and the study itself) are worth reading in full, but, briefly, the study postulates that while censorship attempts to obfuscate it also "exposes an extraordinarily rich source of information about the Chinese governmen's interests, intentions, and goals" (italics in the original), and that the government doesn't necessarily censor posts with "negative, even vitriolic criticism of the state, its leaders, and its policies," but rather focuses on "comments that represent, reinforce, or spur social mobilization, regardless of content."

The second point especially seems to be a more nuanced understanding of Chinese censorship: someone blowing off steam is fine, even if it's "unambiguously against the state and its leaders," as long as it doesn't encourage destabilizing action.

The only difference is that in the US you are not censored; the police just plant evidence.  You can talk all the smack you want as long as it doesn't mean anything.