Comparatively, between the two nations, I don't think the role of the Chinese state in controlling the thoughts of its citizens can be easily compared with American free market capitalism. In reality, China also has similar model of capitalism which operates in a similar way.
The government creating fake posts, the Chinese fire wall.. Tiananmen Square.. people with anti-goverment views at local level - regularly going missing.. official and unofficial snithches on nearly every street.. I could go on.
The unique role of the Chinese government (unlike America) make their social media habits interesting.
Now of course American social media habits are interesting, but not for the same reasons, and I would argue: American social media habits aren't as important in areas like human rights.
To put it in another context: if I was making this post from china or was Chinese - I would be looking over my shoulder and perhaps writing more ambiguously.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-op...
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/georgemonbiot/2011/fe...
This is old news. It was first revealed in 2004.
What would be interesting in a bad way would be if the US government was using it at anywhere near the scale of the Chinese government.
The irony of the thread is that the fundamental debate is about if such a forum should be allowed to exist without government mediation and control.