The idea is that successful message control will be subtle to imperceptible at first, but through successive actions it will just become commonplace to "not diss China".

If Reddit is the "forum of the internet" then it won't matter if it slowly erodes into a Fox News like media presence. It will exert the gravity over other forums through its "reasonability" on non-sensitive topics.

Kind of like how most modern politicians don't say anything bad about Israel.