Alongside this, I think it's worth keeping in mind gradual changes without discreet dates.
For example, online copyright enforcement/existence has been on a complex, but directional journey over the 20 years. Same for "safety" and other "content policies," both euphemistic and literal. For a short time copyright looseness made "mashups" a major musical genre. Years later, walking by a speaker playing music triggers automatic "demonetisation" on youtube. Meanwhile, social media became much more centralised and inoffensive. Nudity, politics and such are strongly discouraged unless explicitly encouraged.
There are landmarks in the China-touching part of this timeline that are critical to understanding where we are. At one point, the great firewall was derided. Violating digital freedom with comprehensive censorship meant opting out the digital revolution.
Google "walked away" from China when they got too insistent about "getting the message" and independently censoring search in line with unwritten, but well understood censorship rules. Google regretted this and their subsequents did not repeat the error. Since then, most major tech companies have learned the lesson. Telsa, Apple, Disney, Microsoft, etc.
In June 2021, a bug on Bing accidentally applied a chinese censorship setting worldwide. "Tank Man" no longer existed on Bing. A demonstration of what flipping a switch in local content settings can do.