The similarity to China isn’t a coincidence. This is all coming from the cultural dominance of TikTok among young people, which (to my knowledge) algorithmically downranks any content that has those words in them.
It’s a common Chinese strategy, born of Chinese censorship requirements, which TikTok naturally used when presented with similar-enough problems outside of China.
This goes far beyond TikTok. Twitch, Youtube, the jurisdictions of Canada, the UK, Australia... this is one thing I'm not willing to blame China for, I am just noting how close it is the same thing that China does.
It’s a common Chinese strategy, born of Chinese censorship requirements, which TikTok naturally used when presented with similar-enough problems outside of China.