>"In the past year, two of Hong Kong's biggest pro-democracy media outlets were toppled after enormous government pressure, a series of arrests and police raids on their newsrooms."

Thanks for posting The crackdown on independent news in Hong Kong continues. The most worrying thing about this is that publications are shutting down before any state intervention because they know they are not safe reporting the way they do. It's easy to write this off as just one of those things that happens in China, but if you look at some of the legislation being pushed through in western countries you might be surprised so see similar ambiguous legislation on speech that could evolve into something similar. This is before we even consider that fact that most mainstream media is owned by a select few and that journalists probably know what is deemed "off-topic" and shouldn't be published for fear of cancellation by their peers; so in a way western journalism self censors a lot already too, though we are still permitted media that criticises the government for now. I really hope we don't see this form of censorship we are seeing in Hong Kong take a hold around the world, but I think nations states are aware of the predicament they are in due to the information age so I wouldn't be surprised to see some type of clampdown at some point. We are already seeing it with governments actioning against 'misinformation' and pressuring social media sites, so there are definitely some signs there.