Who isn't a slave of their government these days? Western country have wagies slaving their life away while the government prints money to make housing unaffordable.

The word slave in this context refers to him thinking that only Chinese people are economically extorted. Not because of their ethnicity but because of their government structure.

Informing a person is a lot more helpful than just flat out banning them.

The first claim is just straight plain old racism, while the second reeks of confused lib. Either way, calling someone a slave in this context is almost certainly meant as an insult to the political organisation of the state and not to its people. This distinction is important with respect to moderation.

I consider the proletariat of capitalist societies to be slaves by definition. Thus if I were convinced that the PRC was capitalist, I could stand behind this sentiment.

Sometimes those judgement calls have allowed moderation that is at the very least poorly defined in the rules. I posted one comment complaining about a local protest about the current Palestine-Israel conflict that trashed my university's library and shuttered it for the next few months. I got a delete-ban over that for a "CHUD Opinion", which is very much not in the rules. And that is far from the first time that I've run into unwritten rules that feel like they're putting a thumb on the scales.

Sources like The Guardian, Reuters, Telegraph, CNN, BBC are sometimes allowed and sometimes removed on rule 1.

The latter case is usually evident while lurking and finding a deep long comment thread. Sometimes one user there has deleted messages and there's another's rule 3 content comments left. Apparently these cases seem to usually be mutual rule 3 but it looks like they're treated differently.

That's what happens on lemmy.world lmao

I can't remember the last time a mod got into an argument on this community - must have been months ago. I remember there being a few teething pains, but those have clearly been resolved.

Edit: I'm not saying I agree with their liberal use of the banhammer (I think it prevents people from seeing the errors in their opinions because being banned creates an antagonistic environment and likely solidifies their positions), but just look at the comment history of mods on this community: they're remarkably quiet.