A lot of people in the west (especially the US) are raised with the Sunday school idea that religion is something you choose after an objective weighing of ideas. The reality is that both China and the US have engrained cultural values which lead to these regulations. Those cultural values sometimes manifest as religious practice, but there is no hard distinction.
The current discussion around 'harm' from AI generated images is the most hilarious example of a cultural more trying to find a justification for its existence after it is no longer applicable.
Will no one think of the pixels being exploited?
The older I get the more I realize that culture is what keeps us back. The Romans didn't invent steam engines not because they didn't want them but because they couldn't imagine a world where you wouldn't need slaves. The Catholic Church didn't survive the printing press.
Currently there is no society which is friendly to digital information. The first one which is will overtake everyone else in the same way that industrialization let the west overtake everyone else.
> The Catholic Church didn't survive the printing press.
It's a little bit off-topic, but you have to live in a very different world to believe that, as the Catholic Church is by far the largest Christian church still today.
The only religion that is larger than it, not by an extremely large margin, is Islam (not sure if you split Islam in its different branches).
The reality is that after a short initial resistance, the Catholic Church quickly turned around and embraced printing. I would argue that the Catholic Church is probably one of the most agile among the main organised religions and adapts rather well to changes. It pains me to say that, but it's clearly not going to die anytime soon.
