Likewise us in the west also buy a fair bit of garbage. If you look at the studies on social media and search engine biases, and the potential impact they have on public opinion, it's us that are the brainwashed fruitloops. Having said that we are all human and will get influenced in one way or another. Who's to say who is right or wrong? The whole Russia/Ukraine situation is a good example of that - two sides of the story, neither side talling the whole truth.
Well, I like to think that the side that ISN'T invading another sovereign country and didn't kick off a conflict that has already killed tens of thousands gets the benefit of the doubt. Secondly, when it comes to Russia, even those with slightly better than rudimentary knowledge of the issue can note the massive historical inconsistencies of Putin's recent essay on Russia, along with the claims that all the highly trained and organised people wearing the same uniforms as the Russian army and carrying the same weapons aren't actually the Russian army occupying Eastern Ukraine. Lastly, I'd expect that it's Ukraine's decision on how to craft its own foreign policy, not Moscow's.
Similar with the PRC - I'm gonna go with the countries that don't surveil every part of life their citizens's lives, determine what can and cannot be discussed on the Internet, doesn't run a national system of black prisons and neither holds up to a million people in re-education camps where they are tortured, sterilised and denied the freedom to worship how they choose. Keep in mind, that the PRC has not denied almost all of those claims, the only one they deny is torture. So based on
what comes out of Zhongnanhai, I'm pretty fucking comfortable in making a call on who the bad guy is here.
And yes, we are not angels - asylum seekers, Iraq 2003, stolen generation, almost all of Latin America during the Cold War, East Timor, etc. etc. None of us are angels. But right and wrong is not a game of relativity or whataboutism. Just because 'the West' isn't perfect doesn't mean that the worst authoritarian countries get a free fucking pass.
Lastly, social media and the digital realm is only the reality if you let it be so.