Hello and welcome to the intelligence from The Economist.

I'm your host, Jason Palmer.

Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

This month's censorship of LGBT accounts on WeChat, a Chinese social media platform, came as little surprise.

But unlike previous clampdowns, resistance this time has been muted as a curious Chinese nationalist narrative takes hold online.

And the full list of all the bacteria and other critters in and on a person can reveal a lot about their health.

The same is true of cities.

We look at an annual international survey of bugs in metropolitan areas

and how it might act as an urban health check.

First up, though... Netflix released its quarterly results after markets closed yesterday, revealing that its staggering pandemic-fuel rise is stalling.

Its global subscriber growth was down by 85% on a year earlier.

In North America, it actually lost customers.

But still, Netflix boss Reid Hastings sounded sanguine. I think for at least the next several years, the gross story of streaming as a whole is very intact.

And this is the internet applied to entertainment.

And consumer entertainment around the world is an enormous market.

The company has come a long way since it started renting DVDs by mail,

mostly by going all in on funding its own shows and films.

For the moment, there aren't plans to buy up any of its rivals. Mr. Hastings simply wants to out-compete them.

So I would say really we're a one product company with a bunch of supporting elements that help that product be an incredible satisfaction

for consumers and a monetizing engine for investors.

And it's those supporting elements that may end up being key, as Netflix tries to make

itself as dominant abroad as it's proved to be in its home market.

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