BEIJING (AFP) – The highly anticipated return of “Friends” to Chinese streaming platforms soured quickly after fans noticed an LGBT plot line was cut from the American sitcom – and their complaints were censored too. China’s top platforms started streaming the series on Friday (Feb 11), but the back story of a lesbian character was absent from the first season’s second episode. Fans flooded social media with complaints about the removal, with the top-trending hashtag “Friends censored” raking up tens of millions of views on the Twitter-like Weibo platform. “I compared this episode and found that all the lines referring to Ross’s ex-wife Carol being a lesbian were deleted. It’s very clearly disjointed,” wrote one user, whose post gained more than 177,000 likes.