Genuinely curious, how so?

Lightning channels are centralized entities with their own fee structures

They can be opened peer to peer, or hop between other channels, similar to dns routing

They are prefunded with a certain quantity of bitcoin that dictates the size of bitcoin that can move in that route at once - although smaller denominations can go through in rapid succession this just means more fees levied

All of this incentivizes a larger channel to be created by a well funded party, which can be coaxed into censoring transactions because they are a payment processor or institutional service. Likely an incumbent such as Visa joining the lightning network as a victim of LN’s own success.

There are some mitigations built in and actively developed. We are 8 years deep into Lightning.

Right, yeah, but isn’t the network large enough by now where a transaction would be routed around the censoring nodes regardless? Much like how there are censoring miners on the mainnet, but the censored transactions still go through due to not everyone doing the censoring?

Yes, they can route around. I think the number of people needing to open channels to deal with this, undermines the utility and scaling point of the Lightning network if it ever takes off. L1 will be so bogged down with channels opening and closing.

The difference is that becoming a larger channel is not gatekept by regulation, and not at all necessary. Creating small channels between two parties, e.g. for subscriptions, is viable. Though not as convenient, it is at least more convenient than getting blacklisted by Visa.

yes, but this circumvents the egalitarian nature

lighting channels are expensive to open and close

as it stands, there already isn't enough block space for “mass adoption” users to all have their own single lightning channel

let alone several

lightning in its ultimate form will always be a hosted solution

and those with the acumen and willingness to pay to open and close channels (or perhaps use the L1 bitcoin) will be a separate class of people