Elon presumably being an exemplar for current trends: Twitter is unarguably far less censored than it was before (though censorship is still present). And Meta took note and also turned down its censorship significantly in response.

The Epstein files, while far less than hoped for by many, are another example of a trend towards sharing far more sensitive info than has been typical by past administrations.

There are many good examples you could point to of increased authoritarianism, but censorship in particular seems to be on the backswing, if anything.

Edit: oof, it's extremely concerning that the comment below was flagged

The "age verification" push is a big move in that direction in Western countries. "Think of the children" is an evergreen excuse for authoritarian measures.

A private organization making editorial decisions is not censorship. You have no right to use someone else's megaphone. If you don't like it, you are free to go elsewhere. None of these platforms is a monopoly. I, for one, have no interest in using a website like Xitter where people openly celebrate the murder of my family. I stopped using it the day it was bought by a Nazi.

Today, we see flagrant examples of the literal government literally prohibiting people from speaking their minds.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/19/us/politics/trump-cnn-msn...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fcc-disney-abc-early-license-re...

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2026/07/31/p...

When a social media deletes users posts because they cross a political line, it may not be government censorship, but it's very obviously still censorship.

It's very hard to take opinions like yours seriously because I know exactly how you'd react if all your HN posts were deleted because you're calling people "Nazis"

>It's very hard to take opinions like yours seriously because I know exactly how you'd react if all your HN posts were deleted because you're calling people "Nazis"

If you deny that there are literal and unabashed Nazis on Twitter these days, you are wrong. I am not using the term as a pejorative; I am using it as a straightforward descriptor for people who post pictures of swastikas and SS officers, start their posts with "Hitler was right", have "1488" in their bios, and write my name (((like this))) every damn time. These sorts of people would not be offended by being called Nazis and are not shy about their desire to see me gassed to death. Twitter paid them to say these things and then tried to censor people who criticized them for it, and that's a fact.

Hell, I didn't even call this guy a Nazi:

https://tinyurl.com/5n94mk74

So you must really hate laws like the Online Safety Act and the Digital Services Act, that force platforms to censor vaguely-defined hate-speech, without a court order, or face ruinous fines. Literal government censorship, men with guns forcing private companies to silence citizens, denying you the right to organize as you please.

I mean, I assume you hate them. Based on your complaints about government interfering with individuals organizing as they please, you should hate them, but then you speak as if those laws don't exist, and you praise as exemplars of free speech and free association the very services those laws forces to censor. Maybe you just didn't know about them? And now that you do, you're going to protest these laws as fervently as you're protesting the other violations of free speech you mentioned in your posts?

Are you really going to conflate publishing with operating a social media platform? Regardless, if those editorial decisions are meant to suppress a viewpoint, it is censorship - government censorship is only one kind.

> You have no right to demand Twitter publish your speech.

Nobody argued that what social media do is illegal, only that it counts as censorship.

Big "if". In the case of all the big platforms, they are not.

You are free to define the term however you wish. But if "censorship" applies to ordinary website moderation, then you have no basis to object to it. If censorship refers to suppression of speech, and your speech is not being suppressed, then you are not being censored.

P.S. the Epstein files were just a cruel joke! I wouldn’t list it there.

Surely they could get away with at the very least the same amount?

There’s nothing simple about authoritarian control.

Who says we have less censorship? Sure people can tweet all kind of stuff without getting banned. Fine, but at the same time US president is removing news networks he doesn’t like from press briefings. That’s just one example. To say the censorship is in decline is baffling.

This is the current lead story on the NYT.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/19/us/politics/trump-cnn-msn...

Trump banned disfavored news outlets from the White House.

He also tried to take TV stations off the air for hosting comics who made fun of him, cut funding for public broadcasters in order to "punish or suppress disfavored expression", scrubbed information from government websites, and endeavored to punish "woke" universities.

https://universityobserver.ie/silencing-late-night-censorshi...

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/03/31/media-broadcasting-...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_government_onlin...

https://apnews.com/article/harvard-trump-funding-appeal-f652...

People have been arrested for writing editorials he didn't like:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_R%C3%BCmeysa_%C3%...

Hundreds have been arrested for protesting against ICE:

https://www.democracynow.org/2026/4/21/caught_crackdown_thom...

ICE agents have murdered two protesters to date.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Ren%C3%A9e_Good

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Alex_Pretti

>Elon presumably being an exemplar for current trends

He is that: he is using lawfare to silence people criticizing X for hosting and funding white supremacists.

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/x-twitter-elon-mus...

https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk-media-matters-lawsuit-a...

I think hundreds of people being arrested for their protected speech is a more objectionable form of censorship than a few Twitter bans.

We don’t know what it feels like because we collectively participate and decide what should be considered and what not _periodically_ and it’s possible to change it, evidently, with various degrees and velocity by voting.

> I would much prefer the dictatorship-style censorship, because our censorship is far, far more effective.

Case in point!

I’ve lived under both and can guarantee you don’t know what that dictatorship you so much yearn for has in their bag for you until it’s too late.

It’s a mistake to separate these. They go hand in hand and mich further as you climb up the authoritarian ladder.

What do you think is the style of censorship in authoritarian regimes like Iran? Do you think it’s just preventing access?

Also obvious is that all news is made in a short list of countries. Everywhere else the best you can hope for are terrible events.

You will only get opinions from a small list of talking heads.

One might imagine populating the media with nothing but professors. Each field has new stuff every week. In stead you get Adam Savage. The name isn't by acident.

Not a single one of my examples was committed by the government (except if you count funding Carnegie Mellon and MIT). But even in cases when they are, voting rarely helps: https://www.woes.blog/p/tgr-democracy

> you don’t know what that dictatorship you so much yearn for

Re-read my sentence. I don't yearn for a dictatorship, I yearn to blunt and make obvious the current secret, subtle censorship regime.

> has in their bag for you

Is it jail?

“White Lives Matter” Slogan Earns Two Dutch Men Imprisonment for Racism - https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news-corner/nether...

Activist ran race-hate sticker library, court told - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c51zn2l33r9o -Stickers with text like "It's OK to be White" and "We will be a minority in our homeland by 2066". For which he was later convicted and jailed - https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leeds-68448867

I repeat - you agree with the regime. You're floating in the river, letting it carry you where it pleases, while telling those swimming upstream that there is no current, nothing to struggle against.

Edit as reply because "posting too fast":

> How did all of these social media companies made a 180 suddenly after power shifts in Washington?

None of the racist or right-wing or white nationalist subreddits got unbanned, American Renaissance is still banned off Facebook and Youtube, Facebook still explicitly bans white nationalism, and other social media ban it implicitly as "hate speech", TikTok bans "white lives matter" [1], and promised to ban even more [2] (under Trump's 1st term), while wikipedia doesn't even bother to mention that as censorship [3]. All of this is still the case under the current Washington. The only exception is Twitter, after Musk bought it - there, American Renaissance got unbanned.

And a 180 would imply that these things are not only unbanned, but their opponents are banned.

So if you're going to just make stuff up, i.e. lie, then I won't waste my time with you.

[1] https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/other/tiktok-sparks-massive-b...

[2] https://www.timesofisrael.com/tiktok-says-it-will-crack-down...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_TikTok

Interesting! How did all of these social media companies make a 180 suddenly after power shifts in Washington?

> You're floating in the river,…

Of course but this doesn’t have any bearing on what I said. We are talking about severity and type of censorship not its meaning.

one isn't ignoring the other

They censor and delete comments that would age very well.

Sometimes even to their benefit but they are not smart people (control freaks, mods).

I'd wager the vast majority of internet censorship is within platform, like that done by Reddit mods.

The most egregious example I've seen in my lifetime was when old Twitter decided to censor a NYPost article, down to blocking sharing in DMs.

It seems that type of example is entirely missed here. Is there any attempt to capture that signal?

Literally even 4chan has moderation.

Nobody, not even 4chan users, want an actually unmoderated space.

It made me wonder how unlikely or impossible an event has to be before it would no longer be considered a real threat by whoever or whatever flags posts like that. Firing billionaires into the Sun? Hmm, probably too close to home. Sending them light years away to fire them into a black hole?

That alone shows that the hyothetical "you" is the last person who should be allowed to moderate anything.

That one can only do it within reddit is of course merely a technical limitation. The idea can be implemented much more broadly.

If someone is doing that, it's classified as either a true threat or an incitement, both of which have been clearly established as not covered by the 1st amendment by SCOTUS and thus illegal - and can be stopped for no more reason than the fact that it's illegal.

On the other hand, online content moderation rules often get politically weaponized to silence dissent that is inconvenient but fully legal (and perfectly fine, for as much as you might disagree with it / hate that others get to hear ideas you don't like).

Going from "I voiced my opinion on the internet" to "people are inciting gassing the jews" is quite the stretch, crosses a well defined line, and is just nonsensical.

If 4chan didnt have spam filters, the users would be begging for it almost immediately because the website would become unusable.

What I was trying to point out is that there are a lot of users of these 'edgy' sites that would like to post content that the site owners don't want them posting. So the site owner censors and removes CSAM and piracy so that the site isn't immediately in a legal black hole. The site owners remove content that at least some of the users would want be a use they find it morally or legally objectionable. Spam is kinda orthogonal to that point, since neither the site owner or the users want to see it.

There are forms of moderation that we often dont even think of as moderation or 'censorship' because its removing content that "nobody" wants to see. One may argue that the spammers are users of the site who are being censored.

Also, this is a side note, but I'd assume that the overwhelming majority of even 4chan users are in favour of CSAM being banned from the site, even if there are some users who want to see it (i could be wrong about that, it's not like i even have anecdotes to back that up)

For the two categories mentioned above that are plainly illegal, I think, ironically, you can probably just keep AI classifiers running and wait for calls from NCMEC or DMCA emails, exploiting safe harbor clauses and/or by pointing at reasonable measures you've taken. If you have a large post volumes and short public log retention(private logs will probably have to be kept), that would help keeping the pressure low for those.

You may agree or disagree with the ban, but surely you agree that we should be aware of such Overton window enforcement?

In fact, I wouldn't call the latter "moderation" at all, rather it's mods abusing their power to push political propaganda, but they do it through moderation in terms of action.

Thankfully this is extremely rare on the major platforms. "This news story is fake as fuck and is causing trouble such as people going to throw Molotov cocktails at random mosques" is the common scenario.

Giving an anonymous rando the power to censor my conversation is abhorrent. And it's absurd that most people are ok with that.

Yes? Moderation is a form of censorship with a different connotation (the one you agree with vs the other you don't). I don't see how it's controversial

Which article, about what subject?

The story you are referring to involved the New York Post or its affiliates breaking in to Hunter Biden's laptop (a felony) and publishing his personal correspondence, complete with unredacted phone numbers and email addresses. This violated Twitter's policies against doxxing and dissemination of hacked materials. Characterizing this as censorship is misleading; the story contained no newsworthy information and its publication violated longstanding Twitter policy. It's hard to imagine Twitter functioning without such a policy. I don't see any reason the New York Post should get away with violating it just because it claims to be a newspaper.

The Wall Street Journal, a Murdoch rag like the Post and hardly known for its liberal bias, declined to publish this information, which is why it wound up in the disreputable Post instead. Respectable journalists have ethical standards. Act like thugs, get treated like thugs.

There's an argument that when a platform is big enough, it's a common carrier.

But your point is well taken, it's definitely more challenging and expensive than what's being done here.

... and then check for those (or, counterexamples) in the wild.-

Again, which article, about what subject?

howunfortunate didn't answer, just deflected:

> Are there NYPost articles you feel people should be prevented from DMing? Or posting, for that matter?

qerghnui's reply was flagged to death:

> Why do you refuse to answer the question?

> The story you are referring to involved the New York Post or its affiliates breaking in to Hunter Biden's laptop (a felony) and publishing his personal correspondence, complete with unredacted phone numbers and email addresses. This violated Twitter's policies against doxxing and dissemination of hacked materials. Characterizing this as censorship is misleading; the story contained no newsworthy information and its publication violated longstanding Twitter policy. It's hard to imagine Twitter functioning without such a policy. I don't see any reason the New York Post should get away with violating it just because it claims to be a newspaper.

> The Wall Street Journal, a Murdoch rag like the Post and hardly known for its liberal bias, declined to publish this information, which is why it wound up in the disreputable Post instead. Respectable journalists have ethical standards. Act like thugs, get treated like thugs.

> P.S. Twitter is free to make whatever editorial decisions it pleases. Trying to make them publish something they don't want to publish is compelled speech. Compelling speech in the name of freedom of speech is hypocritical.

This is very much in line with the likes of pokemon go, wiki landmark projects and what have you (those are nice things to have for autonomous drones/missiles to navigate only with vision when gps/cellular/starlink is actively blocked).

—

Russia banned stuff like speedtest because things like that may help “map” the network, aid NSA to model malware propagation, etc.

Not that this should matter when you have cisco, dell, nokia hardware, but it won’t hurt either.

—

I mean come on, some nuts even willingly install stuff like this: https://atlas.ripe.net/

In the last years many sites started to drop/block connections from the countries like China and Russia. It is sad to see how Internet is becoming more and more fragmented.

I think we would see more.

Counterpoint: see any NIMBY meetings where they shut down any and all proposals and legislations, even the obviously beneficial common sense ones.

Rule by mob has rarely been productive.

Maybe one should have a finite number of winning votes in a period. Then the majority might want something (or not want) but wouldn't consider it important enough to spend their vote on.

I think that would reduce the sense of urgency where there is non, equalize involvement, foster debate with the barely involved and ofc create a focus on things one wants rather than things one doesn't want.

Who knows, maybe one should be able to spend more than one vote per topic.

Rule of the thumb: everyone will not 'just' [1]

The majority is not a single person that will somehow behave like a rational being that will count their votes and vote only for "things that matter". People view very different things as "things that matter", and the system is easily gamed. Run a few popular, but pointless votes, exhaust available winning votes for the period, then try to pass a meaningful legislation. You will have riots form people who have spent their votes, but still want to vote for something truly important.

And that's before we start talking about whether people should directly vote on removing building code regulations for example. Or whether or not measles vaccines should be mandatory.

[1] https://www.tumblr.com/squareallworthy/163790039847/everyone...

Votes per period might not work. You could in stead accumulate votes over time.

Of course the proposals could repeatedly go against a specific group. Not sure if you could create a unit of accounting for it or have some kind of independent jury examine the gaming.

I also wondered if the price could scale with the % victory. Like, if 100% votes A it costs zero votes. 51% would be the most expensive.

Maybe give the proposal makers a bunch of tokens, filling a proposal costs x, each vote against it costs y.

The core thought is basically, if people are overly attached to something they will get it but will have reduced influence on everything else.

But we could improve some parts. For example, voting in elections could be improved by introducing Single Transferrable Vote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote (CGP Grey had a bunch of videos on this: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3897F608FAD61E88&si=TzEP...)

I wonder how similar the result would be if the voter could cast one vote for something and one against. This seems less complex.

It has other advantages. A large election budget shouldn't automatically convert to votes. Doing a pis poor job should probably cost more than a few votes.

I know a few. They're called "normal people who don't suffer from crippling tech libertarianism" and there's more of them than of you.

They voted for it or you assume they don't mind it existing?

where do these paragons of civil obedience congregate? how do they express their wishes for less freedom and more surveillance?

And to your sarcastic remarks about those people being dumb, believe it or not not everyone is willing to forgo every possible evil in the name of personal privacy in remote communication. Such privacy was never a thing until very recently anyway.

(In fact as far as most people are concerned it isn't a thing today either, you'd be surprised how many people assume that their messages and calls are spied on anyway)

why would i waste that much time on writing a reply to you and where do you see snark exactly?

> one proof

i just talk about it with people irl, yeah that thing i suggest you try;)

maybe having lived under the Soviets makes my people less welcoming to the idea of a commissar deciding what they're allowed to see, hear, say, and ultimately think.

consider that not everyone grew up in an oppressive dictatorship.

Note that censorship isn't necessarily bad and restrictions on speech that aren't censorship aren't necessarily acceptable. The prohibition on child pornography is censorship but I support it, while I am opposed to IP law in its entirety.

"In January 2024, Italy's ... ordered major internet service providers (ISPs) in the country to block Anna's Archive due to a copyright complaint..."

"In March 2024, ... ordered major ISPs in the Netherlands to block Anna's Archive and LibGen due to a request by advocacy group BREIN (which represents the interests of the Dutch entertainment industry)."

"In December 2024, the UK Publishers Association won an order from the High Court of Justice requiring major ISPs to block Anna's Archive... under section 97A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act."

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna%27s_Archive

In the end, all censorship is content related. One could definitely argue along the spectrum of "all" to "none" censorship is appropriate, but I would guess most people actually hold the belief that "some" censorship is okay, while disagreeing on "which" censorship is okay.

If this is the case, then the bias problem is indeed relevant.

Let's imagine a country bans the distribution of all writings by authors in another country/region disregard of the content. It would not be censorship according to the original post.

The fact that a ban encompasses a wide variety of content could mean simply that it is difficult/undesirable to limit the scope of the ban, but the censorship always originates from the content.

But when Iran turns off the whole internet during a protest apparently that is a content-neutral t/p/m restriction?

Is it a bad sign if CSAM, Personal (medical, financial, etc) Records, Snuff, and Malware/Ransomeware are censored? What about manufacture of WMDs, terrorism, hate speech? Free software, and copyrighted music? Historical records of genocide?

If someone had a secure system for some of the worst stuff out there and it lasted more than a minute, pay attention because they might have actually solved some real problems.

Here you go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I2p

Doubt it. Besides malice there's also incompetence.

See the article that's also on the front page right now about Spain blocking Cloudflare (i.e. half the internet) during football matches.

Let me know how that works out.

Arguably, the most significant difference is between "free speech" and commercial/paid speech, or distribution vs viewability, but not distinguishing the two and calling both "internet censorship" creates a phrase without much support or meaning.

You can see this directly in online forums (including this one), unpopular truths are routinely flagged to the point where it doesn't matter that discussion could have happened, it effectively can't- and not because the points don't make sense or can't be reasoned with... but because it doesn't feel good that it's true.

So, unfortunately, I think censorship is inevitable.. I guess it's better to have censorship from a small group of people for a small group of people instead of having censorship from a small group of people to a nation-wide group of people though.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=YmOeKahtmdQ

https://youtube.com/watch?v=FRRX0J_TDXY

You can build your own lists and share them using ooni run: https://run.ooni.org/

But what we prefer and what's good for us are two drastically different things.

I actually do the opposite now. The second something aligns with my own ideals perfectly, I inherently distrust it. Because that shouldn't happen. We all think a lot alike, but also very differently. If any political party, commercial, or anything meant to be absorbed by the masses seems like it's perfectly aligned with you? It most likely is bad for you, in my experience.

to hear it from the mods, it's about being responsible for what's said to the admins above. so that's why they need to have censorship power.

Anyone over 35 remembers a lot better forum culture and so much more of it.

Sad we only have censored pieces of shit like HN and Reddit full of disinformation and bullshit

"We literally prefer it that way" might apply to you and your bubble, but there's more outside of it.

Quack: Scalable Remote Measurement of Application-Layer Censorship:

https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/usenixsecurit...

Global Measurement of DNS Manipulation:

https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/usenixsecurit...

Reachability index of Internet blockade circumvention tools:

https://explorer.ooni.org/circumvention

Psiphon:

https://forge.psiphon.ca/en/what-is-psiphon

These two for signing up and doing the footwork along with Paul Graham and everyone at YC have done irreparable damage to the people of the United States in their sustained clandestine disinformation operations, funding Flock, and siphoning money out of programs for Americans and redirecting it to foreigners.

They must be destroyed.

The glowing reviews would reflect quite the survivor bias.

Facebook doesn’t give a shit about censorship, beyond it means a limited audience.