• suppression, prohibition, or restriction of information, speech, or media by an authority
  • forms: prior restraint (pre-publication), post-publication removal, platform deplatforming, DNS seizure, IP blocking, search delisting
  • state censorship: Great Firewall of China, internet shutdowns (Iran, Myanmar, Russia), book banning, press control
  • corporate censorship: content moderation policies, algorithmic suppression, shadow banning, app store gatekeeping
  • self-censorship: individuals adjusting behavior under threat, the chilling effect
  • historical: Index Librorum Prohibitorum, Samizdat, book burnings
  • Streisand effect: attempts to suppress information increase its spread
  • cyber is a censorship-resistant knowledge graph: content-addressed storage, cryptographic authorship, permissionless participation, distributed infrastructure
  • IPFS provides the storage layer for censorship-resistant content: content addressing means data persists as long as any node pins it
  • the antidote to censorship is redundancy, encryption, and decentralization
  • see also surveillance, propaganda, human rights, revolution