That is not true. Censorship is the suppression of expression. Full stop. Anyone who controls a medium can do it. Only the U.S. government can violate the First Amendment to the Constitution.

People often conflate the two. That censorship and First Amendment violations are one and the same. They are not.

And the reason the U.S. government saw fit to restrict its ability to censor its public is because they recognized that that ability could be used to censor legitimate criticism of the government.

No. Censorship is when the government kicks down your door to arrest you for your wrongthink. People getting banned from some site or project because of obnoxious behavior is not censorship, it's just normal social activity and group homeostasis. They can always seek other ways to express themselves. They can buy a domain and blog about it.

Dang rate limited my HN account because I got into too many controversial discussions. Arguments just like this one. Did I call him out for censorship? No. I asked him to keep it rate limited. Because the truth is sometimes I see things and I just have to reply.

> No. Censorship is when the government kicks down your door to arrest you for your wrongthink. People getting banned from some site or project because of obnoxious behavior is not censorship, it's just normal social activity and group homeostasis.

The word 'censorship' is clearly defined to include actions by many groups, not just governmental entities.

Now, I think there is a line between moderation and censorship but it is not based on who is doing it. That line is can get real fuzzy, but in my opinion (and it mirrors some supreme court decisions) the most significant difference is in what they try to control. Moderation tries to regulate how people communicate and censorship tries to control which ideas get expressed. Almost all moderation also includes some amount of censorship.

Why restrict the definition to political censorship? Surely there are such things as academic censorship, religious censorship, etc.

Because none of those things have the force of law backing them.

Academic censorship? Start your own journal and publish there. Religious censorship? Start your own church and gather your followers. Forum censored you? Start your own website where they have zero say about anything and write about whatever you want.

Government censorship? You are screwed, and you go straight to jail if you try to break free and start your own.

Because not everyone who can write an academic article also has the ability to establish and run an entire publishing business. Just because they technically could doesn't mean they realistically can.