Censorship

Censorship is the suppression of speech, expression, or information by an authority — historically a government, but increasingly applied to powerful private platforms that remove, restrict, or suppress legal speech based on viewpoint. When Twitter deletes an account, when YouTube demonetizes a video for political content, or when an app store removes an app because of what users post there, many people describe that as censorship — even if no law technically prohibits it.

What it means

The classic definition is government censorship: state authorities banning books, imprisoning journalists, blocking websites. That still exists — China's Great Firewall is the most comprehensive example. But in the U.S. and Western Europe, the primary censorship concern today is private platform censorship: coordinated removal of legal speech by corporations that control the speech infrastructure of the modern world.

Whether private censorship counts as "real" censorship is hotly debated. The counterargument is that private companies have the right to set their own editorial policies. The argument for calling it censorship is that when five companies control where billions of people can speak and be heard, their editorial decisions function like government censorship in practical effect.

How it works on Gab

Gab was founded as a direct response to platform censorship. Its moderation policy — using U.S. law as the floor — is explicitly designed to avoid viewpoint-based removal of legal speech. When users are removed from Twitter or Facebook for political speech, Gab is one of the places they go. The platform has grown significantly after each major wave of mainstream platform censorship.

Related terms

Deplatforming is the account-level form of censorship. Shadowbanning is covert suppression. Viewpoint discrimination is the legal concept. Chilling effect describes what censorship does to speech even before it acts.