What is Censorship?

Censorship is a way of controlling the things that are said or shown to the general public. It can be validated either by the government or private entities.

Censorship resistance, on the other hand, may refer to a trait of a cryptocurrency network implying that anybody who wants to transact on the network may do so as long as they obey the network system's regulations.

As a result of censorship resistance, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies were completely banned. In the sense that no one can undo a Bitcoin transaction or blacklist a wallet or address, Bitcoin is censorship-resistant. Every miner, as well as any node, has the ability to mine any transaction. As a result, Bitcoin transactions can't be censored.

Likewise, no country, business, or third-party organization has authority over individuals who trade or keep their money on a blockchain network.

The whole idea of censorship resistance is promoted by the concept of future of the cryptocurrencies.

Google has prohibited the use of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency terms in advertisements that appear on its platform. However, things have changed, and the tech giant now allows crypto service providers in the United States to broadcast their advertising. There are severe criteria that they must obey though, implying that there is censorship.

Nowadays, Google still does not allow advertising on its platform that has any relations to DeFi trading mechanisms or initial coin offerings (ICOs). Google has not stopped prohibiting crypto trading and mining applications that do not follow its set of guidelines.

The crypto applications that Google does allow though are Binance, STEX, and CoinMarketCap.

Another example would be when China banned crypto mining in its country, in May 2021. They stated that the reason behind this decision was the lack of security that would prevent manipulation which can lead to big losses for crypto investors and a lack of support value.

The ban was very influential to Bitcoin since it fell from its all-time high of approximately $65,000 to somewhere around $28,000. In August of 2021 Bitcoin reached $50,000 yet again.

 The most common purposes of censorship are:

• To manage offensive content
• To protect children
• To ban child pornography
• To help prevent slavery
• To discourage the use of offensive language
• To restrain or encourage political or religious views

Self-censorship refers to the way an individual creates some kind of media and participates in censorship of their works or statements.