I'm not particularly comfortable with calling the act of individuals refusing to engage with an idea "bottom-up censorship". Censorship requires a willing speak

I'm not particularly comfortable with calling the act of individuals refusing to engage with an idea "bottom-up censorship". Censorship requires a willing speaker, willing listener, and some kind of power dynamic - i.e. who is censoring - that prevents the former from communicating with the latter. I'm willing to accept the label being applied to governments, monopolies[0], platforms[1], and violent terrorism[2]; because in every instance there's a very clear power dynamic that I can point to and say "this is the thing that's censoring people". If someone with social capital decides to attack something and other people believe it, there is a power dynamic. But other people have to actually read the critique and decide if they agree with it or not. If the critique is untrue, then you can argue it's defamation. But in many cases the critique is either true, or at least not untrue enough to reach the level of defamation (in at least the US). If someone says "don't listen to this guy, he's a COVID denier[3]", and he is a COVID denier, then... is that any different from every potential listener discovering that for themselves and deciding to tune out? Ok, but... can't the mob itself be the power dynamic? Ordinarily yes, but they're also the ones deciding whether or not to listen. And if we're going to argue that a bulk refusal to listen is censorship, then we're starting to tread down a road in which we argue absurdities, like spam filters being censorship. Again, this is distinct from issues of defamation (covered above). We are talking about people deciding not to listen to someone because of their views on a particular issue. As much as that can be close-minded, putting the label of "censorship" on it implies a moral obligation to force people to listen to things they don't want to. I don't think we should go this far. [0] Comcast, Cox, Cablevision et. all [1] Facebook, Twitter, the iOS App Store, Reddit, Amazon, etc For those wondering I'm not calling for the reinstatement of a certain former President's Twitter account. As far as I'm concerned any reasonably neutral application of Twitter's rules would have banned him sooner than 2021. [2] neo-Nazis, right-wing extremist Islamic or Christian terrorists, etc [3] For the sake of "balance" you may mentally replace the phrase "COVID denier" with any other common thing that right-wingers used to or are using to cancel left-wingers.