Content Moderation Is Not Censorship

Tori Tinsley’s recent essay, “When Social Media Obscures Truth,” laments the state of public discourse, warns against government overreach, and celebrates John Stuart Mill’s faith in the individual reader. But in drawing a direct line from Mill’s nineteenth-century critique of mass media to today’s content moderation debates, the piece blurs critical distinctions—chief among them, the difference between moderation and censorship—and misrepresents how modern information systems actually work.