Citation needed, please. This really sounds like your personal opinion presented as a general statement.
It's not just my opinion.
He's the most tech-focussed minister we have. He's pushing tech pretty hard, so for him to be saying this should be a clear signal to the industry.
See also the consultationn for the online harms white paper: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/online-harms-whi...
It's really weird that this extremist position ("any removal of content is censorship, and censorship is always bad") is so prominent on HN whenusers of products have shown, every single time, they they don't want it.
I've seen darknets (or a P2P networks) which were hard to censor (Tor) but also where you could influence via supply and demand (Freenet, IPFS).
Why are you trying to paint this as an extremist position? Perhaps we are misunderstanding each other. Any removal of content is not censorship and that position is clearly nonsense. E.g. a commercial entity can do what it wants with its own property, including removing content.
What is universally negative is requiring all future technologies to have loopholes through which things can be deleted, thereby preventing some designs outright. I think this parent comment sums it up quite nicely why having such systems is something very reasonable and desirable:
> On the other hand, (at least some) end-users see decentralisation as a huge benefit, and at least in my case it gives me confidence that the whim of a single company can't ruin the experience for me, or even take away the platform altogether.
Public opinion heavily depends on context and evolves continually. Of course people are going to get behind the idea of preventing teen suicides, particularly when it seems that the solution might be preventing a huge, corporate giant do as it pleases.
Given the context of government censorship, which is happening and is likely to increase and become a larger problem in the future, and myriads of smaller, independent entities, people might react differently.
In any case, I don't think it's a good nor strong enough argument to abandon decentralization and anti-censorship efforts.
I'm not saying you should abandon decentralisation efforts if that's your thing, I'm just saying don't expect the world to flock to (or praise) what you create. Censorship resistance is not seen as a universal good.
> Of course people are going to get behind the idea of preventing teen suicides, particularly when it seems that the solution might be preventing a huge, corporate giant do as it pleases.
The criticism is usually that not enough was done to police the harassment. Decentralised systems are likely to make that worse.
