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The question was about censorship, not dedecentralization. That the author still has a copy is irrelevant.

Here more about GitHub suffering from state-censorship: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_GitHub

GitHub also censors any content that they deem stolen (such as the NSA Malware / EquationGroup releases) and content that they deem containing PII-data (such as the public LinkedIn crawl of people stating they work for ICE).



So you're upset because GitHub won't assume liability for your potentially illegal activity? Why not ask the EFF to setup a free service to host these sorts of files? They seem like the most qualified Org to do it.


I am not upset, I am neutral. I am merely answering a question with as much objectivity as possible: Providing examples of GitHub censoring projects to someone unaware of this, without adding my own views on this. It was quite curious seeing the, at least, 3 downvotes the initial link received.

GitHub makes judgment calls on what to censor: They deem a project name offensive, they deem some piece of code stolen (unless the NSA admitted to them it was legit, they had no confirmation), they deem publicly available data crawled from the web PII or harassment instigation.

Unless you do not classify these examples as censorship, it is what it is.


I don't think anyone is questioning that it is platform censorship which any private business has a right to do in order to protect it's business.

The objection stems from the fact that censorship is always a dominant issue raised in discussions about platforms for sharing and, while it's important to keep it in mind if you're the type of person who might share controversial or objectionable content, that is type of sharing is the minority.

If we were in an oppressive regime like China where state mandated censorship is the norm, then it would be a much more pressing concern. But for most of us, we're not under an oppressive regime and decrying the platform for censorship is on par with complaining that reddit won't let you dox people or flicker banned you for posting kiddieporn.




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