If anything, history shows that eventually, censorship will only allow the lies of those in power.

History also shows that eventually those regimes fall too.

The question should be which set of policies maximizes the power of the informed general citizens relative the incumbents and the irrationals (or very-very boundedly rationals).

The fact that the first amendment exists is strong evidence that censorship works. If it didn’t work, why is it so important to prevent the government from censoring people? After all, censorship is futile right?

The question is who censorship "works" for. In most cases it works for despotic dictatorships.

They too switched to misinformation, direct control of media, supression of independent media, etc.

This kind of transparent content removal is not what dictatorships do.

It depends on how much control they have. You'll find no pro-free-market content on Kwangmyong.

You'll instead find the artisanal hand-crafted propaganda, and you won't find constructive criticism. Usually you'll find massive tomes of apologetics full of self-pity and victimization, and of course absolute hope that Dear Leader will still solve this even if the world is against him.

Is there some kind of "list of prohibited books" in NK (like the Index Librorum Prohibitorum in the 16th century)? I guess not, because anything that's not allowed is by default prohibited?

> I guess not, because anything that's not allowed is by default prohibited?

Yes, at least for online content. As far as I understand it, a researcher who wants access to some out-of-country material has to manually submit a request. The censors then download the article or page, go through it, and pass it on if it's found acceptable. In addition, no single computer has access both to the global internet and to the intranet.

I meant physical books, or whatever. I mean is there some contrived reasoning on why those books are too dangerous, or otherwise prohibited? (Like it was with the Papal Index.)