Would also recommend Whatsapp. But I like the transient nature of Snapchat.

Hacker News is moderated but not censored in any sense that I worry about. With zero moderation you get pretty much just spambots. With bare minimum moderation you get trolls, schills, and harassers, so cohesive conversations don't happen because points can't be made in full. Hacker News is the best source I know of for news + discussion because the rules and moderation censor the noisy, unsubstantive comments that would otherwise derail an important conversation.

That said, I wish there were more forums like HN because I would like to follow the same quality of conversation that I see here on subjects besides computer science and tech companies.

Once upon a time 'censorship' referred to restrictions imposed by governments. Newspapers, magazines, and publishers curating the content of their publications was considered editorial discretion (rules and moderation) and distinctly different than government censorship.

Unfortunately all these activities are now simply tossed together into the general category of 'censorship' and as such we've lost the ability to clearly communicate some important distinctions in the process. I would also argue that this loss of clarity has resulted in the negative connotations of government censorship being attributed to private editorial activities with the deleterious effect that private entities are vilified for completely reasonable editorial policies.

Counterexample: zuccotti Park. It's privately owned, but the place for Occupy Wall Street.

It used to be that life happened on the streets, i. e. public property. If you get a hundred people to walk down Main Street at noon, 2/3 of the city will see it.

Over the last 50 years, life has moved (a) indoors, (b) onto private commercial property (mall, airport...) and (C) online, while some properties that used to be public are now private (parks, even the mayor's office is now often a lease-back arrangement.

That's why the rules need to be updated. Otherwise we'll be left with a Free Speech Zone(tm)(sponsored by McDonalds) on some empty parking lot for each city.

Public spaces and public accommodations are an interesting topic, but I think that is somewhat different from the idea of government blocking publication or other dissemination of information.