How Censorship Continues in the 21st Century

Aniket Tank, editor-in-chief

In December of 1791, when the First Amendment was ratified into the constitution, the freedom of speech was seen as assured in the U.S., but censorship has still lingered throughout American history and still lingers today. Nowadays the exchange of ideas, news and information is done primarily online, through short-form content, podcasts and other forms of social media. In the 1700s the concern at the time was of governments stopping the printing of physical newspapers and arresting those who published them, the concern now is how social media algorithms can be influenced, by the government or by a corporation, to change what information is allowed to be seen. How media censorship occurs has changed, but the challenge of confronting censorship stands. 

The First Amendment can often be misunderstood. Freedom of speech, press, peaceful assembly, religion and the right to petition the government are constitutional rights given to any person in the U.S., but the First Amendment is also a restriction on the government, so that they cannot prosecute people for any action that falls under those five freedoms. 

The First Amendment is brought up in debates surrounding how social media enforces its terms of service. Let's say someone gets banned from a platform like X (formerly Twitter) for inciting violence. If a rule from their terms of service can be cited as a reason for the ban, then it is not an infringement of the user’s First Amendment rights.  

A question is raised about the limits of the power of social media influencing the public. While inciting violence is dangerous and should be removed from any app, the power of what is permissible to be on a social media app is in the hands of whoever owns the app. Algorithms can also be changed to push certain kinds of content. Marianna Spring, a BBC correspondent, ran an experiment where 20 different X accounts were made, each with its own unique character. The characters expressed a broad spectrum of political beliefs on the app. After six months, the content pushed to each of the accounts was all on the conservative end. This experiment shows how algorithms can be used to push certain viewpoints. 

Throughout American history similar situations have always happened, newspaper companies have the power to decide what gets published, and there were hundreds of newspapers publishes across the U.S. The difference is that now when most Americans get their news from social media, there are only a handful of companies that own the apps. Nearly all mainstream social media companies are owned by just four companies, Meta, X Corp, Google and ByteDance. In many cases these companies will alter the social media’s algorithms, which choose what content shows up in the feed, to promote certain content less because they contain certain words, such as “killing.” 

This leads to users changing how they speak online to avoid censorship, which is why the term “unalive” has become more popular as an alternative to “kill”. Whether or not this does anything to avoid censorship does not matter because it catches on, and other people will say the alternate language anyways. This form of linguistic substitution has been seen in other countries such as China. Online people in China will change certain terms that could be censored to other words that sound or are written similarly. 

Social media algorithms are made to keep people on the app as long as possible. Social media is made to be addictive, so content that you like to see will be promoted to you more. This can create what is called “echo chambers.” For example, if someone really likes a certain movie, they will engage with content that agrees with them, so the algorithm will keep showing them more content that says the movie is good, which means that the person will think that the movie was universally liked, even if a majority of people hated it. This can happen to any topic and to anybody and is a contributing factor to growing political polarization. 

Despite online content being the main way Americans get news, the world of print media has not avoided censorship. In 2025, Indiana University (IU) directed the advisor of IU’s student run newspaper, the Indiana Daily Student (IDS), to stop the printing the news section of their issues. The advisor, Jim Rodenbush, refused and was then fired by the University. This move was illegal and has resulted in a lawsuit. After backlash from students and alumni, IU reinstated Rodenbush. 

The administration originally defended their actions by citing financial issues for ordering the paper to cut all news stories from their homecoming issue. Billionaire Mark Cuban, an IU alum, claimed that he gave the paper $250,000 to avoid spending more than what was is in their budget. This furthers the claim that the university censored the IDS, not for financial reasons, but for the contents of the news section of the issue. The issues news section included an article about IU’s low ranking in free speech compared to other public universities and the university’s suspension of a campus activist group.