Legit question. IIUC: On the publishing side, it allows people to say things with less fear of bad guys knowing who said them. On the audience side, it allows people to consume media with less fear of bad guys knowing they read it. Unfortunately, I don't believe it can ameliorate what most people think of as the censorship part, which is a guy with a black magic marker crossing out parts of things.
> it allows people to say things with less fear of bad guys knowing who said them
I see what you are saying, but AFAIK, the technology is neutral as far as good or bad goes. One could say it lets a person say and do things with less fear of consequences in general.
Is there anything Tails does to actively bypass censorship, or is it simply a result of the increased anonymity?
To me, it seems like it can only have limited utility in this regard. For example, Tails (and Tor) isn't going to help you avoid private sector censorship on services like X or Facebook or YouTube, right? It won't help you get a book published or reach an audience with a video.
I'm not really sure what you understand the word "bypass" to mean here?
Tor/Tails can certainly help someone who is experiencing censorship to publish a book or distribute a video in a different region where that censorship does not exist. That bypasses the censorship. For example someone experiencing censorship could contact a publisher or distributor in a different location and transmit the book or video to them.
If censorship exists on Twitter, publishing items to Twitter isn't bypassing Twitter's censorship. You may be bypassing automated censorship or some mechanism but Twitter would still be censored.
The same goes for books. There's no tool that is going to keep a book on the shelves of a library that wants to burn the book. Bypassing the library's censorship means getting the book to readers despite the library's censorship.
If you get canceled and ISPs refuse to give you service Tor is not able to somehow bypass that censorship. If the server your hidden service is hosted on is taken away in a raid. Tor doesn't help you there.
Providing limited protection from being deanonymized doesn't mean that you can no longer be censored.
Obviously! Assassination or imprisonment could also be considered censorship and tor or tails won't help. There are always edge cases. They are pretty explicit about their threat model and go into great lengths explaining it.
