The time to set up uncensorable communications is before you're being censored. After, it's a lot harder to get traction.
To me, it implies that things you agree with and things you don't agree with cannot be censored. This seems like a prerequisite for a free society.
I found the reference to hate groups to be a much more effective argument, I think purely because everybody is so used to the kids/drugs/terror angle being overused and abused to chip away at liberties.
Surveillance-state dystopians take note.
The best way to address this is probably to make the resistant tools as easy and compelling as possible.
In any case, OP was visibly grappling with a tradeoff. The question is if there are compromises, i. e. methods to make such projects more useful for the good dissident, and less so for criminals.
One idea would be to restrict the types of files: video would seem to be more useful for illegal pornography than anti-government organisation. Please note: more useful. I'm not saying video is completely useless for good causes.
You could even make features dependent on the language used, or do some rudimentary geolocation. Or correlate directly with freedom: "if Wikipedia is not blocked, your upload speeds are severly limited".
None of these are perfect, and most are easily circumvented by people with a working compiler. But But they might help mitigate the possible misuses. Denying even the possibility is just lazy.
Think of our philosophy as starting a fire on purpose to prevent an out of control fire later. We know we've got a bunch of rowdy idiots here, and love them for it, but every once in a while they find an amazingly lazy way to grab power and shake things up a bit - like a randomization function.
I'm still hoping 5 years later all of them will forgot what was so important and go back to discussing Jennifer Lopez's butt.
Even if you trust the American government, people in repressive regimes can still make use of this. This could enable a western news outlet to make itself accessible to those who are brainwashed by state media.
Trying to prevent "hate groups" from congregating or criminals from opening marketplaces doesn't usually work, either. It's the prohibition principle: if you ban the tech, criminals will use it, but an American NGO won't be able to reach those with censored internet.
You may not use it, but I don't see why your "being on board with it" ought to affect what others create.
I think an important point to make is that just because you trust the American government now, doesn't mean that this won't change in the future. Which is why the core tenets of free speech and privacy should be protected at all costs.
It is a place to find prespectives that are not allowed.
Reminds me of a star trek voyager show where bad thought has been outlawed so they have a black market for those type of thoughts. From the start there are people who want to express and someone who wants to stop them. This stops the person stopping them.
/s
I could go on, but that's about where we are.
Just because the world's loudest whiners have decided that people disagreeing with them is censorship, doesn't mean that there aren't legitimate examples of actual censorship and oppression in the world.
There are plenty of countries where criticizing the government on social media results in prison, beatings or being disappeared. There are regimes that aren't above using a dissident's family members as collateral or for retribution.
¹ definition is subject to change depending on which entity is currently in power.
There are other ways to investigate or deradicalize fringe extremists. There is only one way to have free speech.
On the other hand where we already have free speech, I’m not a big fan of anonymous speech. Speech should be subject to the self censorship that comes from thinking about whether someone is hurt/offended/etc. Free speech means being free to say what you want without legal consequences, not without social consequences.
Conversely, any method for censoring hate groups will be used against dissidents.
I used to be anti-censorship, now I'm pro-censorship because let's face it, the dissidents are fucked regardless and the fascists (and worse) are the only ones who are going to get much use out of these tools. But technological solutions to social problems aren't going to work. The computer knows nothing about the meaning of the bytes it processes. They're all just ones and zeroes.