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It is certainly not a general instance of censorship if certain node operators or miners choose to exclude transactions meeting certain criteria.

This isn't comparable to e.g. a hard coded blacklist.

they can't censor you. this is incorrect. all they can do is inconvenience you. ultimately you can close the channel with them at any time if you conclude they are a bad actor.

Beyond that, LN transactions use onion routing, which means you define the exact route for your payment to take through the network. You can actively avoid ever routing through a particular node if that's your desire.

>It's an especially big problem given the fact that the vast majority of lightning payments are routed through lightning nodes operated by centralized cryptocurrency exchanges.

I'd love to know how you came to believe this. Due to Lightning's design, there is no way to know how payments are routed, so it seems clear that you're either misinformed or lying.

> That's not even getting into the abysmal incentive structure node operators face.

Such as... getting paid for your capital by routing payments? Oh no, so abysmal!