To combat illegal sports streaming and betting. On a deeper level it is to combat major crime organisations on a financial level. Italy actually has a lot of initiatives to do these things, though some obviously work better than others. One of the better is how every budget has to has through a government service, to tack illegal activities both internally and across borders. Many EU countries have various things like this, though in Italy is far more focused on the financial aspects because Italy obviously has a big past of organised crime to the point where these organisations rivalled the nation station.

The piracy shield is terribly implemented of course and does a lot of harm to things it wasn’t necessarily meant to target. Part of this is because the law itself is rather terrible and has already undergone multiple changes and amendments, but part of it is also that Italy has a rather tough “no fucks” policy toward major tech companies.

The real question is: how did you come to believe 'the West' does not censor?

If I recall correctly they were also the first Western country (or the first country overall outside of China) to implement lockdowns, at a time when everyone was saying that we couldn’t do them and that lockdowns could only happen in a country like China.

All European countries censor the Internet to some extent.

OpenDNS is not operating in France and Portugal, for example. There are many other cases.

Sometimes it's because of piracy, sometimes it's because of terrorism, sometimes it's because it allows voters to post comments about immigration or vaccine policy, or criticism about certain Western allies committing war crimes and ethnic cleansing, etc.