Even though you can argue that it is all censorship that is still very much missing the point in using words like that. There is a perfectly acceptable word for what you are describing, a word that has been used for years now
- Moderation
Now there is good moderation, bad moderation and awful moderation. On all three of these you can technically put the censorship label. However censorship is mostly used in a negative context where people want to attach a level of severity that isn't there. It is often implied to be related to censorship from governments or to be on the same level. Which frankly, is offensive to people facing censorship in their daily lives and can't simply avoid it by creating a alt account/moving to another subreddit/etc. To quote the wikipedia definition "Censorship is the suppression of speech", which simply is fundamentally impossible because of how reddit works.
So think about this for a moment. Do you really want to discuss how subreddits are moderated? Or do you want to make it a political issue by equaling moderating (removal of posts and comments) with what some governments do to their citizens (persecuting citizens) ? Because in my opinion the first is perfectly acceptable and I would welcome that discussion. On the other hand if it is the latter I am going to pass.
Why not let the community decide with their votes?
Well there is this:
"The Fluff Principle: on a user-voted news site, the links that are easiest to judge will take over unless you take specific measures to prevent it." ^Source: ^Article ^by ^Paul ^Graham, ^one ^of ^the ^people ^that ^made ^reddit ^possible
The reddit FAQ also has a entry about it called: Why does reddit need moderation? Can't you just let the voters decide?
Not to mention that there hardly ever is one singular community on subreddits. Rather there are subgroups of people which you have to take in consideration. For example one group might disagree with something and because of that voice their discontent. This while another group of people is actually happy with the things as they are and because you will not hear them because they don't have much to talk loudly about. Now it is easy to do what the loud group says because that is the group that is easy to spot. But if you simply do what the loud group says you are basically ignoring the other group. So in that regard it is always a balancing act and for that matter one that almost never will make everyone happy.
"The Fluff Principle: on a user-voted news site, the links that are easiest to judge will take over unless you take specific measures to prevent it." ^Source: ^Article ^by ^Paul ^Graham, ^one ^of ^the ^people ^that ^made ^reddit ^possible
What this means is basically the following, say you have two submissions:
- An article - takes a few minutes to judge.
- An image - takes a few seconds to judge.
So in the time that it takes person A to read and judge he article person B, C, D, E and F already saw the image and made their judgement. So basically images will rise to the top not because they are more popular, but simply because it takes less time to vote on them so they gather votes faster.