Collateral censorship

Alright kiddo, let me explain what collateral censorship means in a way you can understand.

Sometimes, when someone wants to stop people from talking about something, they might try to shut down the entire conversation. For example, let's say there's a group of people talking about a story that includes some inappropriate language. The teacher might interrupt and say "stop talking, you can't use that kind of language in school."

This is a bit like collateral censorship- the teacher wants to stop the bad language, but they end up stopping the whole conversation. Sometimes, people might want to censor one specific thing, but they end up blocking lots of other things too. They don't mean to do it, but it happens accidentally.

Just like how the teacher stops the whole conversation to prevent inappropriate language, some people might try to stop something else from being said or shown. For example, they might try to stop people from sharing a certain story or video. But if they're not careful, they might end up blocking lots of other stories or videos that are completely harmless. This is called collateral censorship.

It's like when you play Jenga- if you pull out the wrong block, the whole tower might come crashing down. Collateral censorship is a bit like that- if you try to block one thing, you might accidentally block lots of other things too.