Your Protocol Can’t Be Censored. Your Users Can.

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Speaker: Esha Datanwala

Type: Lightning Talk

Expertise: No prior knowledge

Event: Devcon

Date: Nov 2026

Open-source and decentralized systems still rely heavily on centralized platforms to reach people. That creates a practical gap between being censorship-resistant in theory and being visible in practice. This talk looks at that gap through cases such as X’s open-sourced recommendation system, where the code is public but the live system remains under platform control, and India’s use of platform restrictions, internet shutdowns, and app bans during politically sensitive moments. The goal is not to argue that centralized platforms are inherently bad, but to show how much power still sits in the systems that decide what gets seen, by whom, and when. The talk will explore where censorship and capture can occur beyond the protocol layer, and what more resilient discovery systems might need to look like.