Deboosting is a method of censorship, but censorship can be executed in many other ways. 

 How is deboosting different from filtering?  

 Depends on who's doing it. Otherwise I don't know. 

 That's right. Voluntarism is the keyword.  

 🔥 

 "Freedom of speech is supposed to mean the right of everyone to say whatever he likes. But the neglected question is: where? Where does a man have this right? He certainly does not have it on property on which he is trespassing. In short, he has this right only either on his own property or on the property of someone who has agreed, as a gift or in a rental contract, to allow him on the premises. In fact, there is no such thing as a separate ‘right to free speech’; there is only a man’s property rights: the right to do as he wills with his own or to make voluntary agreements with other property owners." - Murray Rothbard 

 And public spaces do not exist?  

 Nope. 

 it’s just censorship with possible deniability, hence censorship done by cowards 

 I guess I would call it soft censorship, as you can still find the information if you look for it and is thus categorically different from hard censorship.  

 I thankfully acknowledge receipt of a zap 🙃
fair point, however it’s still inverting the responsibility of data not being available - “it’s not because we censored it, it’s because you didn’t look hard enough/in the right places/didn’t know what to look for”
the above also has quite a bit of gaslighting potential 

 I don't use a client that respects boosts so get fucked 

 It’s worse. Censorship requires being up front and taking a stand. Deboosting is silent, deniable, and hard to verify. 

 It’s doublespeak in action 

 Marketing.  

 Censorship implies that some information is made unavailable: explicit lyrics replaced in a song on the radio, a scene cut from a movie, a book banned, a blurred image, a deleted/hidden social media post, etc. The goal is to remove access to the information. 

Deboosting implies that the information is still available/accessible but intentionally given lower priority and made less convenient to locate/access than it normally would be otherwise. 

 The important thing is what it does. It does the same thing: prevent certain narratives, or debunking of other narratives, from reaching the masses. Whether it's called censorship or not is of far less importance.