[pythia__]

It doesn't trouble me at all from the perspective of this being something Thiel can do that I can't. As long as billions mean something billionaires are going to wield more power than mere morals. From my standpoint, moreover, this is far from the worst use of private donations for an "activist" cause.

As for it being censorship, this event is not properly comparable to the government censorship of speech in China. Read http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html if you haven't. In the US what you can say is restricted through informal, "softer" means like social pressure, which would make it like most places if not for the fact that American cultural institutions are the most powerful in the world; those institutions, in turn, have a complicated relationship with the government. Briefly, American billionaires like Thiel have nothing on the American media or universities in terms of their ability to influence what people think. Government, media and academic opinion form a feedback loop.

There is (thankfully, of course) no Great Firewall of the United States but in practice American thought rarely deviates from the government-approved norms.