Editorial Policy
How we choose stories, how we source them, how we correct them, and where the line between a human editor and a machine runs.
What this page is for
A small site earns trust the same way a large one does: by saying in advance how it works, and then working that way. This page sets out our standards so that you can hold us to them. If we fall short of anything written here, we would rather hear about it than not.
What we publish
Three kinds of material. First, original analysis written for this site — pieces that try to explain how censorship, surveillance and platform power actually operate, rather than repeating the day’s outrage. Second, practical guides, written to be used rather than admired: if a guide does not leave you able to do something by the end, it has failed. Third, carefully selected reporting from publishers who release their work under open licences, republished with full credit and organised into topics and longer series, so that a reader can follow a story instead of a single headline.
How we choose what to cover
We look for evidence, real-world consequence, and the chance to make something complicated understandable. We prefer a documented case to a dramatic claim, and a boring pattern that affects millions to a spectacular anecdote that affects nobody. We avoid conspiracy-style framing, and we do not publish to feed anger for its own sake. When a story is important but the evidence is thin, we would rather wait than guess in print.
Sourcing and verification
Claims are checked against primary material wherever it exists: platform policies, court filings, official documents, published studies, transparency reports. We link to those sources so that you can read them yourself and disagree with us. Where a claim cannot be confirmed, we say so plainly in the text rather than smoothing it over — “we could not verify this” is a legitimate sentence.
We do not treat a single anonymous account as proof of anything. When we protect a source’s identity, we say why, and we describe what kind of evidence we saw. We correct numbers to their source, and we do not sharpen a quotation to make it land better.
Facts, analysis and opinion
These are different things and we label them as such. Reporting and analysis stay separate from personal viewpoint, and anything that is primarily a viewpoint is published as commentary in our Opinion section, signed. You should never have to guess whether you are reading a documented finding or an editor’s judgement.
Work we republish
Republished pieces keep their author’s byline, name their original publisher, and link back to the original. We do not change quotes, numbers or conclusions in someone else’s work. Our edits are limited to formatting, and to translation where we publish in another language; if we shorten a piece, we say so. Republished work stays under the licence its publisher chose, which is not necessarily ours — the details, including how others may republish our own material under CC BY 4.0, are on our republishing page.
Where AI fits — and where it doesn’t
We use AI tools for translation and for preparing texts. Every editorial decision — what gets published, how it is framed, what gets corrected, and what gets dropped — is made by a human editor. AI does not decide what appears on this site, and we do not publish machine-written articles presented as reporting. Where a tool has done substantive work on a text, the human editor is still the person answerable for every sentence in it.
Corrections, updates and right of reply
Factual errors are corrected as soon as the facts can be confirmed, not when it is convenient. Small fixes — a typo, a broken link — are made silently. Anything that changes the meaning gets a dated correction note at the foot of the article, saying what was wrong and what it now says. We do not quietly delete a mistake and pretend it never ran.
If a piece names a person or an organisation critically, they may respond, and a substantive response will be published or linked alongside the piece. Requests for corrections go to info@withoutcensorship.com and we aim to answer within a few working days.
People in stories
We take particular care with minors and with people who are vulnerable or at risk, and we remove identifying details where publication could cause them harm. We do not publish private personal data because it happens to be technically available, and we weigh a real public interest against the harm to a specific person — not against how many readers a detail might attract.
Independence and money
We do not accept payment for coverage. No article, guide or mention on this site is for sale, and nobody outside the editorial process gets to see a piece before it runs or to ask for changes. If any link on the site could ever earn us a commission, that is disclosed on our affiliate disclosure page. Where we write about a tool or organisation with which we have any relationship, we say so in the piece.
Contributors
We welcome independent writers, journalists, researchers and people with first-hand experience. Contributors keep ownership of their work; submissions may be reviewed and edited before publication for accuracy, clarity and sourcing, and we will not publish a piece under someone’s name in a form they have not seen. Details of how to send us something are on our submissions page and on the page for journalists and contributors.
Who is responsible
Editor: Pavel Kadlec. E-mail: info@withoutcensorship.com. This page is reviewed as the site changes, and the version you are reading is the one we consider ourselves bound by.
