It's not even just about the salute. Using Twitter links, especially in the sports subreddits, has been a pain point for years and years. Unless you have an account, you can't see what was said. If you do have an account, you can't see the original tweet in response. When highlights are posted, the video player is trash. There is always a karma race to post the info first. Updated information has to become a new thread because you can't edit the old tweet. Deleted tweets lead to dead threads. The experience has been shitty for years, this is just the last push it took to try to break out. ESPN has started making it's analysts info and breaking stories available on their platform through some kind of system on ESPN? I got notifications about it on Tuesday. So the functionality isn't really being lost; information is still coming out as normal, it just isn't from a shitty platform (completely separate from current events).
I wouldn't call that censorship. No spread of information is being restricted anymore so than what Twitter already restricts. Unless you are connected to your Twitter account already, it cannot be seen. The information can and is readily found elsewhere. Is restricting of linking to a platform (who itself is restrictive in who can see the information) censorship alone, ignoring the content?
How is defederating not censorship? The solution is to make your own instance and control your own federated instances, but that's partly unrealistic for everyone to run their own instances. So Fediverse inherently promotes censorship? But the same solution exists with Reddit. It's not an administrator rule, it's a sub rule. If you don't like the rule, you can make a sub and allow the links, the exact same as the solution for federating your chosen interests. It just seems hypocritical to shout "viva la fediverse" when the exact same issue is here, and it's technically one of the built in features.
Also, that's insane the level of personal attacks you're levying because I disagree, but go off my guy. Crazy you're not posting from your own instance, lest something get defederated and censored. But what do I know? The world I am growing up in (as an adult like...2x over) clearly doesn't show it.