I browse with showdead turned on. I never see porn spam. You could say maybe those comments are completely removed, but then that wouldn’t explain the graying out of comments with “masturbation” in them.
If an option to see something exists and is published I don't personally think you can call it censorship. This is a curated space. Dang and others get to make choices, it's part of the implicit social contract here.
I'm not a free speech reductionist, it should be clear. I think pragmatically speaking that if the filters were made, there was a reason and if the filters can be turned off, there's very little of substance here to comment on.
