Digital Prohibition: Why Psychedelic Content Disappears Online (And Where to Find It)
The war on psychedelics has gone digital. Now it's algorithms, not police, that determine which paths to consciousness you're allowed to discover.
In early 2023, a series of Google algorithm updates quietly reshaped the visibility of psychedelic content online.
We experienced it firsthand. One month, we were reaching over a hundred thousand readers — the next, our traffic plummeted by nearly 80%.
Our guides didn’t disappear — they were simply buried, no longer surfaced by Google or shared freely on platforms like Instagram or Twitter.
We weren’t the only ones. DoubleBlind, Lucid News, Mycopreneur, and numerous other industry leaders have all openly discussed similar challenges — tanking search rankings, shadowbans, account suspensions, and de-monetization.
Many legitimate, registered media companies have even faced frozen bank accounts or been cut off by credit card processors.
While it makes sense for tech platforms to restrict content that promotes or sells unregulated substances, the enforcement has been arbitrary. Educational resources, scientific reporting, and harm reduction content are getting swept up in blanket crackdowns — even when they follow the rules.
Meanwhile, ketamine clinics advertising the off-label use of a Schedule III controlled substance continue to run paid ads on Instagram without issue.
At the same time, platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Reddit are flooded with faceless, depersonalized accounts that openly advertise bulk quantities of illicit substances. Some are obvious scams, but many are real vendors operating right out in the open. These accounts persist, largely untouched by moderation systems, while educators and advocates walk on eggshells just to talk about research or public safety.
For example, one of our previous podcast guests, Dennis Walker of Mycopreneur, permanently lost his Instagram account in 2023 for “violating community standards.” Which standards he violated remains unclear. Years of interviews and content were wiped with no warning and no appeal.
In our case, the first major hit came when Google delisted most of our content. As an independent publisher, we relied heavily on search traffic to reach new readers and keep the lights on. After losing visibility, we shifted our focus to building an audience on Twitter.
After nearly a year of effort, we were shadowbanned there, too. Our crime? We shared a few links to our Substack posts.
This was especially disillusioning given Elon Musk’s repeated claims that X would be “the global town square” and a platform for “free speech absolutism.”
In reality, content linking out to other platforms — especially independent ones — became quietly suppressed. That’s not freedom of speech. We have no interest in playing along with Musk’s delusional version of open discourse and have abandoned the platform entirely.
While Substack has done an excellent job at providing us with the freedom to keep publishing without walking on eggshells, we’re also excited about a new and emerging era of censorship-resistant, decentralized social media technologies like NOSTR (more on what this is later).
The era of digital censorship isn’t just a threat to publishers — it’s a broader reflection of how centralized systems control what can be seen, said, and shared. In turn, this shapes how we think, what we believe, and how we engage with important issues.
We believe education should be accessible to all, especially when it comes to topics that can save lives and expand human potential. In a time when algorithms rewrite the rules in silence, keeping these conversations alive isn’t just important — it’s essential.
Here’s some traffic data to show the widespread dropoff of psychedelic publishers in 2023 (Google search).
Modern Censorship: Subtle, Scalable, Silent
“Censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance.” — Laurie Halse Anderson
Throughout history, those in power have used censorship to control access to knowledge — and by extension, control the boundaries of belief.
From the Catholic Church's Index Librorum Prohibitorum (List of Prohibited Books) to state-sponsored book burnings and authoritarian regimes rewriting history textbooks, censorship has always been a tool to engineer public consciousness by controlling what people are allowed to see, read, or discuss.
Today, that power doesn’t just live in government halls — it lives in machine learning models. Quiet, automated, and unaccountable.
Platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and X rarely ban content outright. Instead, they rely on something called shadowbanning — a form of censorship where your content technically exists but is rendered invisible to most users. Your account becomes unsearchable. Your posts get quietly buried in feeds. Engagement plummets. You’re not told why, and often, you have no meaningful way to appeal.
Tech CEOs routinely deny this practice exists. The narrative goes: if your traffic drops, it must be your fault — make better content.
But the truth is more disturbing — and more dangerous.
This isn’t just about creators losing clout. When educational content about safe psychedelic use gets suppressed, it doesn’t stop people from exploring these experiences. It just makes it harder for them to access the knowledge they need to do it safely. And in that context, silence can be deadly.
None of this is new. Psychedelics have a long history of being censored — not because they’re ineffective, but because they challenge the status quo.
In the 1960s, research into LSD and psilocybin showed early promise for treating alcoholism, depression, and trauma. But that work was abruptly halted — not by peer-reviewed evidence, but by political backlash. In 1970, the US government classified these substances as Schedule I, wiping out a decade of scientific progress in a single stroke.
Globally, sacred medicines like peyote, ayahuasca, and iboga have been criminalized or suppressed under colonial regimes, despite being central to spiritual and cultural traditions for generations. At the same time, the US government conducted secret experiments on psychedelics through Project MK Ultra, attempting to weaponize the same substances it publicly condemned.
So what's the real threat?
Psychedelics expand awareness. They encourage people to question authority, reflect on trauma, and reimagine their place in the world. That makes them powerful — not just as medicines, but as catalysts for personal and cultural transformation. That kind of transformation doesn’t sit well with systems built on compliance, consumption, and control.
Even today, while breakthrough studies show psychedelics can treat depression, addiction, and end-of-life anxiety — some of the most widespread and difficult-to-treat conditions on earth — the research still faces institutional and algorithmic resistance.
Why?
Many argue it’s because open access to unpatentable medicines — like plants or 80-year-old compounds — is a direct threat to industries that profit from prolonged illness. And because systems that rely on unthinking obedience don’t benefit from mind-expanding experiences.
I could rebut this with a reminder that bureaucracies move slowly, and caution around public health is understandable — but I can't ignore the fact that the suppression of information remains net negative to society.
Free access to information is foundational to personal sovereignty, public safety, and the right to explore one's mind or seek alternative treatments when all else has failed.
If we want people to navigate altered states safely and with intention, we must fight to keep this information available — not just legally, but culturally, socially, and algorithmically.
When access to knowledge is limited, harm doesn’t decrease — it increases.
Freedom Without Filters Comes at a Cost
Substack has done an excellent job resisting the wave of algorithmic censorship sweeping across major platforms. It’s one of the few places where publishers like Tripsitter can write freely about controversial topics without fear of sudden deplatforming. But that doesn’t mean it’s perfect.
Substack has faced criticism for hosting far-right voices, including open white nationalists and neo-Nazi publications. While Substack has defended its approach by emphasizing that it doesn’t amplify or recommend such content (shadowbanning?), critics argue that simply giving these ideas a platform is already too much.
This brings us to the hard truth about free speech: some people will use it to spread horrible ideas. Racism, misogyny, disinformation, and hate speech are all part of the downside to a truly open internet.
And while most of us would agree that these ideas are morally wrong, deciding who gets to make that call — and enforce it — is where things get murky.
Someone, somewhere, always ends up drawing the line. And historically, that “someone” is a tech company, a government, or an opaque group of moderators following vague Terms of Service. The problem is that those same mechanisms can (and often do) suppress legitimate speech too.
In a truly censorship-free world, you're going to see things you don’t like — including racist, sexist, manipulative, or even dangerous content. You can't have full freedom without the risk of exposure to ugliness.
But that doesn’t mean we’re powerless. There are ways to filter and block that content from our own feeds — and more importantly, from the feeds of children and other vulnerable users.
This is where I believe the next evolution of social media comes in.
There are numerous problems tackling this problem, but the one I'm most excited about lately is Nostr (an acronym for "Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays").
Nostr is a censorship-resistant, decentralized protocol that shifts control away from corporations and into the hands of users. There is no central authority that decides what gets taken down or who gets banned. Instead, moderation happens at the user level through community-built filters, relay preferences, and customizable interfaces.
It’s not perfect, but it’s honest. And more importantly, it puts the responsibility — and the power — back where it belongs: with the people.
How Nostr Works
Nostr isn’t a social media platform — it’s a protocol. That means it works more like email or RSS than something like Instagram or Twitter.
There’s no single company running the show, no centralized server, and no algorithm deciding what gets seen (or not seen). Instead, Nostr allows anyone to publish messages — called “notes” — that are broadcast across a decentralized network of servers known as relays.
Here’s how it works in practice:
You generate a public/private key pair. This cryptographic key is your identity.
You post content (text, media, links, etc.) signed with your key.
That content is published to one or more relays, which anyone can read from.
Other users — using any Nostr-compatible client — can follow, reply, or repost your messages.
No one can delete your post unless you do. No one can ban your account because you own it. And even if one relay refuses to host your content, dozens of others can mirror it. Your data isn’t trapped in someone else’s system — it’s portable, open, and truly yours.
But let’s be honest: Nostr is still too technical for most people.
To use it properly, you need to understand the basics of private key management. If you lose your private key, there’s no “forgot password” button — no support email, no help desk.
This is a downside, for sure, but it's also the whole point: there’s no central authority to reset things for you. With sovereignty comes responsibility.
Even more advanced features — like truly owning your content and hosting it from your own hard drive — require you to set up and maintain your own relay. I’m a fairly tech-savvy person, and it still took me about 4 hours of tinkering to get my personal relay running smoothly. That’s just not a practical ask for the average user.
Thankfully, this is all starting to change.
Developers are building tools to make decentralized publishing easier and more intuitive. Projects like Umbrel and Start9 are inching closer to bringing sovereign communication to the masses. These are tools that make it as easy to run your own relay as it is to install an app.
The Ecosystem of Digital Freedom
It's important to note that Nostr is NOT an app — it's just a protocol. You still need to use a separate app or interface to use it. Some of the most popular clients right now include Primal, Snort, Iris, and Damus.
The beautiful thing is that regardless of which interface you choose to use, your content remains the same.
These apps don’t actually host your data the way Instagram or X does — they simply read from the public Nostr network and display it for you. Your followers, your content, and your identity all remain intact if you switch apps.
Likewise, your followers can see your posts regardless of which app they're using.
New layers are being built on top of Nostr every day — private encrypted chats, community feeds, payment tools, blogging protocols, and more — all designed to eliminate the central, corruptible gatekeepers that dominate the internet.
Nostr isn’t the only protocol built around this kind of decentralized architecture.
Bluesky uses a similar decentralized protocol to accomplish a more open and user-controlled internet. It was founded by Jack Dorsey, the ex-CEO of Twitter. This system uses the AT Protocol instead of Nostr's relay-and-key-based model, and aims to separate the identity and content layer from the platforms that display it.
While Bluesky isn’t as censorship-resistant as Nostr, it offers a more polished onboarding experience and could serve as a helpful on-ramp for people new to the decentralized world.
There's No Renaissance Without Resistance
If you’ve made it this far, you probably already understand how fragile open dialogue can be — especially when it comes to psychedelics, harm reduction, and consciousness-expanding ideas.
The internet promised us a free-flowing exchange of information, but what we got instead was algorithmic tunnel vision, profit-driven moderation, and a feedback loop of cognitive bias — propped up by rich, whiny billionaires.
That’s why independent media matters more than ever.
We’re not backed by corporate sponsors or ad networks. Our only obligation is to the truth — and to the people who care enough to seek it.
If you value the kind of work we do here, the best way to support us is to simply to subscribe to our Substack so you never miss an article.
The psychedelic renaissance means nothing if it isn’t paired with free access to truth. This movement is about more than just mind-expanding substances — it’s about reclaiming the right to explore, learn, heal, and connect on our own terms.
Further Reading
The Void Starer: How Philosophy's Greatest Pessimist Discovered Cosmic Love
The High Control Hangover: Spotting Religious Patterns in Psychedelic Spaces
Enjoying Tripsitter? 🍄
Don’t Journey Alone! Tripsitter was built by a community of psychedelic advocates — but it’s people like you that allow us to thrive.
You can also follow us on Bluesky or subscribe to our Reddit.