99% of the stuff removed by “Americans” from the net is taken away for commercial reasons, not because the NSA/feds or any other government are involved (if they kept doing that, they wouldn’t have anything to spy on!). The usual reason is copyright violations, though it can equally be because the content was too popular and bandwidth costs became an issue (especially with streamed audio and video).
The UK filters are a separate issue based on 10 year old technology that even the “stricter” Asian countries laugh at (and can be switched off anyway by any grown adult who pays the bill for the circuit). I’ve ordered several new broadband circuits for work since the changes and although I’ve not tried (for obvious reasons) to deliberately access controversial content, a “family friendly” filter would block a lot of sites legitimately used at my work as hard drugs are prescribed to a lot of our patients.
Where I have encountered blocking/filtering or stuff disappearing, this has been because copyright authorities are trying to get websites owners to pay for more than one license per region of the world like how traditional TV/radio broadcast rights operated. They are private companies, not part of any government, although they can (like any other private citizen or organisation) make allegations of theft or fraud against those unlawfully distributing content. Theft/fraud allegations usually are investigated by the Police, assisted by other experts who might include the military security services, so “government” can be conveniently blamed for this whilst the copyright authorities try to look “cool” and say they are “protecting artists rights”.
Its not limited to the USA, I’ve seen blocks on lyrics of Dutch piratenliedjes for copyright reasons, but they aren’t even consistent or rational, especially as the whole idea of this genre is to encourage people (who might not necessarily be in NL) to listen to the Dutch language.
Usually when it happens a big corporate has bought up a small record label, or when a clique of artists want to preserve the income streams and lifestyles that may have existed until the 1990s but are no longer possible (if you look at todays “youth” music a lot of the artists are the other side of 30 years of age, and fewer new artists are appearing).
A bigger factor is the Internet has disrupted traditional content creation by facilitating easy duplication to such extent it is extremely difficult to make a long term career from anything creative, even relatively non controversial stuff, whilst at the same time making it extremely easy to stalk and harrass content creators. in the 80s/90s even local news reporters had an amount of close protection (bodyguards) which the license fees or advertising paid for. They also had contacts within the Police who could look out for them, and the BBC training guides had a lot of security related stuff.
Today even a cat or dog video shared on line can put a family at risk of having their pet stolen if its a high value breed. So there is also less actual new content being produced and the quality of much of what is being produced is declining, added to which people are more aware of privacy / security risks (and thus avoiding the online ads that the net has become dependent on for funding) whilst at the same time not bothering to learn about how the Internet actually works.
That bit is no more or less free than it was in 1994 (it was and still is possible to block or reroute unwanted traffic, which is how every firewall in a router or local device operated) but resources required for communications cost money and therefore tend to be in the hands of big telecom companies and other corporates such as Google, and even these companies are dependent on their advertisers and shareholders.
