I disagree. Censorship evasion capabilities are incomplete, but decent. It depends on your threat model.
Wikipedia is blocked in Turkey, but is still accessible from IPFS mirrors. See this blog post for details: https://blog.ipfs.io/24-uncensorable-wikipedia/
Similarly, IPFS was used for the Referendum for Independance of Catalonia (a part of Spain). Information about it were censored by Madrid, which saw it as illegal. It censored websites, but the information was mirrored on IPFS. Unfortunately, most users back then used the HTTP gateway gateway.ipfs.io, which was also censored, but tech-savvier users avoided censorship using a regular IPFS daemon and installing the simple IPFS Companion browser extension. IPFS is now way easier to use. See: http://la3.org/~kilburn/blog/catalan-government-bypass-ipfs/
You can also setup a totally uncensorable website, by hosting your assets on IPFS and linking the domain name to your website via a “decentralised DNS”, like the Ethereum Name System. Users will need to install a browser add-on, but that’s about it. See: https://medium.com/the-ethereum-name-service/ethdns-9d56298fa38a (quite technical) or https://medium.com/the-ethereum-name-service/how-to-host-your-dapp-with-ipfs-ens-and-access-it-via-ethdns-c96046059d87 .
So, censorship can be several things:
- You are unable to access some content. IPFS can circumvent that as seen above.
- Your ISP is able to know what to browse. IPFS can not circumvent that yet if the ISP set up surveillance nodes. Other nodes must be able to know what you want to send it to you if they have it. This include surveillance nodes.
- You are unable to publish what you want. IPFS ensure you can.
- You are unable to anonymously publish what you want. An ISP with constant network surveillance could probabilistic spot you were the first provider. It would be hard to prove you were the first, though. And you can circumvent that by making a third party publishing your content (a website in another jurisdiction for example). After that, it can just spot you were another provider.
- You are unable to use IPFS altogether. This is getting technically difficult for censors as the IPFS is increasingly similar to normal web traffic. The implementation of the QUIC protocol in IPFS nodes will strengthen that further.
(A bonus feature is that you can also interact within your local network without ever pinging the Internet.)
IPFS provides no anonymity yet (which is a delicate problem, especially when combined with the already delicate problem of P2P and if you don’t want to trust any other node of the network), but can ensure you access or publish the content you want.
Some others thought around censorship:
Hope it helps