As someone who follows government fairly closely my take on this so far is that a lot of the deletions were the result of an executive order requiring all federal websites to remove mentions of many diversity and gender related topics. This order contained a really quick deadline to remove all these things, and it was impossible to review all federal webpages by the deadline, so pages were taken down pending review. Many of these pages have been found to either not contain mention of diversity or gender, or have had such mentions removed, and have been put back up, so I don’t think every page that goes down is a page the government wants to delete entirely.
Even the pages that are taken down for good do not mean iNat will be censored, federal agencies largely work for the president so executive orders can be used to change federal websites, whereas iNat is private and cannot be changed by executive order
Also, most of these removals center on gender, diversity(in the human sense), or climate, While there is some connection between iNat records and climate/environmental issues, I don’t really see iNat as a big target for govt opposition
If they did want to censor iNat the way to do it would be to cut off federal funds and contracts to anyone who funds or works with iNat
Speaking of funds, this administration is trying to cut the federal budget, which I see as a much more likely cause of problems for iNat than censorship. The government may have limited power or interest in attacking iNat directly, but I don’t think iNat can rely on any federal funding, or any funding from an organization that receives federal funding, as that organization may have to cut back if they lose funding.
I have heard of landowners or local governments objecting to biodiversity data that could trigger federal regulations, but on the federal level I expect the focus to be more on repealing the regulations they don’t want rather than suppressing iNat
As @joerich mentions, censorship could be a problem for those using iNat to document negative effects of govt action or industries supported by govt, but I’m skeptical that iNat itself is a significant govt target, my concern is budget cuts more than censoership
What? On what grounds? Are they arguing that you are not authorized to be there or that you can be there but cannot take pictures? Or that iNat posting is somehow illegal?