Why did censorship change in Fahrenheit 451?

Answer 1

Well, lessening of differing opinion, for one. Less original thought and action, apparently. More leisure time, less decision-making. Less value placed on human life. Bigger rifts between people who live in the cities and those who lived outside. ... Of course, this wasn't mild labeling or typical censorship. This was no books, period. Another effect, predictably, was rebellion. People who refused to live by the new rules.
The book Fahrenheit 451 deals with censorship because that is what the 'firemen' were doing- they were censoring what people could and could not do and was controlling their freedom to read.

Answer 2

In his explication of the history of book burning, Beatty equates deep thought with sadness, which he rejects as categorically evil. The immediacy of pleasure in this bookless society eliminates thought and, with it, the ability to express sadness, which is why people like Mildred carry around vast amounts of suppressed pain. According to Beatty, mass censorship began with various special-interest groups and minorities clamoring against material they considered offensive, as well as a shrinking attention span in the general populace. As a result, books and ideas were condensed further and further until they were little more than a series of sound bites; they were ultimately eliminated altogether in favor of other, more superficial, sensory-stimulating media. Mass production called for uniformity and effectively eliminated the variance once found in books.

The startling point of Beatty's explanation is that censorship started with the people, not the government (although the government stepped in later in accordance with the people's wishes). Most people stopped reading books long before they were ever burned. It is important to note that Beatty's entire description of the history of the firemen has an oddly ambivalent tone. His speech is filled with irony and sarcasm, and his description of reading strikes the reader as passionate and nostalgic. His championing of book burning, on the other hand, has a perfunctory, insincere tone. Of course, this sarcasm reflects Bradbury's attitude toward what he is writing about, and much of Beatty's complexity stems from the fact that he is simultaneously Bradbury's mouthpiece and villain-everything he says is deliberately ironic.

Source- Sparknotes