12 No. 15-3047 tion (albeit not by him, but by other enforcement agencies that he urges to proceed against them), in an effort to throttle Backpage. See Bantam Books, Inc. v. Sullivan, supra, 372 U.S. at 67. For where would such official bullying end, were it permitted to begin? Some public officials doubtless disapprove of bars, or pets and therefore pet supplies, or yard sales, or lawyers, or “plug the band” (a listing of music performances that includes such dubious offerings as “SUPERCELL Rocks Halloween at The Matchbox Bar & Grill”), or men dating men or women dating women—but ads for all these things can be found in non-adult sections of Backpage and it would be a clear abuse of power for public officials to try to eliminate them not by expressing an opinion but by threatening credit card companies or other suppliers of payment services utilized by customers of Backpage, or other third parties, with legal or other coercive governmental action. With very limited exceptions, none applicable to this case, censorship—“an effort by administrative methods to prevent the dissemination of ideas or opinions thought dangerous or offensive,” Blue Canary Corp. v. City of Milwaukee, 251 F.3d 1121, 1123 (7th Cir. 2001), as distinct from punishing such dissemination (if it falls into one of the categories of punishable speech, such as defamation or threats) after it has occurred—is prohibited by the First Amendment as it has been understood by the courts. “Threatening penalties for future speech goes by the name of ‘prior restraint,’ and a prior restraint is the quintessential first-amendment violation.” Fairley v. Andrews, 578 F.3d 518, 525 (7th Cir. 2009). The Supreme Court, in enjoining a state commission from sending threatening letters to distributors of books that the commission deemed obscene, found that the “notices, phrased virtually as orders, reasonably understood to be