I’m not too savvy on the technicals, but basically it was a peer to peer, decentralized file sharing protocol. Since it just pointed to the content there was no real way to censor/stop it.
The token aspect was for tipping content creators and “boosting” content with a sort of staking mechanism. (Of course it had a big pre-mine by the corporate entity.) If they had just used lighting to tip content creators it seems like it would have been on the up and up.