INTERNET CENSORSHIP IN VIETNAM.

Medium dot com is a multi-user blogging site for citizen journalists.  It probably sets an international gold standard for such sites that are in the same category as our platform Fifth Estate Press.   

(Substack dot com I understand is another platform that's getting a lot of traction these days from good writers who want a cyber soapbox from which to influence others or simply express themselves through creative writing).

A while back I posted the Fifth Estate Press essay *The Religious Discrimination Bill in Australia* on to the Medium platform, and started a subscription to said platform.  

Now living in Vietnam for a while, I wanted to check the site and whether the essay was getting any traction and comments.  But buggered if I could access the site, no matter what browser I used - Microsoft Edge or Google Chrome.   Then I gave up trying. 

But today I endered into Google the question "is medium censored in vietnam".   Many references came up, including the Wikipedia entry attached hereto. 

Quote:- 

"In Vietnam, Yahoo!360° was a popular blogging service. After the government crackdown on journalists reporting on corruption in mid-2008, many blogs covered the events, often criticizing the government action. In response, the Ministry of Information proposed new rules that would restrict blogs to personal matters.  In 2020, Medium was blocked. In 2021 there are still a number of Internet service provider block based on technology deep packet inspection."

Question for Winston:   is Fifth Estate Press blocked from any country on earth?   

(I would suggest not, because it is a miniscule citizen journalist platform compared to Medium).     

Medium has 100 million monthly visitors
Medium’s growth has increased 140%
Medium published 7.5 million posts in 2016
Readers spend 4.5 million hours on the website every month
Medium is currently valued at $600 million

The conclusion on censorship seems to be that it is proportional to success & influence of the platform.     

Donald Trump censored by Twitter, Alex Jones by all of the big tech platforms.   If your site is miniscule like Fifth Estate Press, then you are not worth censoring. 

However, all these things said,  I tend to understand why one-party governments in complex, changing societies like Vietnam and China would want to control political influencers (CIA operatives) that aim to undermine existing support for the government in the country targeted for "regime change".   It's how the Colour Revolutions started.     

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_….