Substratum really needs some good press.

Recently, Substratum put out an article on their blog about “Why the World Needs Censorship Resistant Internet”.

In the article, Substratum goes over the “confines of a censored internet”.

Although China’s case of internet censorship is rather austere, internet censorship exists in all shapes and sizes around the world. Internet censorship can be as minute as an internet service provider or government entity deciding that certain swear words cannot be used in public press, or as severe as China, Iran, and Russia’s internet laws, where individuals typically cannot access some of the most popular phone apps, like Telegram and Twitter, and websites, like Google and Facebook.

Hmm.

I wonder if Substratum would go over the confines of their censored social media channels. As several users pointed out, Substratum has long censored their social channels such as Reddit and Telegram from critical discussion.

Makes this article seem a bit ironic, don’t you think?

“An innovation like this is perfect for citizens who live in regions with stringent internet restrictions; as a matter of fact, Substratum Node has already been tested in a few of these areas and proved to be a successful solution to delivering content that would otherwise be blocked”.

Substratum links a blog post and video showing how “SubstratumNode Delivers Content THROUGH the Great Firewall of China”. This is very misleading marketing and they continuously claim this. Hopefully this doesn’t backfire on them in the next 6-8 months.

Why is this misleading, you may ask?

Substratum’s goal is long term circumvention, not temporary relief. Anyone can browse services like Twitter and Facebook using a VPN. In fact, many people do this.

Furthermore, Substratum only used four nodes (which can easily be blocked as those IP’s can be traced) and there is not even encryption for Substratum Node yet. What’s stopping the Chinese Government from setting up a few nodes and back-tracing the IP’s and subsequently blocking them? It would only cost them “pennies”.

All in all, this latest press release is a means to recoup from all the PR disasters Substratum’s CEO has caused.

Substratum’s Community Fires Back

A user on twitter pointed out how Substratum’s CEO has effectively destroyed the project, as it was announced recently SUB was delisted from it’s largest liquidity provider, Binance.

https://twitter.com/FactsLand1/status/1109805503461449728

The blog post was also posted to the Substratum subreddit, where several users also chimed in.

Reddit user u/naaktslaak highlighted the irony of Substratum’s latest press release.

“why do they keep censoring people in telegram?”

Ex-Substratum moderator, u/RealMonopolyMoney responded to u/naaktslaak ‘s original comment.

“They ONLY ban the dumb f#&% little kids out of their telegram that constantly bitch and moan about garbage nonsense that they read online (mostly off of reddit) and took for fact”.

Naturally, by consensus the community agreed that this comment was not a thoughtful response and of course, according to “RealMonopolyMoney”, it’s not Substratum’s fault. When asked for examples, u/RealMonopolyMoney declined to comment.