https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180612/09543240020/tanzania-forces-unregistered-bloggers-to-disappear-themselves.shtml

The internet is many things to many people. Some of these things are good, while others are bad. Still, it should be fairly uncontroversial to say that the internet has generally done a good job of empowering ordinary people. With the advent of a platform sans gatekeepers, millions of people suddenly had a voice that they would not otherwise have been afforded. The result of this has been the explosion in blogs, podcasts, forums, and other outlets. The internet brings the ability to reach others and that has resulted in an explosion of thought and speech.

It will come as no surprise that plenty of national governments throughout the world aren't huge fans of their people suddenly having this sort of voice and reach. After all, that kind of free expression can often times come in the form of critiques of those very governments, and that kind of reach can create movements of dissent. You may recall back in April when Glyn Moody detailed Tanzania's attempt to tamp down this critical speech by forcing bloggers to register with the government at a cost greater than the average per capita income of its citizens. While this was a fairly naked attempt to keep the voices of its citizens from being heard, Glyn pointed out that the Tanzanian government was at least attempting to be cynically subtle about it.