Thanks for your article, https://www.accessnow.org/venezuela-blocks-tor/. I'm writing in response to this statement: "traffic on the Tor network ... increased ... even more sharply this month via Tor bridges — likely in response to a new wave of online censorship from the Maduro government."

I don't think the sharp increase in bridge users can be attributed to anything happening in Venezuela. A similar pattern is observed in many countries at the same time, not just in Venezuela. To choose a few examples: Chile https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-bridge-country.html?start=2018-04-0... Indonesia https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-bridge-country.html?start=2018-04-0... Morocco https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-bridge-country.html?start=2018-04-0... The same trend is visible in the aggregate of all countries: https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-bridge-country.html?start=2018-04-0...

If you scroll down on the metrics page, you'll see that the phenomenon has been noted, but the cause is unknown:

2018-04-15 to present Doubling of bridge users over about 45 days. Relay users unaffected.

So while a decrease in Tor users in the past few days is likely attributable to censorship by the Venezuelan government, the increase in bridge users in the months preceding probably has some other, more global cause, not necessarily related to censorship.