"Signal is being blocked in Venezuela and Russia. The app is a popular choice for encrypted messaging and people trying to avoid government censorship, and the blocks appear to be part of a crackdown on internal dissent in both countries..."
Would you say matrix is censorship resistant? I've very limited knowledge of it but given what you said I imagine that if I was trying to block matrix I would just need to query the url of the text file and check the DNS text entry, if either exist just add the domain to the blocklist.
I mean, that's not specific to Matrix. Telemetry is the tool used to get the numbers, so I don't see how you would collect numbers on servers that don't report numbers.
The whole point of not being federated is not to call the other servers. I don't run a server but I hope it's not calling home if specifically configured to not be federated.
People who live in countries where DNS and IP blocks are common probably use a different server. I've been running my own for over a year and it works like a dream
It cannot be easily blocked especially if you use your own homeserver every homeserver replicates the channel and it can operate without the original server! That's why signal and telegram are inherently flawed.