They get the systems in place, they run drills to get the population used to the idea, then they close specific sectors, then they close everything and have special "open sectors" and then you're fucked.
Don't fall for it.
Like it or not, but Facebook and Google sitting in the US, collecting massive amounts of private data from people all over the world, while the NSA just taps straight into exchanges, like the DE-CIX, means that the Internet is an inherently very hostile place to any non-Five eyes [0] actors.
It's also for those above reasons that Russia and China have massive local social media alternatives, they don't want their citizen's data to end up on US servers.
For countries like Russia and China, it's actually important to make sure their digital infrastructure doesn't fall apart the moment a US company, or those aligned with Five-Eye interests, decide to shut them out.
Second, many governments (not just Russian one) have been very effective at censorship without disconnecting from the Internet. China is the only county that does both censorship and 'the Great Firewall'. Saudi Arabia is perfectly capable of very strict censorship without doing what China did to the very same extent. AFAIK Facebook, YouTube, Twitter are all accessible in KSA and are used by millions of Saudis on a daily basis.
They don't want to turn off western media, they want to turn off people like Navalny and thousands of government critics who use facebook, telegram and youtube, plus Russian anti-gove media located abroad for the safety reasons, like Meduza.
They've already tried to block telegram and failed, now they are going a more radical way.
It also seems to be a global trend that spans cultures, nations, religions, etc.
I am not sure exactly why this is happening, but my guess would be a lot of extreme change very fast driven by technology. Most people are intimidated by rapid change. The tendency is to run to the big alpha and close ranks with your own tribe. Your brain stem still thinks you are a hunter gatherer in the African savannah.
There are a number of studies that suggest that transparency past a certain point decreases the effectiveness of a democracy.
The implication being that most people have a worse calibration than professionals on when to deal and when to oppose, to achieve their goals as often as possible. And consequently people drive their leaders to act counter to the people's own interests out of negotiation ignorance.
Authoritarianism is a mirage of effectiveness against a morass of the public's own making.
Just from acknowledging its effectiveness doesn't mean people are defending it, just recognizing that it is a really effective practice.
I think its outrageous that someone's lack of vilification is seen as tacit consent of the behavior.
Opinion can't be outrageous. Opinion is an idea, ideas doesn't kill people. Other people do.
No, it is always people who kills people.
> Ideas and beliefs are real and exists as such in our human experience.
Yeah, but they do not kill. It is always people. Do not blame ideas for the faults of people.
Can statements be considered ridiculous? Or is that just people too?
You can't substitute wars with censorship, quite the opposite, they often go together. Not because one of them is cause, because both are consequences of authoritarianism.