Yet that didn't happen. Why are things turning out differently in the internet age?
The USPS did do exactly that. Read about how abolitionists attempted to spread anti-slavery literature through the federal postal system in the antebellum era, and how the post office decided it would suppress those mailings for being supposedly insurrectionary.
If you ask a random Chinese citizen "are you okay with the government listening in to your phone calls?", most people would say Yes. Having the government listen in and having government presence on the streets makes us feel safe, because most of us trust our government. Sure, it has it's issues, but in general, the government acts in our favor, and without it we'd have far lower standards of living.
The US is a total polar opposite in this regard.
Another is that in days before the internet, the technology for small numbers of people to cause mass violence did not exist.
But also, the government in the 19th century was much weaker than it became in the 20th and now 21st centuries.