[Ray20]

> I don't think you give people enough credit. There have been dissidents in totalitarian regimes the world over, even when the punishment was death or being sent to a labour camp.

You probably know very little about totalitarian regimes? The thing is that they usually have a rather weak legal system, governed by the principles of lawlessness. This creates strong incentives for dissident activity:

- You won't be caught, because the police are interested in breaking their own laws, and not in finding criminals - If you are caught, there is a chance to buy your way out, because the police are more interested in receiving bribes than in jailing a dissident who has violated something unclear - Even if you are completely law-abiding, you can still be detained as a dissident, because they urgently need to catch a dissident today - You can't be completely law-abiding citizen, no one can, laws doesn't supposed to be workable. And if you break a bunch of laws just because you breathe, it's easy enough for you to break just another one - And even if you obey all the laws you can, what awaits you? A miserable, half-starved life that can be cut short at any moment for any reason - You don't receive social stigma and disapproval, because the majority of society clearly does not approve of the persecution of dissidents

The point is that severe punishments, including the death penalty, are used under totalitarianism precisely because of impotence in the fight against dissidents.

But we are talking about completely different regimes. Regimes with laws that work. Regimes with extremely efficient bureaucracy. Regimes where people have very much to lose and where they clearly know what they need to do to avoid losing it. And regimes with a system of totalitarian surveillance of all citizens. People won't need to be executed. Just a small fine EVERY time - and very quickly there will be no one left.

> but I think many people would see it as the start of China-like censorship.

The start has already begun, and as I see it, China is a children's party with tea and custard cakes compared to what awaits us.

[dvdkon]

I based my comment mainly on my knowledge of communist Czechoslovakia and other East Bloc countries. There the country was hardly lawless and the state was pretty efficient in its efforts to find and punish dissidents. Laws were being bent and corruption was high, but I'd never heard of anyone bribing their way out of dissent charges. There were plenty of people who were relatively well-off and/or were willing to snitch to rise in the ranks.

Totalitarian regimes don't need to be failed states. These countries had functioning rule of law and bureaucracy before WW2, and this apparatus was fully used by the new totalitarian governments. So I think they're the closest model that we have for how our ("western") societies might work after sharing undesirable information is made an offence.