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by digiown 139 days ago
Depends on the how you formulate the goal in the totalitarianism olympics. The goal of totalitarian regimes is not really to completely prevent the flow of information to motivated people. It simply needs to raise the motivation bar high enough so that all but the select few is fed only government-approved propaganda. The few that retain access is tolerated as long as they don't raise a stink. In this view, the efforts of China or Iran is fairly successful.

The UK has a different flavor of authoritarianism centered on surveillance to (ineffectively) improve "safety", and general paternalism at all levels. It doesn't really intend to prevent the flow of information all that much.