This is HN not PN. I do realize HN is full of libertarian spoiled youth (and spoiled not-so-youth-already including myself) but I don't want to teach anyone how to live.

The time will show.

I do understand libertarians. I personally was really unhappy to see more and more "regular people" getting internet access since the late 90s. Now the Internet is full of crap. I have trouble finding stuff that was easy to find in, say, 2010.

I do miss "the underground days" of FidoNet. And underground is total denial of the mainstream. But the Internet is not just the mainstream, it's the infrastructure now.

I grew up in Moscow in the 80s-90s and my passion for computers somewhat saved me from the street influence but OTOH I did have the Anarchist's cookbook, for instance, precisely b/c of the computers. Absolutely unregulated. That is I'm sort of the early kind of spoiled kids.

Most Russians had enough of 90s with child prostitution, heroine, skinheads etc. They just want unspoiled kids to continue rebuild the country they lost in 90s but better. They don't need BLM/LGBT/whatever extreme stuff in the mainstream. There's place for that and it's called underground.

Also, I think English-speaking Internet may be viewing modern Russian at least as oppressive as the USSR but this isn't true IMO. They have learnt the lesson and do realize that prohibiting and classifying almost everything is not the way. As well as basing regulations, policies and even international affairs on ideological principles.

That's is the system is very much interested in the existence of underground. It's similar to how enforcing customs regulations totally has turned out to be too expensive and bad for economy. Some expert in the area said that ~10% of smuggling is a healthy balance.

Another example. I once talked to a guy from Sochi who told me that during the preparation of the 2014 Olympics some local hippies were approached by special "people in civilian clothes". The hippies have been told something like: we know you grow shrooms and weed, and that's OK, no worries, but we need you to stay away off during the Olympics.

Yet another example. While visiting the village where my grand-grandfather was born I heard that they got their own potheads and shroom eaters, in the next village or something. Everyone knows about that, police included.

Dumb enforcement never works well for such things. Just remember how desperately the Russian Empire was trying to make the Ashkenazi cultivating the land. The government gave them the rich black earth in Novorossia. That worked perfectly for many of the Germans and the Greeks but not so much for the Ashkenazi. The government didn't want to understand that this just wasn't something Ashkenazi would like to do.

Also, I think most of those young kids thinking they're protecting freedom of speech are just acting like offended children how ran away from home. For how long can they survive? Even if they can, is it good for them? The Soviet Union was a very parentalistic system that everybody was fed up with. People thought that with the destruction of the Union they'll only get freedom. In reality the not only got freedom but lost many things they were taking for granted like free health care and education, science and significant part of the industry.