Iran quashed its spring revolt, but Mubarak didn't. I think parallel to purported policy goals and idealologies, any ruler or single administration lives to see the next day from a combination of institutions and patronage stacks. Those details probably matter more than a sudden attempt to kill the internet in deciding a regime's fate, though it's certainly not a sign of strength.

A regime with enough support can wipe out thousands or millions of people, and a single well-publicized massacre or act of outright corruption can precipitate a complete loss of legitimacy.

In Egypt, you could say controlling the population through grain subsidies is a double edged sword if there's ever an interruption in the supply. The tribesmen on camel proved to be a pretty weak constituency contrasted with the military as an Egyptian institution with allegiances to the population at large, and a senior leadership that ultimately would resume power without its former figurehead. Nominally, it was mass grass roots protests that overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood, which wasn't owed credit for the overthrow of Mubarak anyway, but "we'll do you the favor of carrying out a coup if you put x many people in Tahrir square," is much more like a behind the scenes coalition between interest groups than an embrace of democratic principles. That the groups still had the institution of the military to carry it all out, then quietly implement more effective controls on dissent, meant that the revolution might as well never have occurred, as long as your name isn't Mubarak and there are no more shortages in food.

In Iran, it was more of a challenge to decouple the regime from a specific scapegoat without undermining its legitimacy. Maybe it is less resilient if any flaws or corruption are openly acknowledged. And yet, there is probably a lot of national solidarity and pride implicit with the revolution (1979) and the war with Iraq. Not only were there more thugs, and they were on motorcycles rather than camels, but the Revolutionary Guard is probably both a patron of the regime and an institution that is respected and gets significant, automatic respect on its own. It may simply have been that the more dynamic classes of society simply didn't have the real power necessary to upset the status quo regardless of restrictions on internet or filming of abuses.

In Turkey, the last decade has seen the very steady dismantling of the military as an institutional check on government. I don't think this is the same as 'proactive' governments dismantling institutions like an independent judiciary, a free press, or erosion of conventions on privacy and freedoms from surveillance that you see in places like Pakistan and the United States. The mechanisms for a military veto are almost always extralegal, and no matter how meritocratic advancement within the officer corps is, it's fundamentally anti-democratic. And yet, what has he done with consolidation of power around a more unitary executive? Instead of fostering the growth of more legitimate institutions that would ultimately strengthen the country and cut down on corruption, he seems to have focused on his own patronage stack, whether that involves cashing in public space, or squashing opponents. There is some irony that the allegations against him many very well be as trumped up as some of those against former military leadership, but possibly, equally in service of the ultimate public good.

All that said, ineffective attempts to shut down communication probably cause much less harm than making a bigger show of firing artillery into Syria or shooting down jets to gin up nationalist fervor.

Anyway, that's my hamfisted attempt at a background for coming up with a 21st century theory on revolutions, probably rife with inaccurate characterizations. So maybe restrictions on the internet can impact general prosperity in ways that rob regimes of their legitimacy, and they're definitely not a sign of strength. However, we can be pretty irascible on issues of liberty, and yet we're pretty slow countering threats to the free flow of information, or the creation of new tools for cronyism.