Generally speaking, the “Anti-censorship motivation” has strong heterogeneity among different individuals. Dictatorships can actually benefit from this heterogeneity. Information is always different from person to person, in which those who are willing and able to circumvent censorship have access to information that is very different from those who are not. This kind of separation will have a negative effect on the tendency of collective action.

Efforts to discover, expose and publicise the existence of censorship are essential to reduce this heterogeneity and thereby resist censorship.

Comment:

The heterogeneity of public circumvention of censorship suggests that more work should be done to understand how censorship affects inequality and political polarisation in authoritarian settings (whether it makes people more united or more polarised).