The internet will always route around censorship in principled western nations.

It's a politico-technological arms race. They make their laws. We make technology that completely nullifies their laws. They need to increase their tyranny in order to enjoy the same level of control they had before. The end state is either a totalitarian government or an uncontrollable population.

I used to think that we'd find some kind of equilibrium along the way, that we'd eventually discover the government's limits: some principle they refuse to break, some line they refuse to cross...

But the truth is these tyrants have no limits whatsoever. They'll stop at nothing in their quest to control the flow of information.