Oh, no doubt. The only observation I'm making is that while the old adage was speaking specifically of USENET, it is often true of online comms in general: the net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.
If a government with nearly no backstops against public message-shaping has as much trouble as China does keeping criticism out, imagine the trouble one where many pieces of the system, structural and individual, will actively oppose erosion of the First Amendment (the real "criticism of the government" kind, not the hand-wavey "It should be a crime to ban me from Facebook" kind) will experience.
If a government with nearly no backstops against public message-shaping has as much trouble as China does keeping criticism out, imagine the trouble one where many pieces of the system, structural and individual, will actively oppose erosion of the First Amendment (the real "criticism of the government" kind, not the hand-wavey "It should be a crime to ban me from Facebook" kind) will experience.