As contemporary authoritarian regimes learn how to manage and engineer information flows, we must understand that promoting and protecting free speech in places like China and Russia is not a simple matter of “tearing down the wall.” Given these governments’ complex strategies for regulating what their citizens do online – ranging from establishing effective control of private media and telecoms businesses to allowing people to blow off steam without going too far – we should be more realistic about the true extent of the Internet’s transformational potential.