Imagine if it was impossible for any government to block or censor anything.
But what I mean is that we got more transparency into the world as we have started using the Internet. Before I had to rely on the travel agencies promising words about an hotel. Now I can read hundreds of reviews from past visitors.
This isn't to say that this data is not open to manipulation. But at least in a lot of ways the floodgates are open and we are not going to go back to a world where zero transparency exists in a lot of areas. Hopefully this can expand to how you were treated by the police, the sources of income of scientists releasing papers about how sugar is great for kids and so on. You get the point.
Getting reliable news is obviously one of the big hard problems, as we have seen in last years and as in the example you mentioned. I guess it's another discussion (but relevant to oppressive regimes).
It's not that people want to live under oppressive maniacs, it's that the oppressive maniac is depicted as a wonderful great leader that fights for the small people like them and will make their country great again. So even if you hold fair elections, a huge chunk of people think the oppressive maniac seems like a pretty okay guy and will vote for him again.