What do think you know about "how totalitarian regimes operate"? Worked for some have you?

What we do know, from well sourced documents, is that real-time keyscore type filtering and flagging of every byte of unencrypted data occurs at ISPs, and that is common practice in our own non-totalitarian nations. What do you imagine goes on in less savoury dictatorships to whom we sell the same intercept equipment and DPI firewalls?

To describe that landscape as "cartoonish exaggeration" seems either naive or disingenuous.