Hard to make it airtight without tanking the economy. Since the economy is already tanked, I guess they don’t care anymore.

Does the Iranian economy rely heavily on access to the global internet? They can’t trade with most of the world due to sanctions, so what in their internal economy grinds to a halt without global communications? I’m not saying I think that it wouldn’t, just that I don’t immediately grasp the mechanism.

Good points! I’m not an expert, so I’ll wait for people who know more to weigh in. But as far as I know: (1) they still need to import basic necessities like food and medicine, and (2) despite heavy investment, they haven’t managed to build an intranet that’s fully isolated from the internet.

Have they though? Everybody I know who grew up in China has told me its trivial to bypass restrictions with VPNs

It’s a deliberate “pressure valve.” China tolerates access for productivity but retains a kill switch for sensitive periods: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/how-...

The question is what do you win when found using VPN?

You phone and computer will be checked thoroughly using automated tools. If they didn't find any sensitive keywords, you'll be fined and recorded in the system. If they find something, a detention for at least 3 days or ... forever.

There is pretty much no risk. It’s expected you will use a VPN, you can talk about it openly in public.

Now, if you’re doing something unrelated that the administration doesn’t like, you can expect VPN use to be included in the long list of charges.

Depending on where you are, “everybody I know who grew up in China” may not be an unbiased sample w.r.t. ideology, forthcomingness, or truth-telling.

"bypass restrictions" meaning put on a list of people to closely watch.

Apparently they use traffic analysis now so it's difficult to bypass even with VPNs.

I suggest you take a look at the page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Firewall

I guess by "Everybody I know who grew up in China" you mean those elites who speaks English and have already bypassed restrictions to talk to you online or travels to other countries. There's some selection bias here.

NO.

They can do unconditional blocking at any moment and suddenly you can experience Internet blackout. [1]

The censorship from GFW is ever evolving. See the endless cat-and-mouse games yourself. [2][3]

[1] https://github.com/net4people/bbs/issues/511

[2] https://github.com/net4people/bbs/issues?q=is%3Aissue+state%...

[3] https://gfw.report/en/