I mean, amateur radio was illegal to encrypt. That encryption ban could have theoretically also happened to the internet with just a few changes in legislation in a different timeline.
If, say the US and rest of North America, and the European Countries, along with Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, basically if most of the democratic world somehow in an alternate timeline just went batshit crazy and become authoritarian. What would the internet even look like. Would the internet even exist?
I mean, the US was supposedly a liberal democracy tried to ban PGP. A full fledged authoritarian US would’ve imprisoned many of those PGP and Free Software authors. HTTPS would’ve have a government root certificate on every computer, phone, tablet, smartwatch. Signal would’ve been illegal…
Is this alt-timeline too far fetched?
I mean its not even too late for this to happen starting like right now 2025, right?
Late Soviet Union might be a similar to what you are looking for? I wasn’t alive back then, but from what I recall from reading old science magazines as a kid, there were few home computers, lots of “radio-hobbyist” stuff (DIY electronics from radio to computers), and praise for “inventor and rationalizer” for the good of the people. On paper at least. I think most interpersonal communication was over the phone or amateur radio, or even telegrams.
I don’t know much about how modern China goes about it though.
But TBF it’s very difficult to speculate about message encryption. Thinking back from my own experience, digital communication (over the internet or even SMS over cell phone networks) was not common until 90s-2000s, and encrypting them became a concern not too long ago, early 2010s I think? Before that, it was HTTP (without the S) and unencrypted AIM chats over the Jabber protocol.