People who have never seen propaganda in action don't understand: it cannot work (the way these states want it to work) in the presence of real information channels, even if that's just private conversation. That's why socialist states arrest people for just talking privately to an agent about the government.
So yes, you have free speech if major news players coordinate whatever. If on social networks you get banned. Absolutely. That's problem 1 for authoritarian regimes. This is not something any authoritarian nation will relent on even slightly.
Second they have a problem with there being any "players" at all. Because you do get different perspectives, most of which don't match the governments. Compare the news in Israel with the "news" in Russia, or with Al Jazeera and you will see the difference. In Israel, there's maybe 5 major channels. But they hate each other. Pro and contra the war perspectives are represented. In Russia, there is no anti-war perspective. In Al Jazeera there is no one questioning how the government is spending money, there is no discussion on viewpoints, on anything in the middle east. There is no discussion of corruption either, in either Russia or Qatar. None.
This illustrates the problem of propaganda: everyone knows it's bullshit. Every Russian knows Russia is less democratic than a US TSA inspection. Everyone knows everything in Qatar is entirely, 100%, corrupt.
Propaganda will fail, certainly in the eyes of the government, if there is some, any way to get real information. And it doesn't matter if it's not easy. This is how it's always been in the US, because now people have some seriously rose colored glasses on how "true" US newspapers were in the early parts of the 20th century. Reality is that in the US bullshit always dominated the news cycle. This is not new.