Ruling with an iron fist tends to create resistance and without mass surveillance technology an unpopular regime couldn’t keep everyone in line. But if instead most people are in agreement about something being bad (like they are with slavery or pedophilia) then there is much less resistance to enforcement against it (whether that’s centralized or decentralized enforcement) and therefore that thing is more effectively stopped.

While lone individuals or small secretive groups could continue doing the bad practice, in terms of technology I don’t think this will matter much because they won’t be able to develop a lot of technology with only a small group of people who aren’t building on other people’s work and their technology also wouldn’t be adopted by a society that is against it.