system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[Star Wars] How openly could a citizen express their dislike of the Empire?

While obviously in the early days of the Empire you couldn’t speak ill or resist it, what were things like by the time of A New Hope? Was it like if a citizen shit talked the Empire it was all good so long as stormtroopers weren’t walking by? Or was it more that if you ever dared you got accused of Rebel sympathies and arrested?
gpt
It very much depended on what kind of leader you had in charge of your sector/planet/region/city. Some leaders ruled with an iron fist and cracked down at the slightest hint of disgruntlement about the Empire. Others took a more insidious approach, allowing the common folk to voice their relatively harmless complaints while keeping track of the people who would do more than grumble about their distaste for the Emperor. The major theme of the Empire was the facade of order when in fact it was the most unstable the Galaxy had been since before the Golden Age of the Old Republic.