And this isn't even limited to the hypothetical. Just in the last year we've had completely egregious examples of abuse of misinformation classifications. An article about Hunter Biden's laptop, posted by the oldest newspaper in the country, the New York Post, weeks before the election, got them banned from Twitter and Facebook. Any mention of Hunter Biden's laptop would get the post flagged as misinformation and banned.

Now, I don't care about Hunter Biden's laptop. What I do care about is that this was absolutely not misinformation. And then the same happened again for the lab-leak hypothesis. Given pants-on-fire dismissal and declared "debunked," when it wasn't then, and has been shown to very clearly not be now.

So, yes, the abuse of the authority is obvious in the hypothetical, but the relegation to the abstract isn't even necessary to condemn the legitimacy of these self-proclaimed institutions.