> It was pitched as a way to combat "misinformation," but let's call it what it was: a top-down attempt to gatekeep truth.

Disseminating accurate information and handling misinformation is literally one of the mandates of the DHS. Nobody batted an eye when the government did the exact same thing for the Spanish Flu, or the Boll Weevil blight, or smallpox. It was never perfect, but it was not inherently political in nature until one side laid down on the tracks and voluntarily became a victim.

We can debate all day as to whether the previous administration went too far in regards to Covid, but clearly all of the conspiracy theorists have kept their jobs and stayed on the air so it can't have been that effective. And it's also clearly a different beast to what is happening now, where it's not even done under the auspices of pragmatism but as a way to punish political adversaries only for existing.