Indeed, I was recently reflecting on how the Snowden revelations happened more or less before the era where truth-value of information was decided by the machine. I don't remember any controversy over whether it was ok to discuss or share information about the Snowden revelations, or any debate about whether it was misinformation and should or should not be allowed to propagate or be shared. If there was coordinated suppression in action then, it was still underground at a level where it wasn't obvious and could be plausibly denied. It was the election and pandemic that caused the machine to resort to heavier techniques that came to public visibility.
I Snowden had happened now, it would probably just be buried as a crazy conspiracy theory about some guy who supposedly leaked data "proving" the government is spying on everyone, only believed by backward fox-watching low-information white supremacist antivaxers.
