Is it a conspiracy theory once you have open documents proving it, or a conspiracy fact? Looks like these things like the Snowden revelations go very fast from "it's not happening" to "it's happening but everybody knew it and it's no big deal".

Basically you are allowed to believe in conspiracies only as long as that belief will have zero consequences for the regime.

The definition of "conspiracy theorist" in practice is just someone the listicle writer or tweet author doesn't like.

These documents seem to corroborate what people thought about ties to government and the press pretty directly.

Sure, we will see a lot of people that overshoot here, but it is a clear failure of the press that did not even criticise political influence on Twitter, carefully crafted messages that should deceive users. Especially since for the user it should look like there wasn't anything going on behind the scenes.

Many established papers were the largest conspiracy theorists when it came down to the Russian election interference. This was negligible compared to domestic US special interest, which was its won league entirely.

The media machine is attacking the truth like it is a foreign object, classifying every dissenting opinion holder as a conspiracy theorist, the new alt right.

Damage control?

by whom?

By the establishment.