No. You don't lose authority, you lose credibility. Unfortunately, conspiracy theorists tend to believe and repeat information that sparks an emotional reaction

No. You don't lose authority, you lose credibility. Unfortunately, conspiracy theorists tend to believe and repeat information that sparks an emotional reaction in them or agrees with their paranoid worldview, regardless of the credibility of that information. However, because of Google's track record with user data, paranoid assumptions of them tend to be correct.