Ideas and articles such as these often come from a more credentialed yet less historically literate/knowledgeable generation.
I think you typically see similar articles conflating these larger private companies and their shenanigans with the state or federal govts who have actual men with guns to impose their will.
For better or worse, words have much different meanings for younger generations.
Before the web browser wars, we had (in the US) three big platforms: AOL, Prodigy and CompuServe. They all had highly censored, walled-garden forums with different focuses. The services had different price points. Something full of well-heeled professionals like Hacker News (bad example, because I’m ignoring the Internet; think quants, or suits) would be on CompuServe, which was far too expensive per hour for students and middle class teenagers.
We’re headed back there, and fast. I’ve heard the forums on some of the paid news sites are quite good for discussion of economic matters, for example.
Apparently, if I want medical information about coronavirus from actual medical researchers, I can no longer go to YouTube, since they’re taking down all content that hasn’t already been approved by the WHO. Moving forward, I guess that’s all going to paywalled inside $$$ medical journal sites.