I truly wish these companies were genuinely private, but they are not. They are de facto state actors. More precisely, they all work hand-in-glove and which is the hand and which is the glove is no longer clear.
Epoch Times guy is really onto something here. It's crazy that there's no existing body of literature that explores how the ways in which a society's productive forces and relations (its "base", if you will) interacts with its other institutions like government, media, etc. (its "superstructure", if you will). But here we are. He's the lone Cassandra, his desperate cries falling upon deaf ears.