This whole article is idiotic. It can be re-phased as: "Meta and Alphabet don't want to hire large compliance teams, so they simply accept every request as valid." The companies have the option to push back, but they prefer not to, because they don't want to be bothered. And if a take-down request is not challenged, then we don't actually know if the courts would have found the speech illegal or not. If the courts frequently upheld the speech, then the regulations would naturally shrink in scope. But if the courts instead agreed that the speech violated the law, then the speech actually was illegal. But establishing the exact boundary between legal and illegal is something that can only be done if the companies, or some free-speech CSA, are willing to take some of these cases to court.
The criticism here is similar to the one made against content hosting companies who take down any content flagged by a DMCA request, even when the entity making the DMCA request is not the copyright holder. When the content hosting companies demonstrate cowardice regarding DMCA, then the DMCA can become a tool of abuse, but some of the criticism regarding the situation around the DMCA should be aimed at the cowardice of the companies.
It's worth repeating, too, Meta and Alphabet always have the option to leave the EU market if they find the regulations in the EU market to be overly burdensome. But if they stay in the EU market, then they'll have to abide by EU regulations.