It's true that companies normally have no way to really severely sanction you, unless they are in cahoots with governments (plenty of examples of that in histor

It's true that companies normally have no way to really severely sanction you, unless they are in cahoots with governments (plenty of examples of that in history), or unless you consider closing your accounts and banning you is a severe punishment (in this day and age losing your online accounts - or worse bank accounts and such - can indeed have severe effects on your personal and professional life, but it still isn't the same as throwing you in prison). But the broad societal effect of companies censoring things is more or less the same whether they did that on their own or were instructed by the government. What prevents this a little right now is that we do not have a truly monopolistic landscape in that matter, at least when it comes to online services. You basically need facebook and google and twitter (and tiktok) to all decide on a certain topic to become non-grata to effectively censor a topic enough to vanish it from most public discussion (small services will populate only by people interested in the topic, but the way to "get the message out" will be gone). The governments are more effective by forcing all the big players into compliance. Regardless, the threat of big companies looks very real to me. and the trend goes to big companies consolidating their power more and more. It's also good to remember there are companies more powerful than FAANG from the perspective of (specific groups of) regular citizens: banks, credit card companies, ISPs, utility companies, health insurers and other insurers, the company that sells you "copyrighted and patented" seed or DRM-enabled tractors, home owners associations, potentially your own employer, to name a few.