I can't make sense of how such people were able to get preferential treatment from governments and/or the media to the extent that their apps were able to get s

I can't make sense of how such people were able to get preferential treatment from governments and/or the media to the extent that their apps were able to get so much attention and traction to begin with, and yet the same government-media complex turns on them later for obscure reasons. At this stage, It seems like all these celebrity tech billionaires are government spies or working with intelligence agencies and are being persecuted for ceasing to play ball. Like there was some kind of deal where some elite group told them; we'll let your app gain traction but then you'll do everything we tell you, or else... I just can't make sense of these serial entrepreneurs otherwise. Thousands of similar apps were launched which were the same or better than those ones. Why were these ones allowed to gain traction? Why these people were chosen? Whenever I've met people who've had success in tech, it was clear that there were some weird dynamics behind the scenes which made them act in ways which were highly counter-intuitive and often involved sabotaging their own projects in some ways.