No, she didn’t nail it. They aren’t private companies.
They used venture capital money from the US government.
They used DARPA research. They hold massive government IT contracts (ask a university, or city police department if they can ignore civil rights if they accept Federal money.
They benefit from a raft of special laws passed specifically to protect them. In return, they meet with government to receive instructions on things the government wants done like censorship.
Facebook doing government censorship so the government can claim innocence is like claiming sending someone to Jordan to get tortured so you can claim you don’t torture.
It’s a fascist arrangement. Facebook and Google get what they want from government, and Government uses them for projects to execute government policies of suppression of dissent and domestic spying. Both sides claim innocence.
It’s a classic fascist government/private partnership.
There is almost nothing “private” about the tech industry.
By your definition neither are any defense contractors, aerospace companies, service firms who have government contracts, manufacturing companies who may have benefited from NASA or other government research, any pharmaceutical companies, or anyone doing business on the DARPA internet.
That leaves probably 5% of the economy not in public hands.
And then you bring up fascism.
True.
They are actually publicly-traded companies. They have corporate charters which describe who they are and what they do.
They are answerable to the SEC. If they are conducting business in ways that are not described in their charter, the SEC can sanction them.
Their political leanings are certainly valuable contributions to the Democrat Party. The FEC can sanction them.
They do their business on the internet, so the FCC has some authority over them, as well.