Being a democracy does not make countries immune from the phenomenon where under their own judgment, private actors decide with information provided to them in part by their own government, it’s more often than not in their best interest to be with them rather than against them.

What if the private company is "deciding under their own judgement because the VP's roomate from College is a chief of staff and they were told it would be really helpful if they decided in a beneficial way? We saw from the Twitter files that Twitter had an active relationship with members of the Democratic party and agents of the government to decide under their own judgement to ban or downrank certain people and ideas. This led to another concrete example of major outlets being effectively banned (The New York Post) due to the Hunter Biden Laptop issue. This behind the scene collusion is where the "they are a private company" line falls apart.