I agree 100%.
On the research and academic side, I've seen very important researchers.... A group at NYU here in the U.S. was blocked by Facebook from research it was trying to do, because it was seen as adversarial as it tried to expose some of the harms on the platform.
On the flip side, Google hosted Newsgeist in Canada as you were starting to look at Bill C-18. I'm fairly certain that some of the witnesses who defended Google were at Newsgeist, which is a closed-door, invite-only, Chatham House rule conference for a lot of academics and people in the news industry who covet that invitation from Google.
I don't get invited, by the way.