After Trump got elected and boomers un government realized that social media is way more powerful than they thought, the policing/censorship on social media really blew up.Twitter files were WAYYYYYYYYYYY more modern than the chronology of corporations fucking over the internet.
r/fatpeoplehate being banned was the major start of reddit getting shat up, and that was back in 2015.
Google+ was invented back in 2011, and started the major shitting up of Youtube and google.
Were these both due to the government? Probably a little bit, but also majorly just because CEO's are giant assholes and nepotist tards.
Frankly the astroturfing campaigns and psyops mostly started post-2016, before that date it was primarily paid shills for corporations and products.
The narrative went from "free speech is fine," to "we must stop this from happening again."
I'm not saying none happened before then..but that's when it really took off.