He oversimplified the issue. Phone companies don't make money through ads. FB/Twitter/Google make money by "getting into the weeds". They chose a business model with much more reward (hence much more risk). They're basically running ads businesses. You post about shoes, they sell you shoes. You talk about unemployment, they sell you a candidate ? Gitlab/Microsoft et al have slightly less dependent business models that aren't dependent on ads (for the most part).