"Free communication" is specifically held up as a threat to democracy by current leaders in quite a few states. For instance, Macron and Merz in France and Germany have both recently explictly comdemned free communication, that isn't filtered and gatekept by some "common framework" or government agency, as a threat to democracy. Probably because this communication is producing social movements in these countries that the state cannot control.

And if this isn't US-centric enough for you, the previous US administration created a "Disinformation Governance Board" specifically to address the threats that they felt free communication among the people was posing to democracy, taking action to pressure corporate actors to censor disfavored popular speech in attempt to circumvent first amendment protections. At least the current administration isn't really pretending that attacking free speech is protecting democracy somehow.