Earlier quoted context omitted.
A company forced to file these reports essentially has all the costs of being a public company. There's absolutely no reason not to go public at this point, to benefit existing shareholders. The average op-ed writer is ignorant about finance but this is what is meant when informed people talk about companies being forced to go public--they're forced to take on all the costs of being public, so might as well just IPO.
They are forced to take some of the economic costs of being public, but the managers have much more flexibility when the company is private. For example, Facebook's acquisition of Instagram would not fly if FB were public when that happened. You can argue that the paperwork is onerous, but its paperwork. The headaches involved with public companies go far beyond a few paltry reports.
Is that really the case? In other words, what additional restrictions does a publicly-listed company have that privately-traded companies do not have?
Your comment seems plausible, but I could imagine that the SEC regulations around > 500 shareholders etc. could also include all the shareholder protections we associate with public companies, as well.
Additionally, I wouldn't be surprised if Mark Zuckerberg's controlling interest in FB had some sort of an impact on what regulations apply to the company.