O n Tuesday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the social media behemoth will end its third party fact-checking program in the U.S. and instead adopt a crowd-sourced “community notes” program. The inspiration for such a decision? Elon Musk’s X.

For all the talk of freedom, Mr Zuckerberg’s video was another example of the capture of American business by the bullying incoming president. Mr Trump has called Facebook an “enemy of the people” and threatened to ensure that Mr Zuckerberg “spends the rest of his life in prison”.