If it was in the works for a long time, then Zuckerberg has been planning to bend the knee to Trump for a long time.
Today, Trump in press conference (video at [0]:
Q: "Do you think Zuckerberg is responding to the threats you've made to him in the past?"
TRUMP: "Probably. Yeah. Probably."
This tells us all we need to know. It has nothing to do with facts and everything to do with yielding to political pressure to bend the media to his whims.
This is just the most standard and basic elements of autocracy, the autocrat must make all the institutions serve him, not the people. This includes not only the branches of government, but also of society, starting with the press, but also the corporate world, the academy, social groups, and everything else.
Autocracy is not Left or Right. It is corrupting all the institutions to serve the will of the autocrat, not the will of the people.
Bending the knee to the autocrat, in this case explicitly changing your rules and operations to enable the autocrat and his followers to more easily spread their lies and intimidation is not political flexibility, it is obeying in advance to be complicit in implementing the autocracy.
It would be better if you didn't have to learn that the hard way, but our educational system and information distribution system has failed. This is just a more advanced and accelerated example of that failure.
[Edit: yes, my mistake to phrase it as political pressure — it was nothing of the sort — it was authoritarian extortion. Note Zuck has a case before the FTC.]
Autocracts doesn't get democratically elected, as far as I understand. Trump is a democratically elected leader who will end his term at most in 2028. Autocracts tend to not be democratically elected (or to change the rules once they're elected to never be deposed). Zuckerberg will bend his knee to the Democrats if they win next term. This is not autocracy, this is just knowing where the wind blows.
That doesn't make sense with the common use of the word. Autocracy is a much wider term than a militia style dictatorship, and is mostly used in the context of democracy.
Most, if not all, autocrats are democratically elected (with some wildly varying definition of democracy of course).
In current times, democratically elected autocrats include Putin of Russia, Orban of Hungary, Erdoğan of Turkey, Chavez/Maduro of Venezuela, Bukele of El Slavador, and more. Jumping back a most notorious autocrat, Hitler was democratically elected.
Autocracy is not typically imposed by conquest, it is mostly created by corruption of institutions. It is not binary, it is on a scale.
In full democracies, all the institutions of government, legislative, executive, and judicial, are independent and serve as checks & balances against each other. And the institutions of society, industry, trade, press, academic, sport, social, etc. are also fully independent.
Under autocracy, all of these governmental and societal institutions are corrupted to bend to the will of the autocrat, often by his using force of government to his corrupt ends.
This is exactly what Trump just admitted to and Zuckerberg just did — he threatened Zuckerberg with unfair government actions, and Zuckerberg is now converting Facebook to work to further Trump's goals instead of remaining an independent institution.
Today, Trump in press conference (video at [0]:
Q: "Do you think Zuckerberg is responding to the threats you've made to him in the past?"
TRUMP: "Probably. Yeah. Probably."
This tells us all we need to know. It has nothing to do with facts and everything to do with yielding to political pressure to bend the media to his whims.
This is just the most standard and basic elements of autocracy, the autocrat must make all the institutions serve him, not the people. This includes not only the branches of government, but also of society, starting with the press, but also the corporate world, the academy, social groups, and everything else.
This is bog-standard autocracy, not democracy.
[0] https://x.com/atrupar/status/1876683641113248036