How Mark Zuckerberg’s shift to the right could reshape the world

Donald Trump will be inaugurated in little more than a week – and the world is moving decisively towards him. The tech world that is, and it could have profound effects on all of us.

One of the clearest examples of this came with Tuesday’s stunning announcement from Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg that his company is to get rid of factcheckers, “dramatically reduce the amount of censorship” and recommend more political content on its platforms, which include Facebook, Instagram and Threads. Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen told our tech reporters Dan Milmo and Robert Booth that the announcement meant Meta had clearly “heard the message from Trump”.

Meta’s platforms are used daily by about 3.3 billion people worldwide and, for many people, especially in the global south, Facebook is the internet. As tech writer Chris Stokel-Walker put it in a powerful opinion piece: “where Meta goes, the world – online and offline – follows. And Meta has just decided to take a drastic, dramatic handbrake turn to the right.” Nobel peace prize-winning journalist Maria Ressa said it would “allow lies, anger, fear and hate to infect every single person on the platform” and lead to a “world without facts”.

Even before Zuckerberg’s video, Blake Montgomery, in our TechScape newsletter, presciently considered the new political era at Meta after former Bush adviser Joel Kaplan replaced former UK deputy PM Nick Clegg as its head of policy. Then, after the announcement was made, Blake outlined Zuckerberg’s thinking, namely that he is simply following the prevailing political winds to curry favour with Trump.

In our opinion section, media professor Siva Vaidhyanathan wrote that Zuckerberg’s “move to Maga” came not through fear or reverence of Trump, but through “his longstanding and steadfast belief that his companies are the ‘solution, not the cause, of our global maladies’” while Arwa Mahdawi was blunt in her assessment: “We are very much living in an age of oligarchy.”

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Finally, I have some cheering news to share with you. This weekend marks the end of our annual charity appeal and this year readers have already raised an incredible £1.5m for our partner charities, Médecins Sans Frontières UK (MSF), War Child and Parallel Histories.

This year’s appeal is also a personal landmark. In 2015, my first year as editor-in-chief, we decided to raise the profile of our appeal, seeing it as a way not only to raise money, but to share a message of solidarity and hope, and raise a flag for social justice and progressive values.

I’m delighted to report that, in the decade since, our readers have raised more than £15m for scores of charities doing vital work in areas as varied as refugee support, the climate crisis, child poverty, homelessness and victims of war conflict.

There is still time to give to this year’s appeal, which closes at midnight (GMT) on Sunday. I’d like to thank everyone who has so generously donated so far, and in advance to those whom we hope we can still persuade to contribute.

The scale of the wildfires in Los Angeles has shocked the world. This visual explainer shows the sheer scale of the fires and the devastation. Our reporters on the west coast have done incredible work in increasingly difficult circumstances. In this gripping dispatch, Lois Beckett described “a ring of wildfires circling half of the city” where hydrants have run dry, and firefighters are stretched to the limit. Gabrielle Canon was also in the neighbourhoods near the Palisades, affluent areas such as Malibu and Santa Monica, and reported “only about one out of every five homes had been spared in the charred canyons left by the sprawling fire”. Sam Levin and Maanvi Singh reported on the devastating impact of smoke pollution on the city’s vast population of unhoused people.

On Friday, 2024 was confirmed as the hottest year on record. Meteorologist and climate journalist Eric Holthaus described how compounding disasters – in the case of the LA fires extreme drought and the Santa Ana wind storm – could become the new normal: “These fires are a watershed moment, not just for residents of LA, but emblematic of a new era of complex, compound climate disaster.”

Discourse in the UK was once again dominated by Elon Musk, whose X posts about a historic child rape scandal in English towns captured headlines and led to the prime minister hitting back at Musk’s “lies and misinformation” as well as debates in parliament and fears of whole communities being subject to racism and attacks. Marina Hyde asked how the billionaire has been allowed to dictate the terms of an extremely serious debate while Emma Brockes was baffled by Musk’s behaviour: “It is, surely, a kind of madness, chasing the highs of owning the libs on X when your other job is conquering Mars.” Meanwhile, Hanno Hauenstein reflected on Musk’s embrace of the far-right AfD in Germany, and upbraided the mainstream media there for having laid the ground for his intervention.

After the shocking death of Kelyan Bokassa, a 14-year-old boy stabbed to death on a London bus who had been groomed by drug dealers from the age of six, Gaby Hinsliff wrote beautifully about him and all the other exploited young people who only come to attention when there is a political storm or a tragedy that makes the news.

The Observer’s Shanti Das revealed that Danish drug company Novo Nordisk provided hundreds of thousands of pounds’ worth of sponsorship to pharmacies as it sought to boost sales of its slimming drugs in Britain.

As Britain faced up to its perennial inability to deal with snowy weather, reporter Robyn Vinter and photographer Gary Calton travelled to the nation’s highest pub, the Tan Hill Inn in North Yorkshire, which has a history of “snow ins”. Robyn and Gary probably didn’t expect to be stuck at the pub for four days. An absolute nightmare assignment, I’m sure many of you will agree … Gary’s great pictures almost made you want to be there with them.

Burnout among the “996” generation – those working from 9am to 9pm, six days a week – is a hot topic in China. Chang Che profiled a generation of disillusioned young Chinese who have had enough of working incredibly hard while never reaping the rewards that the generations immediately before them did.

Oliver Burkeman introduced the questions that could change your life, a new series for Saturday magazine in which experts, including Susie Orbach, Orna Guralnik and Dilly Carter advise on the prompts that could unlock change in your life, from finding more meaning to decluttering your home. Kate Wills had a timely guide for ways to break 10 bad habits, from doomscrolling to vaping. And our Australian summer series Kindness of strangers is proving a hit. This week’s instalment was moving.

For the second winter in a row, British sport fans were captivated by the exploits of Luke Littler. Last weekend the 17-year-old blew away the field in the PDC World Dart Championship. Jonathan Liew was at Alexandra Palace to watch history being made: “Whatever Littler goes on to achieve in the fields of darts, celebrity or world peace, nothing will ever quite match the crystalline beauty of this moment.”

Sunday’s Golden Globes were a triumph for Demi Moore, star of The Substance. Steve Rose wrote about her renaissance and why she is finally getting her due as an actor. In a huge month for film, I also enjoyed Peter Bradshaw’s five-star review of Jesse Eisenberg’s movie A Real Pain, which sounds like a must-see.

Martha Beck is the self-help guru and bestselling author famous for her work with Oprah Winfrey. In this fascinating interview with Emine Saner she spoke about how she discovered a simple, uplifting method to deal with her overwhelming feelings of anxiety … but the piece has a lot more in it than that.

One more thing …I devoured the terrific podcast series Hysterical, investigation into a mysterious illness – with symptoms including tics, outbursts and involuntary movements – that took hold among a group of high school girls in the US in 2011. It investigates whether there was a physical cause or whether this was a type of collective hysteria, amplified by attention from the media, and how this psychological contagion might be the defining disorder of our age.

Cook this | Rukmini Iyer’s tamarind chickpeas with cavolo nero

This hearty, sweet-and-sour vegetarian curry by Rukmini Iyer is easy and ready in half an hour. Fresh tomatoes and cavolo nero add plant points and interest, while pickled pink onions bring crunch and sharpness.

Listen to this | Are we hardwired to commit ‘deadly sins’?

Scientists are increasingly finding that behaviours once seen as depraved often have a direct physical cause. To find out more, Ian Sample hears from Guy Leschziner, a consultant neurologist and sleep physician whose new book looks at the neurological basis of behaviours often dismissed as evidence of bad character or lack of willpower

Watch this | The ‘new China’ in Thailand

A fantastic dispatch from our senior China correspondent, Amy Hawkins. After 30 years of relentless growth and capitalism, a new trend has emerged in China. The search for a simpler, calmer life is leading some Chinese people to seek a life abroad. The trend is so popular that it’s gained its own internet buzzword: the “run philosophy”.

The Guardian’s crosswords and Wordiply are here to keep you entertained throughout the weekend.