Zuckerberg positioned himself as the poster boy of a great liberal, global project driven by young, cool dudes from California. Like him they wore t-shirts and jeans, spoke about innovation and did complicated stuff nobody had ever done before. What could possibly go wrong?

Zuckerberg was squarely in the progressive camp. He told us, repeatedly, human rights and notions of justice were what motivated him personally and his company. This was disruptive capitalism with equity at its creative core. The world would be a better, fairer place. The Tech Bros would make it so.

But now we know, as far as Zuckerber was concerned, it was all contingent. Negotiable. Driven by what he thinks are the prevailing political winds. Yet it was precisely to make the opposite point that human rights and constitutional law were developed in the first place. Some things are not supposed to be contingent or negotiable.

“I’m a man of principle. Tell me which principles matter today.”

Wrong.

Zuckerberg’s recent statements amount to a renunciation of ideas which hitherto we had been told were foundational.

It therefore calls into question the sincerity of everything he has said up to now. Has it always been about the bottom line and the rest was merely marketing? Has the mask simply slipped?

Zuckerberg is abandoning diversity, equity and inclusion programmes and also proposing to lay off 3,500 staff to encourage a more “cut-throat” approach within the business. He’s worried there isn’t enough “masculine energy“. It seems sacking people is a great way of correcting that.

Fact-checking (a search for truth) is being abandoned and, of course, Meta is embracing encryption more widely even though it is acknowledged the company will thereby be blinding itself to otherwise detectable child sexual abuse.

Last but not least Zuckerberg is asking the White House to help get foreign governments to drop or modify their demands for “censorship”.

This amounts to him saying Meta’s lobbying has failed to convince overseas legislators to change their ways so they need to be strongarmed.

I trust the UK, EU and others will resist.

“How are the mighty fallen”

Actually that doesn’t quite work as a metaphor. He is still mighty in some departments even if his moral standing has been totalled.