Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg pushed Facebook and Instagram into a new era when he announced that they would follow in the footsteps of Elon Musk's X, doing away with fact-checkers and other content moderation in favor of community notes and freer speech.

Elon Musk told the political strategist Mark Penn that if DOGE tried to cut $2 trillion, it'd have a "good shot" of ending up at $1 trillion.

Now Musk's escalating criticism and mocking of European leaders and governments, which he has done repeatedly via X, the social media platform he owns, has sparked a backlash from European governments amid increasing calls for regulatory action in Europe against X.