If four years ago, if we foresaw Donald Trump giving his second inauguration speech with the likes of Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos in the privileged seats right behind him, it might feel like a hard sell. Nonetheless, there they were: The leaders of the world’s largest technology corporations sat behind the new president as he opined about America’s dawning “golden age” of economic and social prosperity.

On the bi-weekly podcast “America This Week,” writers Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn discussed some of Trump’s executive orders, including the one regarding free speech, which cited the government’s coercion of social media companies (like Twitter and Meta) to censor and silence certain viewpoints and stories. Among these forbidden news stories was the Hunter Biden laptop scandal. Originally dismissed by the legacy media as entirely fake and conspiratorial, Facebook kept the story, broken by The New York Post, from being circulated on the platform. The Post’s Twitter page was furthermore suspended for two weeks after the laptop story came out.

Now, it’s the consensus that the story was valid. The story was also squelched right before the 2020 election. Biden became president shortly thereafter.

Taibbi, hearkening back to this incident, fairly calls into question the presence of Mark Zuckerberg in particular, who cooperated with government officials in these censorship endeavors. Zuckerberg, however, has indicated a turn towards online free speech in his recent interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, saying how the Biden administration “screamed” at them to pressure them to regulate online speech. Zuckerberg has indicated his interest in following Elon Musk’s model of free speech on X.

The presence of these tech giants at Trump’s inauguration signals a major “vibe shift” in the culture. The same people who seemed bent on regulating online speech are now getting friendly with Trump, the object of so much media frenzy and controversy. How genuine of a “conversion” this turns out to be is still to be seen, but it seems beyond doubt that the new political administration is set on partnering with tech companies to restore free speech, not limit it.

Social media definitely has issues that transcend freedom of expression. Its addictive design has led to the rise of a nearly worldwide increase in mental health problems, particularly among members of Gen Z. With people devolving into tribes and echo chambers, one might also wonder how much genuine and constructive discourse is happening on these online platforms. Nonetheless, the Constitution guards against government interference in the free speech of American citizens. Interference was happening all over the place under other leaders and approaches to online speech. Now, the tide seems to be turning.