After locking the doors and windows and drawing the curtains they ran upstairs to hide. It wasn’t safe on the ground floor. They had seen the videos of other homes being attacked. “Are we going to die?” one of the children asked.

The front door held so the mob turned their attention to the car outside, booting in the windscreen and jumping on the roof. Mum, who works as a carer, wouldn’t be able to get to the disabled woman she was due to visit that night. So the ripples of misery spread.

This was just a glimpse of the terror visited upon one family in recent days, as told to the Today programme by 17-year-old Anika. There have been other such reports, but this one will stay long in the memory.

I do not know if Elon Musk has ever visited the area around Parliament Road in Middlesborough where Anika and her family live, or if he has been in the kind of fix in which they now find themselves. When you are the richest man in the world with £200 billion to your name it is no biggie to replace some windows and a trashed car, maybe a nice shiny Tesla would hit the spot?

Had he a mind to, the owner of X, formerly Twitter, could give the whole of Middlesbrough a spruce up. But odds are he will not, because the gods of tech do not deal with that kind of granular detail. Musk is a big-picture sort of guy with ambitions so huge they now extend into space.

He did find time in his schedule for other things, however, like trolling the British Prime Minister. After Keir Starmer posted a video saying attacks on Muslim communities and mosques would not be tolerated, Mr Musk replied, “Shouldn’t you be concerned about attacks on *all* communities?”

Another post, not by Sir Keir, had Mr Musk musing whether civil war was inevitable in Britain. A video of an arrest met with the comment, “Is this Britain or the Soviet Union?”

What a pompous ass, you might think, but what does it matter? He’s a silly-rich businessman who lives abroad. His words don’t carry more sway than those of the Prime Minister, do they?

It is just one of the many uncomfortable questions left behind after a week of rioting across England and in parts of Northern Ireland.

UK Health Secretary Wes Streeting, speaking at a Fringe event on Monday, called the spread of disinformation on social media platforms “an existential threat to democracy”.

His Cabinet colleague Peter Kyle, Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, said responsibility for content rested with the individuals and groups who created it, but it was “undeniable” that social media had provided a platform for hate.

According to a report in the Times at the weekend, the person who first posted false information about the alleged killer of three girls in Southport is a 50-something company director who has children of her own, is married, and lives in a £1.5 million farmhouse. She denied being the creator of the post, saying she had cut and pasted the claim from elsewhere. Whatever the truth, the lie spread to a fake news site and from there went around the world.

In many ways it was a textbook example of the marvels of social media. Only this time the power to make cats famous or spread a funny meme was turned to the bad, and just look at the mess left behind.

Mr Musk takes pride in being a defender of free speech. His lifting of the ban on the far-right agitator Tommy Robinson demonstrated that, as have other changes, such as charging for a blue tick. Twitter had already become something of a wild west when Mr Musk bought it, but his reforms have turned it into a chamber of horrors.

The Online Safety Act, passed by the Conservatives, is meant to curb excesses by fining tech firms if they fail to crack down on harmful content, but some parts will not be in force till the end of 2024, and others will have to wait till 2026. Even so, some would like to see X fined now, or action taken under existing legislation.

When it comes to protecting their own interests, the tech giants are quick enough to act. Anything adversely affecting their share price doesn’t last long on a site. Ditto any post that attracts the attention of lawyers.

Thus far, Mr Musk appears supremely unbothered at the reaction to his comments. If past behaviour is any guide, he will get bored soon and move on to something else.

But he seems to have struck a nerve with ministers. Heidi Alexander, the Justice Minister, yesterday called Mr Musk’s civil war comment “in no way acceptable” and “deeply irresponsible”.

Yet it is hard to see Mr Musk facing the kind of “reckoning” that ministers have in mind for others. Such is his power, he can carry on a war of words with anyone he likes, including the man elected Prime Minister of this country a little over a month ago, and little to nothing can be done.

Which brings us back to the question posed at the start. Who is more powerful, the leader of a party that 9.5 million people voted for, or a tech titan with 193 million followers?

Mr Musk, whatever his wealth, cannot make the law or enforce it. But he can fight it. He is not an elected politician, but he has a constituency of people who listen to him and take what he says seriously. Words matter, who says them and who takes heed of them.

Past Prime Ministers would have been aghast at the notion that a businessman was more powerful than a premier. Yet Mr Musk is not just any entrepreneur, and it is not the first time a government has asked who governs.

Where once stood the unions or the markets now there are the tech titans. Their ambitions are altogether bolder. Not content with changing the world they are moving on to changing minds - a chilling thought indeed.