He isn't trying to fix his image. He is trying to leverage dissatisfaction towards an authoritarian revolution where he and his rich asshole friends can consolidate total power over society and he can crush the people that he hates.
He is doing "liberal capitalism is bad, fascism is better."
That requires people feel
he is trustworthy, so he thinks (I don't believe him) this rhetorical pivot is essential to earn youth trust.
They all been doing this; Zuckerberg with his Macklemore style update.
Not sure I get the pearl clutching over surveillance state; look at social media being used to cancel. Journalism and its history of reaching into everyone's lives. Religion's history. Self organizing groups surveilling the population are normal.
Everyone is a self selecting biology out to demonize and denigrate, insulate itself with prestige. In the end all of it is some form of randos trying to surveil and track people. The one exception I make is healthcare, spread of illness. The rest is mostly self aggrandizing nonsense.
First worlders with zero obligation to engage in manual labor to serve their biological survival have little to do but hallucinate up crimes, sins, immoral behavior perpetrated by others.
The only people we should be canceling and harassing are in Congress. Yet purity competitions about powerless neighbors rule Main Street. The American social cult is nothing but hypocritical randomly existing meat suits abusing 12-13 year olds in third world textiles sweatshops; from billionaire class down to retail cashier.
These days, whenever someone mentions "cancel culture" like it's new, I just think of all the old culture that got cancelled owing to a lack of popularity, like the original series of Star Trek… or even further back, Catholicism.
The difference social media brings is not with the cancellation, it's that it caused us to live in Andy Warhol's future where everyone has their own 15 minutes of fame.
He is doing "liberal capitalism is bad, fascism is better."