We saw Twitter suspend author and psychologist Jordan Peterson in June because he “deadnamed” transgender actor Elliot Page.

Twitter told him he could get back his account if he deleted the tweet in question. The tweet said, “Remember when pride was a sin? And Ellen Page just had her breasts removed by a criminal physician.” But Peterson said he would “rather die” than do so. His daughter wrote about it.

Wow. @jordanbpeterson got a twitter strike. No more twitter until he deletes the tweet. Definitely not a free speech platform at the moment @elonmusk pic.twitter.com/YuBTwnjz5W

— Mikhaila Peterson (@MikhailaFuller) June 29, 2022

Then Dave Rubin of the Rubin Report got suspended for reporting on Peterson’s suspension. It’s not clear how what Rubin said violated any of the Twitter rules.

Twitter @TwitterSafety suspended @RubinReport because he reported on Jordan Peterson’s own Twitter suspension. Here’s his statement. Cc @elonmusk pic.twitter.com/qqw8Owjpes

— David Reaboi, Late Republic Nonsense (@davereaboi) July 5, 2022

While content like this is resulting in users getting suspended, as my colleague Sister Toldjah observed, threats against Supreme Court justices are not.

People paged Elon Musk, who is still in the process of his effort to buy Twitter. The NY Post’s Karol Markowicz appealed to Musk to speak out.

“Think this through. I think Jordan Peterson’s suspension for deadnaming is also stupid but say you don’t. Someone is not allowed to tweet about his suspension with any detail,” she wrote. “You can not tweet what he did. Middle schoolers are running this place. Elon Musk should comment.”

Now Musk has responded and is weighing in on Peterson’s suspension.

Yeah, they’re going way too far in squashing dissenting opinions

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 5, 2022

He also had a little fun on Independence Day with Twitter’s effort to place warnings on people’s tweets by posting the following meme.

pic.twitter.com/sUrsfucQ2F

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 4, 2022

It’s not clear when Musk’s Twitter deal will be completed. But it is clear that if he does complete the deal, he intends to implement a big change to stop such suspensions. People are desperate for that change because the platform is just a mess with decisions like this. There’s no consistency or fairness. If he can truly bring it back to what he envisions — a true town square that doesn’t shut down people to stifle their political opinions — then he will have done all a great service. That’s what people are hoping, but any change would be welcome at this point, given the way the platform has been run into the ground.