It’s been a long time coming, but it’s safe to officially announce that Elon Musk’s dream of “freedom of speech” on Twitter, whatever it may be, is dead. He died as he lived: bewildered, disillusioned, and of the vainglorious whims of the man he dreamed of.

Last week, without attracting too much attention, Musk crossed a new threshold in his adventures at running a social media site: perhaps for the first time, he introduced an entirely new policy that actively seeks to restrict what people can say on the platform.

Twitter has long prohibited threats and incitement to violence, as do other platforms. But on February 28th, Twitter Violent speech policy update To prohibit the mere act of hoping, wishing, or expressing a desire that others be harmed. The policy states, “This includes (but is not limited to) hoping others will die, suffer illnesses, tragic accidents, or suffer other physical adverse consequences.”

Technically, tweeting “I hope Scott Adams gets a paper from one of the few newspapers that still runs Dilbert every time he says something racist” is now against the rules. You can’t tweet “I hope Robert Downey Jr. gets gonorrhea” or “I wish Steve Bannon would cut off the blood circulation to his arms when he presses his multiple shirts so tightly.”

None of these things would be nice to say, and they would be bad posts from a qualitative point of view, but they are not exactly controversial violations of basic principles of free speech. Threatening and inciting mean to inflict harm in the real world; Expressing desire hurts no more than any other insult. This is probably why neither Twitter nor its competitors have ever moved to block them in the past.

That being the case, what is the argument for banning it now? It’s hard to say — in its blog post, the company isn’t interested in offering one.

“It’s not clear, it doesn’t have specific definitions, or even examples of what constitutes a threat,” says Erliani Abdurrahman, a former member of Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council. “So how do you rate individual tweets?”

It’s a good question, and it gets to the heart of the new policy raison d’être. After all, it’s hard to imagine anyone being kicked off the platform for posting any of the above – the rule will eventually be enforced by human arbitrators who take into account the severity of violent desires and who is the object of those wishes. And if the recent past is any guide, we should have a good idea of ​​who Elon Musk is seeking to protect: Elon Musk.

That Musk did not get more negative feedback for enforcing this rule speaks to how tired most people were of seeing him and his antics take center stage, and how most people had already realized that Musk’s crusade for free speech was hollow masquerade. And yet! It was Musk just months ago paints himself K Absolute freedom of expression.

Extending Twitter’s speech rights to its outer limits was the reason he said he wanted to buy it at all. In April, he promised to take an extreme approach. By “freedom of speech,” I simply mean what is in accordance with the law, he tweeted. “I am against censorship that goes beyond the law.” It was greeted by freedom-of-speech authoritarians and conservatives who felt as if they were censored by the platform (not to mention the neo-Nazis who were ousted outright).

“Bird freed” Musk tweeted When I close the deal.

But his “free” version became questionable almost immediately. He made good on his promise to restore the accounts of many users banned for engaging in hate speech, incitement, or harassment, allowing white nationalists and users like Kanye West, Andrew Tate, and Donald Trump to return to the platform. However, he soon showed that the platform would have little tolerance for one particular type of discourse: the kind that he personally criticizes or derides.

When users decided to change their account names to Elon Musk, Twitter modified its permanent parody policy to make the act cause for a ban. Then Musk dropped the hammer on ElonJet, the account that tracked his plane for public flight data—and any journalist who covered the story. He also tried to ban the act of sharing links to other social media sites, apparently in an attempt to stem the exodus of users to other platforms, until the outcry forced him to back off track.

At the same time, it removed the team responsible for moderating harmful content, which led to a rise in racist and homophobic rhetoric on the platform, and the resignation of three prominent members of the Trust and Safety Council – including Rehman -. And although Musk’s Twitter did take some enforcement action — for example, suspending West’s account again after he posted a swastika photo — he didn’t bother to provide any coherent rationale.

“It’s a very piecemeal approach to everything, with little or no content moderation policy,” says Rahman. “And how many people has he left? How do you effectively moderate content?”

A generous way to put it is that Musk has taken a crash course on what it means to moderate content on a major ad-supported social media platform. After all, no one wants to try to sell soda among pro-Hitler memes, or be asked to join a dating service along with racial epithets in all caps.

A less generous way of saying it is that the tough-talk policy is merely the culmination of a series of policy decisions that reflect a concern not for the health of the community on the platform, but in protecting Musk’s ego and advancing his own interests. All of these policies have one thing in common: They allow Musk to make a police rhetoric against him for him or his companies. And the vaguely worded ban on wishing to harm gives Musk another tool for sidelining his critics.

“He can do this thing, and he has the right to do so, but he should be clear about the definitions,” Rahman says. Otherwise, it would silence the critics, and that’s a real disservice. This does not promote freedom of expression.”

It’s a little hard to believe in principle that Musk has such a broad interest in discouraging angry feelings across the board when he’s so passionate about stirring them up in practice. In a dark bit of irony, Rahman’s tenure at Twitter ended with Musk personally helping him flood her inbox with wishes of harm.

When Rahman and two colleagues resigned, they posted the announcement on Twitter. Right-wing conspiracy theorist and provocateur Mike Cernovich He replied with a tweet To which he said, “You all belong in prison.” From where I’m sitting, this could be interpreted as a desire to cause harm or tragic circumstances to someone, and thus a violation of Twitter’s updated policy.

However, Musk himself swooped in to support Cernovich’s tweet, responding, “It’s a crime that they refused to take action on child exploitation for years!” And greatly enhance the visibility of the post.

“He threw us under the bus,” Rahman says. “We’ve been subjected to vitriol, hate and death wishers.” After Musk boosted Cernovich’s tweet, she received an email from someone who said they wanted to see her body hanging from a lamppost.

Now Musk may have suddenly developed an interest in never wanting to see coveted mischief on any soul again, rather than, say, trying to ensure he never stumbles upon a tweet from someone who says he hopes to crash into a Tesla. Either way, Musk is finally taking a bold stand on free speech on Twitter: He will restrict it when it serves him. And everything descends from here.