© The Babylon Bee
Facebook may have hit a new low today in its seemingly eternal quest to rid the world of, well, anything the platform deems problematic.
Seth Dillon, CEO of The Babylon Bee (The Bee) said that Facebook demonetized the Babylon Bee and removed a satirical article entitled "
Senator Hirono Demands ACB Be Weighed Against A Duck To See If She Is A Witch." Dillon also stated that the social media platform warned The Bee not to speak publicly about the matter, which Dillon promptly ignored in a tweet on his Twitter page.
"So after a manual review, Facebook says they stand by their decision to pull down this article and demonetize our page. I'm not kidding. They say this article 'incites violence.' It's literally a regurgitated joke from a Monty Python movie!" exclaimed Dillon in a
tweet.
Facebook appears to be acting like the thought police, but we didn't vote for it. To quote the film, "Help! Help! We're being repressed!"
The article was obviously satirical to anyone familiar with
Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and was published by a well-known satire website. Even The Bee's "
About Us" page says that it is "the world's best satire site," and tells anyone that takes issue with its content to "take it up with God."
"In what universe does a fictional quote as part of an obvious joke constitute a genuine incitement to violence? How does context not come into play here?"
asked Dillon.
"A Black Lives Matter leader said that if change doesn't happen, they'll 'burn down this system.' That's allowed on Facebook. You can quote it. You can link to it. But a Monty Python joke about burning a witch at the stake? That's incitement to violence. [Clown] show," he added.
With the
confirmation vote for Judge Amy Coney Barrett to be on the U.S. Supreme Court likely to take place on Thursday, Facebook's censorship of this particular article came as little surprise.
One can truly only wonder what's next for Facebook. Perhaps it will consider a video of two puppies play-fighting to be too much to handle. Or maybe it will finally remove Antifa accounts such as Rose City Antifa. But apparently, the platform is too busy taking blatant satire too seriously.
Comment: UPDATE 23/10/2020: Washington Times reports:
"Facebook reached out to us to apologize for having made a 'mistake,'" Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon wrote in a note to readers Wednesday evening.
"They've lifted the restrictions on our account and restored the article they previously deleted," Mr. Dillon said. "But questions remain. Why did it have to take getting the media involved to fix this? And why did it happen in the first place?"
Mr. Dillon blamed human actors for singling out the post, which played off a joke from the 1975 classic Monty Python and the Search for the Holy Grail. It involved Ms. Hirono seeking to weigh Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett against a duck to see if Ms. Barrett was "a witch."
"This was not just an algorithm flagging an article in error," Mr. Dillon said. "A manual review took place, and the ruling to penalize us was upheld."
Facebook did not respond to questions about how it handled the issue.
While this is not the first time The Babylon Bee, which trends conservative in its humor, has clashed with social media companies that increasingly control the dissemination of news. The Bee has also had issued with Twitter, on which it has nearly three quarters of a million followers.
But this week's flare up came at a time when Facebook and Twitter are under renewed scrutiny for their apparent attempts to smother stories by the New York Post. They claimed Joseph R. Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, and his son, Hunter, allegedly profited off the elder Mr. Biden's position as vice president under Barack Obama.
Both social media behemoths initially blocked links and references to The Post articles, which were derived from an old laptop Hunter Biden allegedly left at a Delaware computer repair shop. The laptop contained emails that appear to show companies in the Ukraine and China funneling millions to Hunter Biden in an effort to get close to the vice president.
Well, they folded twice now with BB. That's a good thing. RC