© Babylon Bee
Seth Dillon here, CEO of the Bee. I wanted to give you a quick update, as a lot has happened in the past few weeks that impacts our business — some positive, some negative. I've got a lot of ground to cover, but I'll try to break it up into pieces and keep it brief.
Victory Against The New York TimesAs Kyle announced in a recent email, we had a big win against
The New York Times. In response to our demand letter, they removed their defamatory statements about us and updated the offending article with a correction. The significance of this can't be overstated. If those statements had stayed in print, the social networks (and other vendors we work with) could have used them against us, citing them as cause for terminating our accounts.
Instead, there's now a ton of media coverage highlighting the fact that it was The New York Times — not us — that had been trafficking in misinformation. A big, heartfelt "thank you" to all of our subscribers and supporters who helped make this win possible. We couldn't succeed in these efforts without your prayers, encouragement, and financial support.
Facebook and the New Line of AttackFacebook recently announced they'll be
moderating satire to make sure it doesn't "punch down." Anything that punches down —
that is, anything that takes aim at protected targets Facebook doesn't want you joking about — doesn't qualify as "true satire." In fact, they've made it clear they'll consider jokes that "punch down" to be hatred disguised as satire. They write: "Indeed, humor can be an effective mode of communicating hateful ideas."
Mere days after this announcement was made, Slate published a piece accusing us of having a "nasty tendency to punch down." This is not a coincidence. Having failed in their effort to lump us in with fake news, the media and Big Tech are looking for new ways to work together to deplatform us. They now hope to discredit us by saying we're spreading hatred — rather than misinformation — under the guise of satire.
But we're not "punching down." We're punching back. Conservatives have been on the ropes in the culture war for a long time. We're in a defensive posture, fighting back against the top-down tyranny of the left's progressive agenda that destroys everything it touches. That agenda is fueled and furthered by all the nation's most powerful people, corporations, and institutions. If that's not punching up, I don't know what is.
More importantly, the left's new prohibition of "punching down" is speech suppression in disguise. It's people in positions of power protecting their interests by telling you what you can and cannot joke about. Comedians who self-censor in deference to that power are themselves a joke.
The Chumps at MailchimpIn case you missed it, Mailchimp suspended our email service this week. They cited "harmful information" as the reason for the suspension, but said it was a mistake and quickly reinstated our account.
For a long time now, Mailchimp has been exercising viewpoint discrimination under the guise of protecting the public from harmful misinformation. We have no interest in staying on a platform that's looking for excuses to censor us by literally scanning the content of our emails. The reversal in this case gives us no confidence that it won't happen again, and perhaps the suspension will be permanent next time. So we're moving on to an email service provider that actually values free expression.
So What's Next?We're going to keep making jokes on the internet. And we're going to keep punching back — not down — at the left's progressive agenda and their endless efforts to silence us. Will you team up with us in that effort? It'll be like when they assembled all the
Avengers and finally defeated Thanos. Except no one will die and you'll get a free coffee table book.
And for those of you who are already subscribers — THANK YOU. You are keeping us in the fight.
Seth Dillon
CEO
Reader Comments
Got that out of my system.
Easiest way to devalue them out of business is to stop using them. You don't need it when you have the other 95% of the web to enjoy wthout them. To use them is to allow them to control you. It's a small controlled internet inside the real internet. Same goes for gaggle. I can't find anything anymore because gaggle keeps pushing me paid for shit I don't care about, even if it thinks I care about it.
While these are some funny comments, we are really putting a bad name to The Faces. [Link]
Great studio live show 4/10/72, RS, RW, KJ, RM & IM . way ahead of its time as re mixing and entire production. Check it out.
Absolutely LOVE the sound of Ron Wood's guitar! Does anyone know what type guitar that is which has, on its 'face' , too many controls? I feel I should know but don't. (It's got volume and/or tone controls not just below the median line but also above it at around behind his right elbow.)
RC
Great tunes guys!
" was given him by Keith Richards back in the days/The Faces era." But controls seem wrong but whatever. RC
*I have not yet read that so I could be butchering that analogy; oh well.
RC
RC
I bet I'm not alone in always having heard 'Would you be the fool to bring the super bomb?" instead of Would you be the fool stood in his suit of armour
rc
"Really don't mind if you sit this one out. My words but a whisper - your deafness a SHOUT. I may make you feel but I can't make you think. Your sperm's in the gutter - your love's in the sink. So you ride yourselves over the fields and you make all your animal deals and your wise men don't know how it feels to be thick as a brick. And the sand-castle virtues are all swept away in the tidal destruction the moral melee."
I you're unfamiliar with it, and/or Jethro Tull, I can recommend Benefit, Aqualung, Thick as a Brick, Minstrel in the Gallery and, to a lesser extent, Passion Play.
What's cool is that for the most part, even on YT, I usually only suffer one advertisement/commercial per entire album rather than song.
RC
R.C.
Proud to have you here mate 👍