On Monday, the wildly successful satire site The Babylon Bee was suspended from Twitter.
The website’s CEO, Seth Dillon, posted a screenshot showing the account had been booted off the platform:
The Babylon Bee's Twitter account has been suspended. #FreeTheBee pic.twitter.com/ASKhDPbHC6
— Seth Dillon (@SethDillon) August 17, 2020
Editor-in-Chief Kyle Mann shared some specifics obtained from Twitter:
WELP pic.twitter.com/8rvCWmy6hx
— Kyle Mann (@The_Kyle_Mann) August 17, 2020
As per their usual mode of operation, Twitter did not offer any specifics about which article triggered the suspension.
Later in the afternoon, Twitter lifted the ban, explaining that its “system” had made a “mistake” in flagging the Bee’s account as spam.
Twitter says sorry, they made a mistake. pic.twitter.com/ZsM3if2vfj
— Seth Dillon (@SethDillon) August 17, 2020
Dillon told Disrn, “The Babylon Bee absolutely does not engage in any sort of platform manipulation or spam. We have no duplicate accounts or anything like that. There is no reason this should have happened.”
But the damage had already been done, as noted by Bee founder and part-owner Adam Ford:
Twitter has apparently reinstated @TheBabylonBee but we now have 5,000 followers. We had 550,000 before they suspended us.
— Adam Ford (@Adam4d) August 17, 2020
Not only that, but Ford also suggested that there may be more funny business going on at Twitter:
"Babylon Bee" was also trending 2 minutes ago and now it's not 🤔 https://t.co/zoNK2bumXO
— Adam Ford (@Adam4d) August 17, 2020
The Babylon Bee has had some very public fights with so-called “fact-checkers” that have labeled articles that clearly fall under the category of satire as fake news. Snopes infamously fact-checked an article from the Bee headlined “CNN Purchases Industrial-Sized Washing Machine To Spin News Before Publication.” Anyone with two living brain cells still bumping around between his ears could figure out that The Bee wasn’t making a claim that CNN was literally spinning its news in a literal washing machine (as if that could literally be done), but the folks over at Snopes, who take themselves very, very seriously, explained:
Although it should have been obvious that the Babylon Bee piece was just a spoof of the ongoing political brouhaha over alleged news media “bias” and “fake news,” some readers missed that aspect of the article and interpreted it literally.
It should have been obvious — it literally was obvious — that the article wasn’t a serious news item, but that didn’t stop Facebook from taking up the cause (Snopes was an official Facebook fact-checker at the time) and slapping a warning label on the post anytime it appeared in someone’s feed:
Really, Facebook?? pic.twitter.com/HEtBc7C0Gz
— Adam Ford (@Adam4d) March 2, 2018
The Babylon Bee fought back the way only the Bee can — by mocking Snopes relentlessly for months on end. They also got their lawyers involved.
At publishing time The Babylon Bee had made up some of its lost followers, but the number currently stands at 16,700, far below the pre-suspension tally.
We look forward to seeing Twitter get a well-deserved Bee sting in the coming days.
UPDATE 8:39 p.m.: Well, that didn’t take long, did it? Clever of the Bee to include a fundraising pitch too.
In case @jack (may he live forever) doesn't reinstate us next time, toss a coin to your friendly neighborhood satirists. https://t.co/NEJF1bUNZH
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) August 17, 2020
Snopes Tries to Deplatform Babylon Bee, Satire Site Lawyers Up
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