The trigger-happy oligarchs at the censorship-obsessed Facebook are apparently so dense they don’t understand satire.
Satire site The Babylon Bee posted a funny photo of Los Angeles Lakers stars LeBron James and Anthony Davis wearing laced collars to honor the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The posted meme was a snapshot of a two-year-old Bee article published Sept. 22, 2020. According to Facebook, the joke was “false information.”
The platform linked out to a 2020 fact-check by CheckYourFact.com to rebuke The Babylon Bee. The fact-check was headlined: “FACT CHECK: DID THE LAKERS WEAR LACE COLLARS TO HONOR RUTH BADER GINSBURG?” The Daily Caller wholly owns CheckYourFact.com.
News flash, Facebook: The meme was clearly a joke! The tech platform apparently realized how foolish it looked and later removed the fact-check from the post, but not before being blasted on social media for applying the fact-check in the first place.
The Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon mocked Facebook for its inability to take a joke: “This was a particularly dangerous joke,” he tweeted. “Thank you, Facebook, for keeping us all safe!” This is more proof that Big Tech’s crazy censorship apparatus is so senseless and arbitrary that it even comes back to kick them in the pants.
For example, Facebook once flagged posts that used the word "hoe" in a group called WNY Gardeners when users referred to the useful weeding tool. The censorship was so stupid that even The Associated Press ran a story headlined: “Hoe no! Facebook snafu spells trouble for gardening group.” As comedian Rodney Dangerfield humorously remarked during a stand-up performance: “Just last week a guy pulled a knife on me. I could see it wasn’t a real professional job — there was butter on it.”
This was a particularly dangerous joke. Thank you, Facebook, for keeping us all safe! https://t.co/0UDIhYdvXL
— Seth Dillon (@SethDillon) September 25, 2022
But Facebook isn’t the only platform at war with satire. The Babylon Bee’s Twitter account remains locked after The Babylon Bee posted that transgender U.S. Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine was the site’s “Man of the Year.”
Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency. If you have been censored, contact us at the Media Research Center contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
