EXCLUSIVE: Babylon Bee’s CEO Pushes Back Against Big Tech Bullying

[PeteS in CA]

EXCLUSIVE: Babylon Bee’s CEO Pushes Back Against Big Tech Bullying

https://www.dailywire.com/news/nothing-funny-about-facebooks-serial-attacks-on-the-babylon-bee

Seth Dillon oversees one of the web’s funniest destinations, but there’s an edge to his voice that’s hardly comic. Dillon, the CEO of The Babylon Bee, is at war with social media. Again. ...

Dillon says the trouble began two years ago when Facebook aligned with third-party fact checkers like Snopes to battle misinformation on the platform. ...

“Facebook treated us as purveyors of Fake News,” he says, tied to a farcical story about CNN buying industrial strength washing machines to better spin the news.

“Nobody believed the story was true,” Dillon says. Facebook disagreed, threatening the company’s social media monetization if the Bee kept producing fake news stories.

The Babylon Bee, a Christian humor site that politically leans to the Right, generates revenue from Facebook in several key ways. Facebook traffic comprises a large part of the Bee’s overall clicks.

Plus, publishers can utilize Facebook’s subscription tools to generate new customers or leverage its “instant articles” feature. The latter lets users click on a story and the article appears, but the process taps into Facebook’s ad network structure.

“When they demonetize you, they turn all of them off,” he explains.

Cooler cyber-heads prevailed, but recently Facebook once again threatened The Babylon Bee over its content.

The story in question poked fun at Sen. Mazie Hirono, a Hawaiian Democrat, for grilling Judge Amy Coney Barrett about any sexual assaults she may have committed in the past.
...
“We were told we would need to edit it or else we would remain in violation of their community standards,” Dillon says. “We appealed [the decision] and lost.”

So The Babylon Bee reached out to the media to amplify both the conflict and their side of the argument. Days later, Facebook changed its mind and apologized, noting the difference between satire and Fake News.

“It’s always a mistake,” Dillon says sarcastically. “They’re reaching, stretching to make us in violation of their community standards.”

My emphasis.

[Smokin Joe]

EXCLUSIVE: Babylon Bee’s CEO Pushes Back Against Big Tech Bullying

https://www.dailywire.com/news/nothing-funny-about-facebooks-serial-attacks-on-the-babylon-bee

My emphasis.

I posted a graphic on fecebook which made fun of the relationships between man and woman but attributed it to a log dead writer. Fecebook came back with the inevitable 'false information' overlay, at which point I ripped them, telling them it was a joke. Eventually, the banner/overlay came off, but I challenged them right on the thread.

I'm not monetized, and don't ever anticipate that happening.