Recently, Facebook took action to punish the Babylon Bee for a satirical article that had some harmless fun at religious bigot and Democratic Sen. Mazie Hirono’s expense:
Facebook seems to have deleted @TheBabylonBee's post saying Senator Hirono wanted to weigh ACB against a duck for "violating our Community Standards." We requested a review but they haven't gotten back to us. pic.twitter.com/GWW5c4veCV
— Kyle Mann (@The_Kyle_Mann) October 17, 2020
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!https://t.co/U9B6tTOj6N
— Seth Dillon (@SethDillon) October 20, 2020
But Facebook’s efforts to protect their users from satirical material that is unflattering to Democrats apparently didn’t go over as well as they thought it would.
Here’s what Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon shared today:
Update: Now that this story has attracted some media attention, Facebook has reversed their decision and lifted the restrictions on our page. They now say it was just a mistake and blame it on their automated systems (even though a person manually reviewed it after our appeal).
— Seth Dillon (@SethDillon) October 22, 2020
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It was totally an accident that they intentionally tried to punish the Babylon Bee via multiple restrictions!
They were hacked!
— Grace, culture war refugee (@graceisforyou) October 22, 2020
Hate it when that happens!
They lied?
Weird!
— I did not and will not vote for him. Calm down. (@jtLOL) October 22, 2020
What a surprise
— DaleDehavenWyatt (@numberedaccount) October 22, 2020
It’s so unlike Facebook to be anything other than completely honest and transparent.