The Bird and the Bee: Satire, Social Media, and Censorship
Via Palladium Pictures Incubator Program - How does a satire comedy website find itself on the front lines of the debate over free speech online?Seth Dillon and his team at the Babylon Bee tell the story of how they unwittingly found themselves at war with Twitter over a joke, eventually garnering the attention of Elon Musk and ushering in a new era for the social media company. The future of comedy and free speech on the internet are at stake and in the hands of a few jokesters and satirists.
The film features interviews with Babylon Bee managing editor Joel Berry, editor-in-chief Kyle Mann, CEO Seth Dillon, and CTO Dan Dillon, and tells the story of the comedy site's rise to prominence, how they were banned from Twitter over a joke, and their return when Elon Musk bought the social media platform. It was produced and directed by Matt Pirrall and edited by Sean Schiavolin.
"Back in the day, you could legitimately go viral on Facebook. Our content would go so viral it would crash servers," Dan Dillon said.
Seth Dillon added: "We were lucky to exist in a time where that was naturally allowed to happen. Thechange started with Facebook responding to allegations that they were responsible for Donald Trump being elected in 2016... The tone turned into 'Babylon Bee is muddying the waters with fake news and misinformation' in order to spread harmful lies."
"The New York Times put it in print that we 'traffic in misinformation under the guise of satire.' That's just false. And Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and all these platforms look to these guys as authoritative sources," he said.
"We noticed a sharp dropoff in traffic on Facebook around the 2020 election," said Kyle Mann. "They were really concerned about fake news after 2016 and they were going to throw all the levers and switches."
"The line of attack from these platforms went, maybe they're trying to do humor, but humor can be a vehicle for hatred," explained Seth Dillon."At the time, Twitter's mission statement was to provide a platform for free expression without barriers but then in the terms of service, you find all the barriers misgendering, not using someone's pronouns, deadnaming, these were the hot button topics at that time."
The Babylon Bee was banned from Twitter in 2022 for a post making fun of the idea of a transgender person, U.S. Assistant Secretary of Health Admiral Rachel Levine, being named "woman of the year." Later that year, Elon Musk bought Twitter and reinstated their account.
"The Rachel Levine tweet was more mischief than a joke," said Joel Berry. "How audacious it was made our writers laugh because you just weren't supposed to do that. I'll never forget Kyle Mann calling me and saying: Bro, I think you're going to get us kicked off Twitter."
Their account was banned unless they deleted the tweet.
"We had to admit that what we had said was hate speech. There's the penance we had to do, click delete on the tweet and say five hail-Twitters," said Kyle Mann. "Our entire business model is to write funny articles and post them on Facebook and Twitter. All of a sudden, Facebook had crushed us and Twitter has removed us."
"A couple of days later, we got a DM from Elon Musk asking if we'd been banned from Twitter. And of course, we couldn't respond to him because we were locked out of our account!" Seth Dillon recalled.
Elon Musk said: "Is someone you don't like allowed to say something you don't like? If that is the case, you have free speech."
"I thought it was a joke, he was really considering buying Twitter because of this problem. But apparently, he was serious!" Seth Dillon tells Palladium Films. "The very day he took over, he sent me a message at like 4:30 in the morning, and said: Do you want the Babylon Bee restored? There will be no censorship of humor."
Seth Dillon says: "The answer can't be we have to wait for some of the richest men to buy the platform and say, no we don't care about advertising dollars or government pressure. What are the chances that's going to happen? I can't believe it happened once. We certainly can't count on it to ever happen again."
https://youtu.be/GgAcEc7bU44