Babylon Bee CEO cuts ties to Mailchimp, accuses email service of 'censoring' conservatives
The conservative satirical site's account was briefly suspended for alleged 'policy' violations
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon is parting ways with the popular email marketing company Mailchimp after the satirical website's account was suspended.
Dillon took to Twitter and shared a screenshot of an email he had received from Mailchimp notifying him that Babylon Bee was suspended for "violating our Standard Terms of Use and Acceptable Use Policy."
"I’d email everyone to let them know @Mailchimp just suspended our account but Mailchimp just suspended our account," Dillon tweeted.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Mailchimp was quick to respond to Dillon's tweet, which was sparking backlash against the company among Babylon Bee fans.
"Hey Seth. We got this in front of our Compliance team and they’ve reinstated the account. Our team followed up in an email with more details. We apologize for the inconvenience," Mailchimp wrote.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Well, it may be too little, too late for Mailchimp to salvage its financial ties to Babylon Bee.
"Thank you, but we're moving to an email service provider that doesn't make these 'mistakes,'" Dillon replied to Mailchimp.
'BABYLON BEE' CEO: 'HOW FUNNY IS IT THAT CNN IS COMING AFTER US FOR SPREADING DISINFORMATION?'
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}He added, "We'd also prefer to be on a platform that doesn't censor conservatives for being ‘hateful’ or 'misinformative.'"
Dillon explained to Fox News that Mailchimp was never specific as to why the Bee's account was suspended in the first place but that the email service later told Dillion an "automated system" flagged the account over alleged "harmful information" and that the account was manually reinstated.
"For a long time now, Mailchimp has been exercising viewpoint discrimination under the guise of protecting the public from harmful misinformation. We have no interest in staying on a platform that's looking for excuses to censor us by literally scanning the content of our emails," Dillon told Fox News. "The reversal in this case gives us no confidence that it won't happen again, and perhaps the suspension will be permanent next time. So we're moving on to an email service provider that actually values free expression."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Mailchimp did not immediately respond to Fox News' request for comment.
NEW YORK TIMES ADMITS BABYLON BEE IS SATIRE, NOT ‘MISINFORMATION,’ IN CORRECTION
Dillon has been fiercely defending the Babylon Bee from the site's liberal critics. Last week, the conservative satirical publication had a major victory over The New York Times, who retracted its claim that the Bee "trafficked in misinformation."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"We can't take this stuff lying down," Dillon told Fox News' Tucker Carlson. "We actually, as satirists, want to joke about this stuff. We just want to poke fun at The New York Times. The problem is, like it or not, The New York Times is considered a reliable source. So when the social networks are looking to decide who's satire, who's misinformation, who's fake news, they look to The New York Times, they look to Snopes, they look to CNN."
"And so when they're making these mischaracterizations about us, we have to take it seriously and even if we don't want to—we want to keep things light, we've got to send demand letters, we've got to threaten to sue because otherwise, we're going to get mischaracterized and we're going to get the boot from social media," Dillion explained.
While the Times eventually retracted its claim about the Bee, Dillion insisted the error was "deliberate" because the "legacy media" is taking advantage of social media's concern of the spread of misinformation.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}CLICK HERE FOR THE FOX NEWS APP
"We're making fun of the things that need to be made fun of. We're ridiculing bad ideas," Dillon said. "The New York Times has incredible disdain for us, I would guess, by the way they're treating us, in the way they are handling this because they know better."
"On the one hand, it's extremely ironic that they're using misinformation to smear us as being a source of it… It's comically ironic, but beyond that, it's malicious because they know better."