Facebook uses partisan fact-checkers to 'suppress' conservative satire, Babylon Bee CEO says
Seth Dillon suspects Facebook gives the Bee a poor "news quality score," even though his website doesn't claim to publish news
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Facebook appears to be throttling the reach of the Christian satire site The Babylon Bee under the guise of fighting fake news, using biased fact-checkers who have singled out the Bee, Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon told Fox News.
"Facebook uses politically aligned fact-checkers to flag, suppress, and sometimes remove content they deem objectionable. This is not necessarily an issue, but it becomes an issue when it results in politically motivated viewpoint discrimination done under the guise of cracking down on ‘misinformation’ and ‘hate speech,’" Dillon told Fox News on Monday. "We're certainly getting caught up in that."
Facebook drove about 5 million users to The Babylon Bee every month from May 2020 to October 2020, nearly reaching 10 million users last June. After a precipitous drop in November 2020, that referral traffic has slowed to a comparative trickle, and Facebook only directed about 1 million users to The Babylon Bee in July, Dillon told Fox News. More than 1 million users follow the Bee on Facebook.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}On Friday, Dillon publicly shared his suspicion about what caused the precipitous drop in Facebook referral traffic.
"Are you giving our satire site a poor news quality score and suppressing our content on that basis?" the CEO had asked Facebook. He said Facebook responded – months later – with this message: "Unfortunately when it comes to the news quality score, we are unable to disclose who is/isn’t included as this is an internal metric."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Dillon responded, "You can't answer with a 'yes' or a 'no' whether Facebook treats satire as if it were news? Since it's called a ‘news quality score,’ one would assume it applies to news only. Satire is not news. Does Facebook acknowledge that satire is not news?"
"We define news broadly but essentially, we look to capture anything that can be perceived as news or influences the news ecosystem," Facebook reportedly responded.
"Facebook defines ‘news’ so broadly that it ends up meaning anything published by anyone. This allows them to assign ‘news quality scores’ to sites like ours that don’t publish news," Dillon said
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Facebook did not respond to Fox News' request for comment.
"I think it should concern everyone that Facebook defines ‘news’ so broadly that their quality score system can be applied to practically anyone," Dillon told Fox News. "This allows Facebook to censor at will for the sake of ‘news quality.’ And instead of taking responsibility for any of it, they can punt to third-party fact-checkers and say your beef is with them."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}The left-leaning fact-checker Snopes – which suspended its own co-founder earlier this month after it discovered he had plagiarized 54 articles on Snopes – has long targeted The Babylon Bee. In 2018, Snopes fact-checked a Babylon Bee satire article claiming that CNN had bought a washing machine to "spin the news." After Snopes declared the article "false," Facebook warned The Babylon Bee that "repeat offenders will see their distribution reduced."
Snopes has also played satire police in attacking the Bee. In one instance, the fact-checking site declared, "We’re not sure if fanning the flames of controversy and muddying the details of a news story classify an article as ‘satire.’" Lawyers for the Bee have argued that Snopes tried to deplatform the conservative satire site, in part by claiming that the Bee’s satire is somehow not satirical enough.
In March 2021, The New York Times insinuated that The Babylon Bee is a "far-right misinformation site." The Times apologized after the Bee threatened a lawsuit.
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In June, Facebook announced upcoming updates to its "satire exception" to its "Hate Speech Community Standard," warning that "true satire does not ‘punch down.'" One week later, Slate published an article claiming that The Babylon Bee "has a nasty tendency to punch down." Facebook had previously demonetized the satire site, claiming that a satirical article that quoted "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" constituted an incitement to violence.