Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon is questioning why Twitter won’t simply delete a post from The Bee’s account — a tweet the social media giant alleges violated its “hateful conduct” policies.
Dillon believes the ultimatum to delete the message or risk losing access to crucial Twitter features is about forcing The Babylon Bee to “bend the knee” and admit they were wrong. And that’s something he’s unwilling to do.
“To require us to go in there and delete the tweet and affirm that we engage in hateful conduct — I mean, how can you expect us to do that?” Dillon told CBN’s Faithwire. “They’re more than welcome to delete that tweet if they want to. It’s their platform. But why should we have to do it? They just want us to bend the knee.”
As Faithwire previously reported, The Babylon Bee was locked out of Twitter over the weekend due to a post about U.S. Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine, a biological male who identifies as female.
The tweet included an image of the transgender official and text that read, “The Babylon Bee’s Man of the Year Is Rachel Levine.” Twitter reportedly slapped The Babylon Bee with an injunction, demanding the tweet be removed for The Bee to regain access to its account.
Watch Dillon react:
The Babylon Bee CEO said his company doesn’t want to be off Twitter and believes it’s an important outlet to be able to share satirical content.
Still, he’s unwilling to cross the line and admit fault when he believes The Bee did nothing wrong.
“We don’t agree that we engaged in hateful conduct,” he said. “What they’re requiring us to do is essentially affirm that two and two make five, and we’re not willing to do that. We would like to be on Twitter. We don’t want to be off of Twitter. But we don’t want to be the ones to delete a tweet like that and acknowledge that we did, in fact, engage in hateful conduct when we didn’t.”
Dillon said The Bee merely “made a joke.” So far, he said fans have been incredibly supportive.
“We have a lot of support,” Dillon said. “There’s a lot of people who’ve been saying that we should have left Twitter a long time ago. I never fell into that camp. I was never one of those people who felt that it was necessary for us to sideline ourselves voluntarily and remove ourselves from the conversation.”
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He argued it’s essential to be present “where the discourse is,” if individuals and institutions “want to speak truth to culture.”
“So, we want to be in the fight,” he said. “We want to be in the ring, and we want to have our voice counted in the discussion. This is not a case where we’re sidelining ourselves. It’s a case where we’re being … compelled to affirm something that we don’t want to affirm.”
Watch the full interview for more of Dillon’s take on the situation.
As Faithwire previously reported, The Bee isn’t the only prominent Christian outlet to be punished by Twitter. The social media giant also recently limited The Christian Post, a well-known news organization covering matters of faith and culture, after the outlet tweeted a story about Levine.
Despite incurring account limitations, The Christian Post told Faithwire Tuesday the outlet has no plans of complying with demands to remove the offending tweet.
“Twitter told us that if we remove the tweet of the CP article, ‘USA Today names Rachel Levine among its ‘Women of the Year,’ then our account will be restored,” the outlet said. “We do not plan on removing the tweet. We will continue to speak the truth, even if it costs us our Twitter account.”
These recent developments will up the ante on the continued battle over social media censorship.
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