Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

Sept. 20, 2022 - Epoch Times

14:16

Twitter Suspends Babylon Bee for 'Absurd' Reason: Interview with CEO

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	It's been said by many people that right now we live in a world where it's quite difficult to distinguish satire from reality.
	And to give you an idea of what I mean by that, let's play a quick game.
	I'm going to show you three news headlines and you tell me which one of them is satire.
	Let's begin.
	Is it A, rapper Eminem tops Billboard's Hot Christian Songs chart for gospel collaboration and calls Jesus Christ the Savior?
	Is it B, San Francisco Bicycle Coalition says not to call police when your bike is stolen because it hurts black and brown people?
	Or is it C, PETA says good riddance to Dr.
	Fauci with a Halloween costume complete with an oversized syringe and stuffed beagle?
	And the answer is none.
	It was a trick question.
	All three of those news headlines are real, showing us just how difficult it is to actually write satire these days.
	However, that does not stop some people from trying.
	People like Mr. Seth Dillon, the CEO of the Babylon Bee, one of the largest satire sites on the entire web.
	And they are large, despite the fact that they are heavily censored, having been suspended on Twitter, kicked off of TikTok, and even having had their email service provider suspend them as well.
	And so, while I was over in Texas, I took the opportunity to sit down and speak with Mr.
	Dillon in order to discuss, for one, the difficulty of writing satire in an already ridiculous world, and secondly, on a deeper level, the importance of comedy in revealing vital truth that otherwise could never be said.
	Take a listen.
	You recently had some difficulties with your email service.
	You were trying to bypass some of the big tech censorship on the social media platforms using email, but even with the email you had some problems.
	Can you sort of lay it out for the audience what happened?
	Yeah, I mean, well, it's hard to know what happens with these things, because a lot of times you'll get shut off for a policy violation, and you ask them, well, what policy did I violate?
	And they say, well, we don't have to disclose that to you, right?
	So we're using a service called Front App, and Front App is like a shared inbox service that you can have your emails, your text messages...
	All different channels.
	Direct messages from different social platforms all funnel into one inbox that your customer support team can handle from one place.
	It's a very useful tool.
	There's all kinds of rules and canned responses and stuff like that.
	So we've been using that to manage our customer support stuff.
	And then out of the blue, we get a notice of termination that we're permanently suspended.
	There is no appeal.
	We violated their conduct policy.
	So, you know, this kind of stuff happens.
	You're never really safe on any of these platforms, and so we've just been, for the last couple of years, bouncing around to whatever platform will have us.
	Very frustrating, honestly, and a big setback for our business because everything was set up on this platform.
	But, you know, ultimately, they're a private business.
	They can do what they want, but...
	If they're engaging in viewpoint discrimination, we didn't actually violate their terms of service, there's no way for us to, you know, get to the bottom of that or do anything about it.
	So, tough spot to be in, but, you know, there's going to be alternatives out there.
	We've already transitioned to one, but unfortunately, conservatives are just, this is the reality that we have to deal with.
	So also, if you go on your Twitter page right now, the Babylon Bee official Twitter account, the last post on there is from like March, right?
	What is it about your content and your satire that has the people holding these levers of, you know, getting content out there like the email service?
	I guess it's not the email service provider, but this email platform, the big tech.
	What is it about your content that's having them, you know, shut you down?
	It's true.
	Our content is true.
	I mean, look, We're satire, right?
	We're fake news you can trust.
	That's our tagline.
	But there's truth to these jokes.
	That's the point.
	There's truth.
	We're reminding people.
	We're pointing back to the truth and trying to speak truth to culture using humor, using comedy.
	And the left is on a full-out assault against truth.
	They're on a full-out assault against rationality.
	They want you to say that two and two make five.
	And if you don't say that, they want to boot you off the platform.
	So even if you just joke about how two and two make four, if we do a joke about, and this is what got us knocked off Twitter, you know, USA Today had named Rachel Levine Woman of the Year.
	And this is a transgender person in the Biden administration.
	And, you know, we did a joke about how we were naming Rachel Levine Man of the Year.
	And so, you know, we're making a joke that's spoofing a real story, but is rooted in the reality that this is a male person, you know?
	And a man is an adult human male.
	So there's truth to the joke.
	That's why they don't like it.
	That's why they want to take it down.
	So they're fighting the truth.
	And that's why they're fighting comedy, is because comedy speaks the truth.
	You know, I think you've gotten sort of like to a deeper philosophical level.
	There's a panel discussion going on today.
	It's called like something with the Pooh, but Pooh is spelled P-O-O-H. And it's about Xi Jinping and how he's censoring people who talk about Winnie the Pooh, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	And sort of the premise of that panel discussion is that tyrants really fear comedy because comedy can topple...
	Well, you know, the people in positions of power are most powerful institutions.
	They want, you know, it's not just the government, you know, there's people in power in government, but there's also, you know, celebrities and entertainment and education, you know, all of these institutions.
	They have a narrative that they want to advance.
	They have a progressive narrative.
	They have their own propaganda.
	They have a narrative they want you to buy into.
	The last thing they want is somebody mocking and ridiculing and poking holes in that narrative.
	That's the comedian's job, honestly.
	But that's why they squirm and get so worked up about jokes that they don't like, because those jokes are making their narrative that they want you to take seriously We're making it less serious.
	We're causing people to question it.
	But that's really our job.
	That's what we're supposed to be doing.
	And I think that anybody who's interested in the truth should be willing to have their own ideas examined in that way.
	But there's also the other side of it, too, where it's like, We have so many bad ideas out there right now that are permeating our society.
	They're advancing so many crazy ideas, insane ideas, that really the best response to it is not to try to argue with people.
	I say the way that I put it is this usually.
	If you've abandoned rationality on purpose and you're adopting an irrational view on purpose and you know you are, but you're trying to do it anyway and push it on people.
	The best response to that is not to try to argue with someone who's abandoned rationality because you're using reason against non-reason, right?
	The best response is to respond with ridicule, to make fun of it, to joke it, to mock the hell out of it.
	So I think honestly, I think that's why there's a target on our backs is because we do that very well.
	All right, just to pause here for a super quick moment.
	I wanted to mention that the sponsor of today's episode is a super cool company called Secure.
	They're a cool company for people that actually care about their privacy.
	Because listen, if you don't think that these giant tech and glomerates and all these different alphabet agencies within the US government are spying on your messages, well, then frankly, you are not paying enough attention to the news.
	However, all that can be in the past because with Secure, they have awesome proprietary technology that has all your messages and all your emails actually go through Switzerland as they're making their way back and forth between you and your recipient.
	And so let's say you're here in America and the person you're messaging is over in Canada, Mexico, or anywhere else in the world.
	Well, it doesn't matter because all your messages are actually going through Switzerland back and forth from one to another, meaning that they are not subject to the Cloud Act and they are only subject to Swiss laws, which are some of the safest in the entire world.
	Their technology is awesome.
	It's proprietary and they're a company that actually cares about your freedom.
	They care about getting the facts out, which is why they sponsor a company like ours.
	And best of all, they are offering a 25% off deal for our viewers, for the viewers of Facts Matter.
	So head on over to secure.com and use promo code Roman to get 25% off.
	And the rates are not even that expensive to start with.
	It's only $5 for the messenger and $10 for the email and messenger combo.
	And they even offer a 7-day free trial.
	So again, head on over to secure.com, use promo code Roman, save some money, and support an awesome sponsor.
	It feels like there's almost a real push away from sort of a mainstream comedy.
	Because I know that back in the day, if you were a comic, you'd have to kind of go up through the circuits, right?
	But nowadays, it's almost impossible if you're an actual edgy comic to go through up the traditional channel.
	So guys like Ryan Long, I don't know if you're familiar with his comedy.
	So he's able to put out his videos, then he's able to have his own independent podcast.
	And there's almost like this side ecosystem that's...
	Building up around people that can still make jokes and tell the truth.
	And I feel like eventually, and I'd love to know if you agree with this opinion, eventually that old apparatus will just decay because it's not funny anymore, right?
	It's like, I was watching for the first time ever, Seth Meyers, I think his name was, right?
	Seth Meyers, online in his late night talk show, he was actually making fun of CPAC. And the jokes were just like lame.
	Like, I'm okay with making fun of myself or the event I'm at, but it's like, Just lame jokes, not funny at all.
	So I feel like eventually that will decay and whatever is built here will actually flourish because this is where the humor is.
	Do you agree with that?
	I mean, comedians are going to flourish when they're making fun of the things that deserve to be made fun of.
	And this is the problem with a lot of late night comedy right now is that they are...
	Instead of poking holes in the narrative, like I was saying, they're promoting it.
	They're honestly promoting it.
	They get up there and they preach.
	They're actually going for the applause of affirmation from their audience rather than the laughter of amusement.
	They've got their audience standing up and clapping for them in support of whatever they're saying that's promoting whatever the popular narrative is.
	And that's not comedy.
	That's not making people laugh.
	So I think that anybody who's willing to make these jokes, like Joe Rogan just recently said, defending us, that woke stuff is the funniest stuff right now.
	And he didn't use the word stuff.
	He cursed.
	I won't do that here.
	But he said woke stuff is the funniest stuff.
	And the reason that Bad Mom Bee is funny is because they're willing to make fun of the funniest stuff right now.
	And a lot of people protect that.
	They want to advance the woke stuff, and so they don't make fun of it.
	So I think that's the key difference.
	And it is difficult.
	I think we have an advantage.
	We built our following before a lot of this stuff got really, the censorship really ramped up.
	Like, it started to impact us after we already had built an audience.
	We may have never gotten off the ground if we had started the site today.
	And that's one of the difficult aspects of the cancel culture because a lot of people say, like, we try to cancel this guy, like Joe Rogan, but he actually gained followers, so cancel culture doesn't exist.
	But that really only works for the people who are already in that position.
	The people who are working up through the ranks, they might just self-censor, right?
	So what do you foresee?
	You were able to do that, but maybe some up-and-coming...
	I use comedians.
	I guess you're technically a publisher, but I guess I use the comedy aspect to it.
	What do you make of that?
	Do you foresee, like what we were discussing earlier, that there'll be a side ecosystem?
	Or how do you foresee somebody who wants to tell the truth, wants to tell good jokes, like make fun of the woke stuff?
	How can they actually get name recognition without getting censored?
	That's a good question.
	There's alternative platforms.
	You can't reach as large of an audience through these alternative platforms as you can through what Elon Musk would call the digital town square of the modern age, which is the main big...
	Like Facebook and Twitter, YouTube.
	It's hard to reach a large audience if you're outside of those platforms.
	So something may change where...
	If you're putting out good material and people are hungry for real comedy, then they might gravitate towards your content on other platforms, and maybe people will start to adopt those other platforms.
	Hopefully, a lot of them do.
	People on the left aren't looking for a free speech platform.
	Honestly, it's not that they have a problem with hate speech.
	They just hate speech.
	So they don't like to see that conservatives are even allowed to talk on these platforms.
	So there's no way they're going to join them.
	They want to stay on the platforms that censor conservatives because they consider everything we say to be hate speech or misinformation.
	And they use the euphemism content moderation.
	They're just using harmless content moderation to get rid of all the misinformation and hate speech.
	But they're just getting rid of views they don't like, opinions they don't like.
	I think ultimately there needs to be an answer to that problem on these platforms where the audiences are.
	If you want to reach both sides of the aisle, if you want to reach the public square with whatever comedy you're putting out or any content that you're putting out, then your First Amendment right to speak freely and not be discriminated against for your viewpoints, your political viewpoints, I think has to be protected.
	And so if the law doesn't currently protect it, then there needs to be new laws that do protect it.
	Have you ever considered deleting that Man of the Year tweet just so you can continue to engage with people on Twitter?
	And if so, what was the reason for not having done it thus far?
	Oh, I mean, well, initially, I haven't considered it since I said that I wouldn't.
	You know, we said, and we meant it, that we're not going to delete the tweet.
	And there's a reason for that.
	I mean, they're asking us with that tweet to admit that we engaged in hateful conduct, and we don't admit that we did that.
	I mean, I think we made a joke that we have every right to make.
	You know, again, like I said, Rachel Levine is a male.
	This is a male person, not a signed male at birth, like literally a biological male person.
	We should be able to make that joke.
	And we should be able to have a conversation about whether or not any of these rules that they're talking about make sense.
	Like misgendering somebody.
	Well, is it misgendering somebody when they identify as a woman and you call them a man?
	Or is it misgendering somebody when they are in fact a man and they call themselves a woman?
	I mean, we should be able to have a debate about that.
	And we can't.
	So we stood on the principle that the truth is not hate speech, and we don't want to be playing a part in these games of giving these platforms more power than they should have.
	We're not going to censor ourselves.
	If you don't like our joke, you can delete it.
	Now, as usual, what we just watched was not the full interview.
	Because I don't want to be suspended off of this platform, just like how the Babylon Bee is suspended off of many others, I instead chose to upload the entirety of the interview over on Epic TV, our awesome no-censorship video platform.
	Because over there, we don't have to work around the self-censorship regime that is present here on YouTube.
	And so if you'd like to check out the entirety of this interview with Seth Dillon, as well as a plethora of other great content, including documentaries, other programs, as well as I should also mention that our program, Facts Matter, I publish somewhere between two to three exclusive episodes over on Epic TV.
	Episodes that because, again, of the regime of censorship here on YouTube, I cannot publish on this platform.
	So if you want to head on over to Epic TV and check out all that great content, the link will be right there at the very top of the description box.
	I hope you check it out.
	And until next time, I'm your host, Roman from the Epic Times.
	Stay informed.

▲