Satire is not meant to be taken seriously. Yet Big Tech and its tools find a way to label any humor coming from the right as disinformation or fake news.
The Babylon Bee has been repeatedly victimized by this tug of war. In a public history page known as a “Talk” page on Wikipedia, editors with anonymous tags or usernames discussed whether or not the conservative satire site could “legally be considered ‘satire’?” The alleged Twitter account for Bee managing editor Joel Berry tweeted a thread about this Wikipedia incident on Feb. 18.
“There has been an ongoing effort to classify The Babylon Bee as ‘disinformation’ rather than satire,” reportedly said Berry. “They desperately want The Babylon Bee to be censored. I wonder why… .”
In the conversation referenced by Berry, an anonymous Wikipedia editor wrote, “I’ve read many Bee articles and they largely seem constitutionally unable to craft anything even resembling a joke or satirical barb.” The editor’s sentiment seems to go against Wikipedia’s discussion of objectivity when it comes to editing or submitting posts. “Assert facts, not opinions,” says the page on neutral points of view. Analysis of whether humor is funny or not is based on perspective and personality.
An editor under the username Squatch347 argued, “This is about what reputable sources say, not any individual editor's sense of humor.”
Another anonymous contributor retorted, “It is most unfortunate though, because in reality the Babylon Bee is no different from any other right wing disinfo site. Fox, OAN, Newsweek, Bounding into Comics, you name it, they're all the same. The Bee simply found a way to protect themselves from liability by adding ’loljk’ at the end of every article. Which is perfectly in line with the usual tactics of the trump era. Every time they are caught lying they simply say it was just a joke the whole time. But as long as they avoid being fact checked, Republicans eat this nonsense up like it was candy.”
The editor under the username GorillaWarfare seemed to agree, saying, “Have secondary reliable sources said what you are saying here? If so, it could be incorporated into the article.” The anonymous user was not able to provide a source that corroborated his statements. However, GorillaWarfare added a Snopes article that stated, “In fact, stories published by The Bee were among the most shared factually inaccurate content in almost every survey we conducted. On one survey, The Babylon Bee had articles relating to five different falsehoods.”
“Wikipedia no longer has an effective neutrality policy,” wrote former Wikipedia founder Larry Sanger in his personal blog. Yet Big Tech is eager to use Wikipedia as a means to “fact-check” certain points of view. Facebook posts links to Wikipedia “if a Page has a history of sharing misinformation” in a context button. YouTube also posts links to Wikipedia at the bottom of videos that are about climate change.
Wikipedia has also received funds from liberal billionaire George Soros to the tune of $2 million.
Conservatives are under attack. Contact info-en-o@wikimedia.org and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on “hate speech” and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us at the Media Research Center contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
