{"id":710682,"date":"2021-09-02T16:21:20","date_gmt":"2021-09-02T20:21:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=710682"},"modified":"2021-09-02T16:21:30","modified_gmt":"2021-09-02T20:21:30","slug":"secret-censors-babylon-bee-ceo-thinks-facebook-is-moving-beyond-news-to-suppress-wrong-kind-of-comedy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/secret-censors-babylon-bee-ceo-thinks-facebook-is-moving-beyond-news-to-suppress-wrong-kind-of-comedy\/","title":{"rendered":"Secret Censors: Babylon Bee CEO Thinks Facebook Is Moving Beyond News to Suppress Wrong Kind Of Comedy"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">34<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fsecret-censors-babylon-bee-ceo-thinks-facebook-is-moving-beyond-news-to-suppress-wrong-kind-of-comedy%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=710682&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/GettyImages-621216390-scaled-1.jpg?w=1200&amp;h=800&amp;ixlib=react-9.0.3\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" \/><\/div>\n<p>One of the most popular \u201cstories\u201d on The Babylon Bee right now bears the <a href=\"https:\/\/babylonbee.com\/news\/scandal-as-newsom-campaign-produces-old-yearbook-photos-showing-larry-elder-in-blackface\">headline<\/a>, \u201cScandal As Newsom Campaign Produces Old Yearbook Photo Showing Larry Elder In Blackface.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The faux article goes on to claim, \u201cNewsom will be spending $12 million in predominately black areas of Southern California to remind black voters that Elder is a fake black person\u2014and that pasty white millionaire, winery owner, and French cuisine connoisseur Gavin Newsom is a better choice for the black community than Larry Elder.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>What kind of \u201cnews quality score\u201d would an obvious joke like this warrant? What kind would any joke warrant? These are the questions preoccupying Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon, who believes Facebook is applying journalism standards to his company\u2019s satirical stories.<\/p>\n<p>Dillon tells The Daily Wire that the Bee began to see a precipitous drop in traffic immediately following the presidential election. To some extent, that was to be expected, given that audiences were less likely to engage with politically-themed humor once the winner had been settled. But the decline continued at a steady pace in the following months. In the past, more than 80% of the Bee\u2019s traffic came from Facebook. Today, that number is down to just 30%.<\/p>\n<p>Dillon couldn\u2019t make any sense of it unless the platform was intentionally throttling the reach of his company\u2019s content. Yet there\u2019s only one reason Facebook has publicly <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/journalismproject\/programs\/third-party-fact-checking\/publisher-faqs\">offered<\/a> for manipulating user feeds in that manner, and that is to \u201creduce the spread\u201d of low-quality reporting.<\/p>\n<p>Stymied, Dillon asked the tech giant about his suspicions that it has been using these new journalism algorithms as a weapon against the Bee\u2019s popularity.<\/p>\n<p>He says he never got a straight answer.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Pay No Attention To The Men Behind The Curtain <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>When Donald Trump is kicked off Twitter, the public, at least the part of the public that\u2019s interested, knows about it. When Facebook decides to brand a post \u201cmisinformation,\u201d the label is there for the world to see. But what about the algorithms and censors, working silently in the background to stifle so-called \u201clower-quality\u201d reporting? How can you question or protest speech suppression that you never see?<\/p>\n<p>Conservative legal experts have been busy in the pages of <a href=\"https:\/\/time.com\/5770755\/threat-free-speech-online\/\">Time<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/the-common-carrier-solution-to-social-media-censorship-11610732343\">The Wall Street Journal<\/a> debating how the First Amendment should apply to social media. Some say these platforms are private companies that should have the power to expel political leaders and remove posts from nonconformist medical experts as they see fit. Others claim they should be viewed as public utilities who, like railroads, are compelled to carry all comers, regardless of political affiliation.<\/p>\n<p>As the Bee\u2019s predicament shows, both sides might be arguing from an increasingly irrelevant paradigm \u2014 the more important question might be what obligations the tech giants have to divulge how and <em>to whom<\/em> they\u2019re applying their stealth quality standards.<\/p>\n<p>What responsibility do the purveyors of public speech have to disclose their secret machinations to users? What if you\u2019ve been kicked off the train without even knowing it?<\/p>\n<p><strong>A Joke By Any Other Name<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>As has been reported in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2020\/11\/24\/technology\/facebook-election-misinformation.html\">The New York Times<\/a>, Facebook\u2019s efforts to artificially weight some news outlets over others went into hyperdrive after staffers lobbied for changes to address the popularity of conservative and rightwing publications.<\/p>\n<p>Immediately following the November election, a group of employees went to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, upset over \u201celection-related misinformation.\u201d Zuckerberg responded by instituting what his head of global affairs called emergency \u201cbreak glass\u201d measures. One of those measures was creating a secret internal ranking system that would boost stories from establishment outlets by giving them a high \u201cnews ecosystem quality\u201d (NEQ) score while suppressing others by giving them low scores.<\/p>\n<p>The problem with the rankings is that no one outside Facebook knows precisely how they\u2019re assessed or by whom. &nbsp;As several anonymous sources told The Times, the new algorithm \u201cresulted in a spike in visibility for big, mainstream publishers like CNN, The New York Times and NPR, while posts from highly engaged hyperpartisan pages \u2026 became less visible.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But even with conservative complaints that Facebook has been weighting left-wing establishment media over equally (if not more) reliable conservative publications, these measures were ostensibly designed to apply only to news. What of jokes about news? Why would the kind of comedy that has been a staple of late-night television and sketch shows for decades be subject to the same oversight?<\/p>\n<p>Dillon says he asked the platform directly if it was giving his satire site a poor news quality score and suppressing Bee stories on that basis. Months later, Facebook answered. Sort of.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUnfortunately,\u201d a spokeswoman told Dillon, \u201cwhen it comes to the news quality score, we are unable to disclose who is\/isn\u2019t included as this is an internal metric.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Dillon points out that it was a strange answer to a straightforward question, especially given the impossibility of assigning a reliability rating to satire.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere are no factual claims being made on our website,\u201d he points out. \u201cThey have internal confidential information that they won\u2019t disclose about how the news quality system works. And so what they were able to tell me was that they won\u2019t say whether we even have a rating.\u201d (The Daily Wire reached out to Facebook to confirm whether or not it has assigned The Babylon Bee an NEQ score and did not receive an answer).<\/p>\n<p>When Dillon pressed further, the Facebook rep did tell him that the platform broadly defines news as \u201canything that can be perceived as news or influences the news ecosystem.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>By that measure, it would be hard to imagine anyone or anything that wouldn\u2019t rate an NEQ score, as any comment or post that gets shared widely has the potential to \u201cinfluence\u201d the news ecosystem.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI mean, guess what,\u201d says Dillon, \u201cwe\u2019re one of the most popular entertainment sites on the internet. So of course, stuff that we share is going to have an impact and get written about in the news all the time. Based on her definition, it\u2019s certainly possible that our satire is being caught up in that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u2018We Have A Right To Be Here\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Dillon stresses that he\u2019s not blaming <em>all<\/em> the traffic drop on censorship or underhanded tactics behind the scenes. But he thinks platforms should have to disclose how they\u2019re applying standards so that businesses that rely on social media have some clarity on whether they are being targeted unfairly, so that, if necessary, they can address it.<\/p>\n<p>Dillon says people ask him all the time why The Babylon Bee still bothers to stay on Facebook and Twitter instead of leaving these sites. His argument for staying is that social media is where speech happens. It\u2019s where debate and public discourse take place.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese three or four platforms essentially function as the modern public square,\u201d Dillon contends. His company specializes in a specific brand of political speech\u2014satire that sharply presents a point of view through exaggeration and mockery. This type of discourse has a long and important role to play in the social and cultural debate going back to Jonathan Swift\u2019s \u201cModest Proposal\u201d in the 18th century that the starving Irish could just sell their children as food to the land-owning British.<\/p>\n<p>In the argument for American independence, no one used mockery more effectively than Benjamin Franklin, whose tongue-in-cheek \u201cRules by Which a Great Empire May Be Reduced to a Small One\u201d crystallized the colonists\u2019 complaints against English oppression.<\/p>\n<p>Or as the liberal journalist Molly Ivins once put it, \u201cSatire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Bee has been uniquely effective at bringing conservative ideas to the public square in an age when the left holds the power over all the major levers of cultural influence. For that reason, Dillon says he refuses to be sidelined by removing the Bee from these platforms.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re going to stay there for as long as we can,\u201d he insists. \u201cIf we get banned, we get banned. But ultimately, I think we have a right to be there.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Dillon believes that eventually Constitutional safeguards for free speech will result in measures to prevent the kind of uneven censorship and viewpoint discrimination the tech giants have been employing.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut a lot of that is out of our hands,\u201d he says. \u201cWe\u2019re just going to continue to make noise when we have to appeal directly to our readers \u2014 if they enjoy our content, if they want to keep seeing our content, to support us, so that we have a platform whether Facebook likes it or not.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>The Daily Wire is one of America\u2019s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a&nbsp;<\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/subscribe\"><em>member<\/em><\/a><em>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the most popular \u201cstories\u201d on The Babylon Bee right now bears the headline, \u201cScandal As Newsom Campaign Produces Old Yearbook Photo Showing Larry Elder In Blackface.\u201dThe faux article &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-710682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=710682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710682\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=710682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=710682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=710682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}