The Babylon Bee's Twitter account is no longer suspended • Hacker News Board

Re: The Babylon Bee's Twitter account is no longer suspended

#71

Post by nemo44x » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 4:06 PM UTC

labrador wrote: post #65

Babylon Bee seems pretty harmless. I find right wing humor to be fairly low-IQ, but they should be able to joke about trans women without getting banned. I'm a recovering alcoholic and bipolar, so I have to put up with jokes about drunks and manic street preachers. Why should trans get a pass? Heck, I even tell jokes about drunks and manic street preachers myself.

They should be able to joke about anything. There are no sacred cows. If someone doesn’t like their humor then don’t read it. Don’t follow them.

Re: The Babylon Bee's Twitter account is no longer suspended

#72

Post by sascha_sl » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 4:06 PM UTC

BitwiseFool wrote: post #57

socialismisok wrote: post #39

[flagged]

>"Elon doesn't actually believe in a free marketplace of ideas, he believes in ensuring views he agrees with are available." This may just be a quirk of how this sentence was written, but wouldn't ensuring agreeable views that were once removed not count towards enlarging the marketplace of ideas? It may never be totally free, but he doesn't seem to be contracting what can be in the marketplace.

Paradox of tolerance.

Re: The Babylon Bee's Twitter account is no longer suspended

#73

Post by meltyness » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 4:07 PM UTC

lynndotpy wrote: post #15

meltyness wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... but is this response, itself satire?

I would also appreciate a source that is not a satire article created by an involved party.

I agree. It's not particularly funny, and the "bird and bee" visual is the closest thing to satire I can find here.

Adm. Levine stayed in a potentially unhappy marriage for 25 years for sake of their 2 kids, or possibly developed genitourinary cancer and leveraged it to do a public service and lead and include transgendered folks.

Not particularly funny. I read it as a tacit admission of guilt.

Re: The Babylon Bee's Twitter account is no longer suspended

#74

Post by apolymath » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 4:07 PM UTC

socialismisok wrote: post #52

outside1234 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What were they banned for? Looking through the content, I don't see any of the egregious hate speech or incitement of violence that we've seen in other bans like Trump.

They gave a trans woman their man of the year award and tweeted about it. Twitter said misgendering is against their rules and blocked the account until they deleted the tweet. Babylon Bee felt attacked and refused to delete the tweet, so they just left their own account locked.

No post body was provided.

Re: The Babylon Bee's Twitter account is no longer suspended

#75

Post by socialismisok » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 4:07 PM UTC

BitwiseFool wrote: post #57

socialismisok wrote: post #39

[flagged]

>"Elon doesn't actually believe in a free marketplace of ideas, he believes in ensuring views he agrees with are available." This may just be a quirk of how this sentence was written, but wouldn't ensuring agreeable views that were once removed not count towards enlarging the marketplace of ideas? It may never be totally free, but he doesn't seem to be contracting what can be in the marketplace.

It's because he's enlarging exactly one segment, his own political views. That will eventually come at the cost of others, who just don't want to deal with misogyny, transphobia, homophobia, etc. They will withdraw from the market, leaving it without those ideas and creating the same sort of insular platform, just with a different bent.

Re: The Babylon Bee's Twitter account is no longer suspended

#76

Post by notacoward » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 4:08 PM UTC

threeseed wrote: post #54

bink wrote: post #38

It'll be very interesting to see what advertisers stick around through all this mayhem.

Very few. Advertisers are the most conservative group in any ecosystem and they have plenty of other options for their advertising spend. Twitter will be no different. Americans like to make a big deal about wokeness but the concept doesn't really resonate in other countries and Twitter is a global business. So it will be interesting to see how Musk reconciles these dynamics.

> Advertisers are the most conservative group in any ecosystem

Just to be clear, you're using "conservative" in the "risk averse" sense and not the more common political sense, right?

Re: The Babylon Bee's Twitter account is no longer suspended

#77

Post by sascha_sl » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 4:08 PM UTC

_aavaa_ wrote: post #69

socialismisok wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will he unban ISIS recruiting accounts? Will he unban Trump? Alex Jones? He's not a free speech absolutist, he's just making room for his personal ideology. He doesn't need to ban leftists to achieve his goal of pushing them off the platform.

Why is it "his personal ideology" when he's one in charge, but simply "twitter's rules" when the previous CEOs were in charge?

Because Twitter policy wasn't informed by a single person until now.

Re: The Babylon Bee's Twitter account is no longer suspended

#78

Post by socialismisok » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 4:08 PM UTC

_aavaa_ wrote: post #69

socialismisok wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will he unban ISIS recruiting accounts? Will he unban Trump? Alex Jones? He's not a free speech absolutist, he's just making room for his personal ideology. He doesn't need to ban leftists to achieve his goal of pushing them off the platform.

Why is it "his personal ideology" when he's one in charge, but simply "twitter's rules" when the previous CEOs were in charge?

Because there are differences in how the rules were created. Presumably previous rules involved policy teams and moderation teams and legal teams.

Elon rolling in and being like, "Unban these people even though they've broken the rules" is clearly a different mode.

Re: The Babylon Bee's Twitter account is no longer suspended

#79

Post by frenchy » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 4:09 PM UTC

listenallyall wrote: post #32

some_random wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Wikipedia tends to err on the side of respecting the wishes of the subject. For a less political example, CPG Grey's page doesn't have his legal name or photo despite them being pretty easy to find. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CGP_Grey

If someone legally changes their name, that would indicate to me that the subject wishes to be known by the new name. Yet Wikipedia will still list the birth name.

People change their names all the time when they get married or immigrate and have no problem with their birth name's being available. I don't think it's fair to make a blanket statement about this.

Re: The Babylon Bee's Twitter account is no longer suspended

#80

Post by mrkstu » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 4:10 PM UTC

socialismisok wrote: post #52

outside1234 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What were they banned for? Looking through the content, I don't see any of the egregious hate speech or incitement of violence that we've seen in other bans like Trump.

They gave a trans woman their man of the year award and tweeted about it. Twitter said misgendering is against their rules and blocked the account until they deleted the tweet. Babylon Bee felt attacked and refused to delete the tweet, so they just left their own account locked.

I'm not sure if they felt 'attacked'- more that they were standing up for their right to do what they do (satire) without being censored and giving into the censorship by deleting the tweet. The 'mis-gendering' in this case was absolutely truthful in a scientific sense, thereby making their point that truth being somehow harmful in today's society. Whether you agree that's a 'good' point or not it seems to fall squarely in the area that should be open for public comment.