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

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

#91

Post by sascha_sl » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 4:12 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.

Jokes about alcoholics and bipolar people aren't usually part of a political campaign (willing or unwilling) to get them barred from many parts of public life[1] or fuel other genocidal ambitions[2].

Also, they're not even funny. Maybe because their function is not to make you laugh.

[1]: https://twitter.com/ErinInTheMorn/status/1582492801190674432

[2]: https://www.damemagazine.com/2022/03/15/trans-people-are-in-...

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

#92

Post by socialismisok » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 4:13 PM UTC

ohCh6zos wrote: post #66

socialismisok wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transphobia is pretty clearly against twitters rules. They weren't really banned, they were locked out until they deleted their tweet. All they had to do was delete the tweet.

Galileo wasn't really under house arrest. All he had to do was recant. The comparison seems apt because while the magnitude of the punishment is out of proportion the refusal to yield to orthodoxy by taking the simple way out is similar.

Babylon Bee isn't under house arrest. This analogy is absurd. They weren't allowed to target hate towards a specific, named individual on their Twitter account. Everything else they were saying was more or less ok.

And they still had plenty of other outlets, including their very successful website.

This is like a single book publisher telling Galileo, "we won't print this one page, but the rest of the book is ok".

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

#93

Post by ndlzk » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 4:13 PM UTC

socialismisok wrote: post #67

threeseed wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem for Musk is that Twitter never banned them for being right-wing. They were banned for undeniable, crystal-clear breaches of their terms of service. Is Musk going to allow child porn, inciteful content, doxxing ? This is an unwindable situation.

I agree with you. They were never banned because they were right wing, they were banned because they were tweeting hateful things that were against the rules.

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

#94

Post by fallingknife » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 4:13 PM UTC

tshaddox wrote: post #53

Comevius wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They selected Rachel Levine as their pick for "Man of the Year", although she is a transgender woman. Babylon Bee says that she is a man, and the truth cannot be hate speech. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Levine Honestly I would agree with Babylon Bee if it would be just for satire, like giving a funny award to a transgender woman, I get it, but they are not in it for the jokes, they are in it for the truth as…

Surely the truth can be hate speech. For example, a statement like “I hate X and I call on my followers to organize and commit against X” would surely be hate speech even if it’s true.

First of all there is no such thing as "hate speech." This particular statement would expose you to charges of incitement of violence because you would be giving a direct order to your subordinates to "organize and commit [crimes, I assume] against x." The hate part has nothing to do with it.

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

#95

Post by Comevius » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 4:13 PM UTC

tomp wrote: post #55

chomp wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't offensive, and no (reasonable) people are claiming it is. What's not appropriate, is referring to the person that exists today, as Ellen Page.

She’s the same person!

They don't think so. Some claims that they were born with the wrong body, so their deadname was a mistake. This is why they call it deadname.

Even if you are not transgender, just imagine changing your name, telling everyone about it, and someone would come along insisting on calling you using your former name, practicly mocking, belittling you and your choice. Now imagine them doing the same to your entire identity.

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

#96

Post by bediger4000 » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 4:14 PM UTC

takoid wrote: post #63

bakugo wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> turning into a cesspit of toxicity because ‘free speech’ Twitter is already a cesspit of toxicity because of the lack of free speech. This won't make it any worse.

It will only become worse for those who benefited from Twitter’s censorship.

I had to think a minute, but I agree with you. Lots of unmoderated free speech will make Twitter worse for ordinary folks, who don't want to be spammed with ads, but also an assortment of porn, aggressive politics bot and weirdos.

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

#97

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 4:14 PM UTC

socialismisok wrote: post #56

Mikeb85 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Elon doesn't actually believe in a free marketplace of ideas, Is he banning left wing accounts? Is there any evidence of what you say?

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.

[deleted]

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

#98

Post by threeseed » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 4:14 PM UTC

notacoward wrote: post #76

threeseed wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I am not American. So conservative in the classic definition.

Majority of advertisers still try to appeal to the broadest demographic possible.

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

#99

Post by bakugo » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 4:14 PM UTC

socialismisok wrote: post #62

bakugo wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> turning into a cesspit of toxicity because ‘free speech’ Twitter is already a cesspit of toxicity because of the lack of free speech. This won't make it any worse.

I mean, you don't have free speech here either. Mods will absolutely come in and remove content and ban you for many of the same things Twitter will.

Not entirely untrue, but the difference is that here, if someone posts "I really hate [group of people] and I wish they'd die" it's generally considered breaking the rules, but on twitter whether or not this statement breaks the rules depends on what group of people you targeted.

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

#100

Post by cmh89 » Fri, Oct 28, 2022, 4:15 PM UTC

adamrezich wrote: post #36

Comevius wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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how many times has he been called "Kanye West" in headlines and news stories in the past couple weeks? nobody gives a shit about deadnaming him, because he's a Bad Guy Saying Bad Things, which proves that there actually is a political conditional on the supposed core moral value of "deadnaming is an utterly terrible thing to do, always, and there's never any excuse for it". I've tried repeatedly to bring this up onli…

Unless he's transgender, he can't be deadnamed.

There isn't a moral contradiction to explain. The entire point of deadnaming someone is to cause them harm. Full stop. No one is trying to cause Ye harm by clarifying that he used to be called Kayne West.

If you want a non-trans equivalent, old racists used to insist on calling Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Muhammad Ali by names they had rejected to make a point about how little they thought of them. Just like people deadname Elliot Page solely to hateful and offensive.

Can you really not tell the difference?