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The Babylon Bee's Twitter account is no longer suspended

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271–280 of 505 posts

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

#271

Great, they should have never been banned to begin with.

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.

> All they had to do was delete the tweet.

And they didn’t which means they’ve earned gobs of respect because of their principled and dignified stance to refuse to be bullied. They won and showed the world you don’t have to lick the boots of elitist corporate oppressors.

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

#272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

That's not an argument

Did you not say “But when people are banning those who disagree, I will reflexively side with those banned and against the people doing the banning, whether or not I agree with them”?

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

#273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They did it because of her accomplishments, not for being a transgender woman. There is an important difference. I understand the satire on some level, she was a man, she only transitioned later in her life, so of course there is always a question of whether you have to be born a woman to be a woman, did these people born into the wrong body, can someone be a woman if you find her look uncanny and so on. There is a l…

> In fact conservatives often go the length and argue against the very existence of transgender people, offering violence as a solution. This is just factually incorrect. Nobody denies people exist that identify as trans. Some people deny the identity is accurate, but no major conservatives are denying gender dysphoria is a thing. Are you seriously suggesting denying a self identity is denying the existence of that p…

I'm seriously suggesting that denying someone's place in society is denying their existence, yes.

Conservative government officials, media commentators and militias are regularly attacking transgender people with real-life consequences. It's not just legislative attacks and information campaigns, but harassment and violent attacks.

It's a culture of hate, and there is no excuse for it, and it should be called out.

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

#274

[flagged]

> Right wing guy takes control of Twitter I'll bite. What makes Musk "right wing"? I get that he has some publicly stated positions that are counter to the prevailing positions of the Democratic Party, but I can't think of any that I would consider "right wing". In fact, I can't think of any that would have been out of place for a Democrat in the late 1990s or early 2000s.

>What makes Musk "right wing"?

He has self-defined long ago as left-wing. Not surprising given he lived in california and started an electric car company. Though in many interviews he tried to assert his position is far less on the left-right spectrum. Which is really the global way it works, it only works this way in the usa.

But he had a post recently.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1519735033950470144

You can see he self-defined himself here left of center in 2008; but in 2021 he's more right of center. His assertion isn't that he changed but rather the left-wing changed. How he ended up on the right-wing isn't very relevant to the point which identifies him as right-wing.

The context however of why the left has moved so far left has everything to do with socialism dying worldwide. The person you were responding to has a username of socialism. So what he sees from his far-left position is someone on the far right equivalent and this is why they must hate elon.

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

#275
post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter used to have a very nasty problem of literal Nazis spamming black and Jewish accounts with hateful garbage. Those accounts still exist to some extent but are reduced to communicating amongst themselves in coded language.

Right, the "OK" sign... Everyone who does that is a literal Nazi. And, truckers. They're the worst (if you're a leftist Canadian). Ah, for the good 'ol days when we could deplatform those guys!

No, not the “OK” sign. Literal nazi or minstrel era anti-Semitic and racist satire, among other things.

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

#276

Great, they should have never been banned to begin with.

Fully disagree. They publicly mocked a trans person, in clear violation of the TOS that all users agree to as a condition of use of the platform. They were then temporarily suspended, as clearly laid out in the TOS. Twitter says "Hey, if X, then Y." Babylon Bee says "Yeah, ok." Babylon Bee does X, and experiences Y. They are not victims, and there is no "violation of free speech" here.

>They publicly mocked a trans person, in clear violation of the TOS

Unless the ToS specifically calls out misgendering, then the slight of hand here is the presumption that all misgendering is hate speech. Looks like Twitter may have decided that this isn't the case.

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

#277

Great, they should have never been banned to begin with.

It's very easy to say this at a high level. But once you look into the reasons behind every ban you will see the subtleties that surround this discussion. There is a reason that content moderation has been classed as the world's toughest problem.

> the world's toughest problem.

On my HN this is cache invalidation and/or naming things.

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

#278
post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really, no. Sex, scientifically, is determined by the kind of gametes an organism produces in sexual maturity. Males produce small sex cells, females produce large sex cells. There is no overlap among mammals (i.e. human sex is “binary”) Gender is a concept made up by feminists with no consistent definition, use mainly to confuse.

What about humans who produce no gametes? Are they sexless?

Yes. For organisms that aren't capable of sexual reproduction, it doesn't make sense to talk about sex.

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

#279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is the person - https://www.hhs.gov/about/leadership/rachel-levine.html My hot take is that it's OK to mock senior government officials, actually.

>My hot take is that it's OK to mock senior government officials, actually.

Mocking senior American government officials is the most protected speech in the country, in fact. I do it liberally an encourage others to. It's the most fundamental part of holding them accountable.

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

#280
post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>exactly, so how is this any different? a black man legally changes his name because he considers his old name to be his "slave name", and almost every headline about him refuses to acknowledge this change. how is this different from Muhammad Ali? I'm not sure what this paragraph is trying to convey. Are you under the impression that Ye changed his name because it was his 'slave name'? >this is the crux of my questio…

a kid down the street from the house I grew up in moved to Hollywood to get involved in acting and changed his name but not his gender. he asked everyone to refer to him by his new name instead of his old one. how is this functionally different from someone changing their gender and their name at the same time, with regards to the name change? it doesn't matter why someone wants to change their name, they want to cha…

I'm not the person you replied to, but of course people should respect Ye's name change. I expect in many cases it's simply laziness, though I do think there's some slack to be granted where a reporter may use "Ye, formerly known as Kanye West", because people may not know or understand what happened, and the point is to clarify. If a news source were to say "Elliot Page, formerly Ellen Page", I think that's fine too. (Only sorta related, but a while back Cardi B amused people, including me, by noting how much Donald Glover and Childish Gambino looked alike.)

Anyhoo, the Bee wasn't accidentally calling someone by the wrong name; they were intentionally doing it to bother the person, which is asshole behavior. It is also when people do it to Ye, and if the kid in your neighborhood had changed his name to from Karl to Brett, and some other kid always ran around saying, "Hey look, it's Karl. Where are you going, Karl?" I'd say that also qualifies as asshole behavior.

Even so, asshole behavior should be allowed, if discouraged. The problem is that the Bee was using their reach and audience to blast a specific trans person, publicly, with the goal of belittling and ostracizing all trans people, who generally already face harassment from society. This would be problematic beyond the simple question of manners whether the target is trans people, Kanye, or Brett.

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