Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon: We have no intention of deleting tweet about Rachel Levine
Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon talks with Fox News Digital about the standoff between the satirical news site and Twitter over its tweet calling transgender woman Rachel Levine its "Man of the Year."
Twitter locked the account of The Babylon Bee's editor-in-chief for "hateful conduct," according to the Christian satire site's CEO, Seth Dillon.
"The Babylon Bee's editor in chief has now been locked out of Twitter for hateful conduct," Dillon wrote in a Tuesday tweet amid a row between the social media platform and the satirical publication.
Dillon included a screenshot of a Twitter notification telling editor-in-chief Kyle Mann that his account will be locked until he deletes a tweet criticizing the platform for locking the publication's main account.
Twitter message to Babylon Bee editor-in-chief Kyle Mann asking him to remove a tweet flagged for "hateful conduct." (Screenshot/Seth Dillon Twitter)
"Maybe they'll let us back into our [Babylon Bee] Twitter account if we throw a few thousand Uighurs in a concentration camp," Mann wrote in the flagged tweet from Monday morning, suggesting Twitter selectively polices certain accounts while allowing others associated with oppressive governments, such as China's, to continue operating.
The Chinese government's treatment of its minority Uighur population has been labeled a genocide by the U.S. government; however, Twitter accounts associated with the Chinese government and a number of its officials remain active. Some users observed that Twitter might have locked Mann's account in error because it thought he was sanctioning the idea of concentration camps, rather than making a satirical point.
The standoff began earlier this week when Twitter locked The Babylon Bee's account for a satirical tweet that named Rachel Levine, the transgender U.S. assistant secretary for health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, "Man of the Year."
The tweet mocked USA Today naming Levine one of its "Women of the Year" earlier this month.
Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon was notified on Sunday that The Babylon Bee was locked out of its popular Twitter account after the social media juggernaut accused the Bee of violating its rules against "hateful conduct" over the joke naming Biden official Dr. Rachel Levine its "Man of the Year" for 2022. ((Joe Hermitt/The Patriot-News via AP, File))
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In suspending The Bee's account, as well as Mann's, Twitter cited its rules against "hateful conduct," which state, "You may not promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease."
Dillon vowed The Babylon Bee would not back down from its satirical reporting.
"We're not deleting anything," he wrote Monday. "Truth is not hate speech. If the cost of telling the truth is the loss of our Twitter account, then so be it."
"We don’t have any intentions of deleting the tweet," Dillon later reiterated to Fox News Digital.