Seth Dillon Explains Why The Babylon Bee Gets Censored While Stephen Colbert Stays Safe

all right seth what's up i'm happy to give you a platform because i know you don't have many or they are reducing in number what's going on seth why has the babylon b been censored by twitter um well i mean i think the short answer to that is just that we we poke holes in the popular narrative we do what satirists what comedians what humorists are supposed to do instead of promoting the popular narrative we're attacking it you know we're challenging it uh we're pushing back on it um so instead of propping it up when you're trying to knock it down that's when you generate some attention some negative attention it's you know the people who are trying to advance that narrative get really bothered by that so um we tell jokes they don't like that's the short answer but you know they've got all these creative ways of of enforcing their terms um so that they can kind of knock down one side and keep the other side standing while still making it look like they're being neutral and it's just because they baked their ideology into their terms right you know they have all this hateful conduct stuff in there that uh is just gender ideology baked into the terms and if you disagree with it it means you're hateful um well you know the majority of americans disagree with it and so you know there needs to be a discussion that's had about this not just a silencing of one side and what is the tweet and look i have been effectively censored on social media platforms not on twitter but for example on facebook and the notice that you get when you are censored is very vague very abstract sometimes it's even harder difficult it's hard to find out exactly which tweet or which post was the offending item and if you can identify you get very loose response if a response at all about what was offensive or what got you red flagged so what was it with the babylon beast specifically that you know of that drew the target of the sensor well i think in this case it's it's clear enough i mean there was a there was a real story out there usa today published a story where they named rachel levine one of their women of the year they had selected a number of women not just one that they named women of the year rachel levine was one of them which we find absurd and we consider that misgendering and so you know we did a joke of it a parody of it where we named rachel levine our man of the year so the babylon bee did its own pick uh satirically and picked rach levine for man of the year um they consider that misgendering they consider misgendering hate speech and so uh you know they're both what they're saying is as long as we delete the tweet we can stay on twitter but in deleting the tweet we have to admit uh they have this language on there that by deleting the tweet you know you agree that you engaged in hateful conduct and we're like come on we're not we're not going to do that you know this is this is it's as absurd as is trying to force us to say that two plus two makes five and if we don't agree with that then we can't tweet well we don't agree and you're not on twitter how the other social media platforms handled you we've had similar problems on the other ones i mean facebook has been the worst we get we've been in uh uh incitement to violence has been one of the things we've been flagged for obviously misinformation we get fact checked to death over there so facebook's been working with third-party fact checkers since like 2018 and they're constantly rating our stories false it absurd stuff i mean it started with one about how we had uh we had said that cnn had imper had purchased an industrial-sized washing machine to spin the news in before publishing it yeah and that was one of the first fact checks they rate it false and it's just the most absurd story in the world so you know we've been dealing with that kind of stuff for a long time and we often get dinged we'll be told that uh you know we have to we have to take down a post or that if we continue to post misinformation or hate speech we're not going to be able to stay on the platform and usually if we make enough noise about it and it gets out there in the media there's something that happens where they you know they turn around and they apologize for how they handled it they admit that satire is different from hate speech or whatever but they're really trying to update their terms to make sure that even satire has to advance their narratives instead of go against them and they and they're doing this with these policies against punching down what they say is punching down they consider that uh hate speech under the guise of comedy so there's a lot we're dealing with to try to just stay on these platforms yeah you know there are so many different layers to getting caught in the fly trap of censorship for you for a guy like me who is offering opinion commentary in journalism they're going to be able to live under the pretense of misinformation telling people will is giving you false information or according to them accurate information but then you have this whole other filter where you're not trying to give accurate information you are you are satirical so how can they hold you to a standard of misinformation if the whole point is you're very aware there's not a industrial-sized washing machine inside the buildings of cnn you're making a satirical point i don't even understand how they would write a guideline that allows them to shut you down well what they're supposedly doing what they claim to be doing is looking out for all these poor people who are duped by us you know the uh the uh the maybe naive idiots out there who read a satire story like that and think that it's true and this is just damaging this disinformation that it can get out there and and what they've actually tried to do what the new york times tried to do was actually malign our motives and say that we're that we're trying to mislead people on purpose they said we were trafficking and misinformation under the guise of satire on purpose which is just an absurd claim they had nothing to back it up and so they actually had to retract that statement we had we've threatened to sue them and they retracted that but you know this is what they're trying to do is suggest that we're misleading people on purpose but here's the thing jokes are believable sometimes will it's like they're believable because there is truth to them and right when you're doing a satirical story obviously you're dealing with made-up details like the names of the characters are made up and the scenario is made up but you're really you really are making a point with the joke and it's rooted in the truth or else the joke isn't going to be funny at all so this idea that our jokes have to be so divorced from reality that no one could possibly believe they were true it's just an unreal unrealistic expectation to place on a satirist when that's what satire does is it speaks the truth through humor and irony using fabricated details but an underlying you know bedrock of truth that you're advancing to your knowledge have there been any other comedians comedy sites satirists who have received the same level of scrutiny and censorship to my knowledge no um you know the onion has been fact checked similar to us but not with the same uh approach you know the fact checks of the onion are handled very differently they usually you know when snopes says a fact check of the onion they say you know this is the funniest satire site on the internet you should know that why are you why are you thinking that this is true you know they're great they're satire and then with us it's like oh you know danger disinformation this outlet is trying to do people don't get don't buy into it so you know the approach is very different uh in terms of like d platforming and stuff like that no i can't i can't think of another another comedian or satire outlet that's dealt with it to the extent that we have how would you describe the bee i know that wikipedia describes to be as a christian conservative comedy website you and your original answer to me described the be as a comedy site pushing back on the popular narrative how would you describe your brand or your niche i love that question it's a great question because not many people ask me that you know what what the left will try to do is is position everything that they do as just the regular version of something the onion is a satire site it's not a left-wing satire site it's just satire and the babylon b is the right-wing or far-right or insane extremist version of uh the onion um and you know they're just trying to uh uh tip tip the balance in their favor just by you know caricaturing you right off the bat um i don't think that really that comedy should fall into those buckets of like right and left i mean we're conservatives generally uh you know we have conservatives and libertarians on our staff um you know christians and catholics um but we're not you know we're not we're not trying to describe ourselves as like a a a conservative or right-wing satire site we just happen to be conservatives who are doing satire and we like to make jokes that poke at our own side um i think that i think that generally like a like i was saying before in my earlier comments that you just quoted you know the the job of the satirist the job of the comedian the court jester right is to is to punch up and and uh and make jokes at the powers that be the power structures that be um the people who are in the positions of power scrutinizing and examining what they're doing um holding them up to mockery and ridicule when they deserve it and pointing out their hypocrisy and so on um and and we're doing that because the left is in power you know the left has all the cultural and institutional power right now in our society and so when we push back on them and make fun of their stuff we are fulfilling that role it doesn't matter if we're right wing or not we just happen to be the ones who are pushing back on what on the powers that be and what they're trying to shove down our throats uh in the way they're acting like authoritarians and tyrants with all of this stuff so um you know i think that any any comedian or satirist should be doing that it shouldn't really matter what lines you fall down on in terms of you know your political views where you fall on that spectrum yeah you know if i think back through at least the modern history of comedy the through line might be that most comedians and most famous people most hollywood actors most media institutions are liberal but they would have at least had the reason to say we're pushing back on the dominant narrative richard pryor would have said i'm pushing back on the dominant culture which he could have described i think in the 1970s as predominantly christian and conservative bill maher might have felt the same way in the early 2000s he might have had that ideological cover but what's odd is now as you point out the dominant cultural force and for that matter political force resides on the left and so what we've seen is this weird thing where those that are truly comedians those who really see their role as pushing back on the dominant maybe like a bill maher maybe like south park find hey there's this fertile ground the fertile ground is we can make fun of the left we can make fun of um coveted censorship we can in nonsense we can make fun of all of this this fertile ground and then there's the vast majority of comedians which i do think it is the vast majority like say stephen colbert who seem to have become something else they become not the court jester who makes fun of the king or makes fun of the dominant power but the court jester who holds the megaphone and re enforces the message of the king yep yeah well i mean there's a reason that they're doing that you know there's there's tremendous pressure on comedians when you're when you're out there telling jokes you're literally tiptoeing through a minefield at this point everybody wants a safe space nobody wants to be offended by anything and they'll by the way they won't necessarily be genuinely offended they will pretend to be offended because you've said something that they don't like and and their outrage is how they control you and manipulate you because if they form together as a mob and come after you they know they can get you canceled and so this cancel culture thing to their credit you know there are some people on the left who are who are pushing back on that bill maher uh who you mentioned you know he's one of these guys who uh has been heavily critical of the cancer culture and the way that it's that it's uh constricting comedians and uh and causing them to basically muzzle themselves i mean like a comedian like jerry seinfeld won't even go on a college campus anymore he won't go near one because it's just not it's it's like hostile territory jokes are like they're viewed as dangerous they're dangerous and and harmful um and and you just gotta be so careful that you're not gonna offend the wrong people and this is the really interesting thing you know when you talk about these power structures and i like to make this point you know it's it's important to understand that that the people who have both the will and the power to punish you for simply making fun of them those are not marginalized people you're not you're not punching down when you make fun of them if they have that will and that power they're tyrants they're oppressors they're actually the ones that are above you uh that can squish you with their thumb if they want to um and so you know i think the comedian's job is to really push back on that and the ones who do it they do like you said the fertile ground is all over the place i mean dave chappelle has done this very successfully there are comedians who are thriving right now in this environment and the effort to cancel them is only making them more popular so i wish that more people would get emboldened and step into that arena and say hey look you know our job is to push back on this stuff yeah and guys like dave chappelle would not describe themselves as conservative much less right wing neither would bill maher so what do you think is driving this you know you used and i know the b does use in your social media post and hey not for nothing but what you guys do is absolutely genius and the onion at its height was not even capable of reaching the level of cultural relevance that you are reaching right now because there is so much absurdity at the top of the power structure and so few willing to point and go wait that's insane so you know the moment has met your talent in a way that i think you have done something that really very few have been willing or capable of doing in the past but those that will not you're not alone but you're you're there at the forefront along with the dave chappelle's and the bill mahers of the world on this would not describe themselves as conservative or right-wing so in your estimation seth what's driving it i mean if you and i had talked probably seven years ago we would have said two things it's being driven by left wing ideology and there is very few i think we might have been able to agree on this very few talented conservative comedians it just wasn't working and there and and i think the times have changed the moment has changed but is it still left wing ideologies driving this driving the censorship driving the fear or is it looser like it's about what you said the popular narrative the current thing that seems to be what we all have to subscribe to well unfortunately i mean yeah what they've they've gained some control they've gained an extensive amount of control over our institutions so you know they they own entertainment um they so they own they basically have owned comedy for a long time they own the universities uh they own the government at the moment um they own they own everything so we're we're in a position where uh you know there's more and more radical further left views that are that are being kind of pushed on people um by a very vocal uh but actual minority of the people but they're vocal and they hold positions of power um and so you know i think that once they get that power they're using that power to their to their advantage you know what happened with the social media social media is something that's really interesting that's impacted us because that's where we drive most of our traffic is you know you had donald trump get elected and facebook was taken a lot of heat for that you know they were getting they were getting raked over the coals by people on the left for for playing a role in allowing conservative media to flourish um conservative voices to flourish they weren't doing enough to clamp down on misinformation and they couldn't let that kind of thing happen again so that's why in 2018 you know you had this big push to start getting these fact checkers in there to protect their power to protect their power because they realize you know they have all this control they have all this power they own facebook they own twitter they own instagram they own all of these things but they weren't using these tools to the full extent that they could to protect themselves and so now they've started to ramp that up a little bit it's only gotten worse over the last few years so i think it's about power and control and now it's turning into a thing about submission where rather than just deleting our tweet twitter is saying they want us to bend the knee and say we actually did engage in hateful conduct and delete it ourselves i mean that goes so far beyond just them moderating what's on their platform yeah so let me see if i understand what you're saying completely and accurately because i wonder like do i think left-wing ideology is behind this yes but there's something else going on and perhaps that something else resides even on the other side of left-wing ideology and it's simple and it's about brute power but when we move so quickly from whatever the current thing is and the current thing moves from a coveted vaccine to a ukrainian flag in your profile to i'm really shocked in the past couple of days it hasn't become and i think matt walsh made a joke about this but alopecia awareness you know after the will smith jada pinkett smith incident uh chris rock incident but the current thing moves so quickly and it seems like social media and for that matter corporate america because we've seen what's happened with disney this week moves so quickly with it that what you're telling me is yeah it's it's left wing but even behind that it's just simple people not simple people but people simply moving towards power just using the current thing to exercise power well to exercise power for a purpose and and i think that you know the exercise of that powers for the purpose of of of preserving and promoting and foisting on everybody these progressive ideas i mean that's why um that that's why they're exercising the power that way i mean that's the example that i gave about the election i think it's it's a good one you know facebook for the most part was trying to stay fairly hands off and stay fairly neutral and they got so much pressure put on them by democrats by people on the left to do more they had to do more to curb uh the spread of misinformation and clamp down on that and so you know the power was for a purpose it was to silence these voices that were effectively taking away uh their power but also undermining their message you know the message right now this big thing that's going on the big story right now is the disney stuff everything that's happening with disney and the uh you know the indoctrination and the and the grooming as people on the right will call it um that that disney is engaging in and trying to um put sexual messages and conduct and content into uh you know these shows that are designed for children and people are pushing back on that but this is a you know it's it's them using their power their influence to reach nobody has the reach and the influence that disney has disney plus has more subscribers right the daily wire is ever going to have um and so you know they're using it to the full extent of their ability and why do you think it is because disney believes that or they're operating out of fear of their employees or just trying to keep up with the current thing that's a lot of market share that's a lot of decades of brand building that they're willing to burn in pursuit of whatever is the current thing and the current thing is trans issues and these sexual orientation gender identity issues in kindergarten why are they so willing to burn that cat all of those things boil down well all those things boil down to you know i the the way i describe the left is it's not necessarily that they have their own values they have anti values you know whatever whatever our values are they're opposed to them and they and they want to tear them down and our values are a threat to their values um freedom of speech itself is a threat to their values it's not that they have a problem with hate speech they just hate speech they don't like when people disagree with them and push back on them and challenge them and so once they get power you know then then it's like okay well now we can silence everybody now we can ban people who disagree with us we can use it um you know to to make sure that everybody has to agree with us they don't really care if you feel the right way like if you actually feel like rachel levine is a woman they just want you to only verbally affirm it you have to conform you have to either affirm it or shut up um and you know that's a that's both a power play at well at the same time it's you know it's just them um you know wanting their ideology to be dominant and unchallenged what does that mean for you you bought the bee i believe what 2018 um the bee was founded in 2016. you came along in 2018-19 i believe and i got to think you didn't simply want to build a business on social media if you did i'm sorry that's looking less bright than when you put your money down to buy the b but what does that mean for you because on one hand you've got this fertile ground that we talk about where you get to own comedy along with some very big names like dave chappelle but on the other you need to have a platform uh in order to get out your content so what does that mean for the future of the bee well um you know that was one of the main concerns it's the concern that adam the founder of the babylon bee had when he sold the site to me it was that censorship is coming and uh and you know i don't wanna i don't wanna get the the rug pulled out from underneath me um and so i you know i saw it a little bit differently i saw it to some extent as an opportunity um to be kind of on the forefront of this battle for ideas for the truth for comedy itself for the right to make jokes um and uh and i i realized you know i i was hopeful that the battle itself would draw a lot of attention to these issues and if there were people who were bold and unwilling to back down on the front lines they would embolden other people um so i wanted to get into the fray and get involved in that fight we do need a platform you're absolutely right about that so one of the first things that we we did when i took over was to make sure that we had a subscription model in place where people could subscribe and support us directly and you can do that on the website you can sign up become either a basic or premium subscriber and provide financial supports that when we lose these platforms and we lose all the traffic that comes with them we still have revenue and we can still keep going because we have a lot of expenses we have a large team of writers and graphic designers and marketers and developers and everything we're a business so you know um we've reached out to our our audience and our audience has been very supportive but then in terms of reaching people with our content once you get taken off these platforms there's not there's not much that can be done that's why i'm i'm looking to either you know hopeful that either congress or the courts will come up with a solution for this because as it stands right now this is a major speech problem you know the rights of these private companies to just do whatever they want well that may be the case under current law you know a lot of judges have ruled that way should it be that way i don't think what are you looking for from congress or the courts do you want to see an antitrust action do you want to see these things broken up do you want to see government control of the speech on these platforms how do we control a bunch of private companies who who subscribe to the current the current narrative and censor anybody who dares step outside the boundaries well there's a couple of things i mean i think that some things could be done to simply say look you know the section 230 immunity that these companies enjoy is great um but maybe it should be conditioned on new political neutrality viewpoint neutrality where you know you get the benefit of immunity you get when you're if you're politically neutral just like you get the benefit of tax exemption being a non-profit if you don't endorse political candidates the minute you start doing that you disqualify yourself from the benefit so it's not really a punishment it's just a benefit that comes with qualifying conditions i think something like that that could work um you know there's there's some legislation that's been drafted there's a bill that was out in texas that just got shot down by a judge but they're appealing it um that basically made it unlawful for these platforms to discriminate based on viewpoint and and de-platform people and if they did do that then it gave people the ability to sue these companies not for money to bankrupt them but just for an injunction to get back onto the platform um you know so there's been some legislation that's been crafted along those lines where you don't have a large convoluted expensive government regulatory body that's overseeing speech nobody wants that uh no no conservative wants that um we want we just want to protect free speech and we want to we want to and i think that can be accomplished you know justice thomas was talking about common carrier doctrine and how that might apply to these social media companies where you know you have att for example they're a conduit of your messages that you're sending to other people they're not the speaker of those messages and they don't just they're not allowed lawfully to discriminate over who gets to say anything on their communications platform if twitter and facebook are just treated as conduits as common carriers like that um then they can engage in discrimination um and so there it's not a first amendment issue uh it's not a first amendment issue with att why should be a first amendment issue with twitter or facebook um so you know there's there's big conversations around those things and rebuttals that you know you can go back and forth all day but ultimately i think something's got to give so let's go back to where you nodded along for just one moment when i said i think as recently as definitely seven years ago five years ago perhaps there seemed to be so little talent in conservative comedy it was either because there was a perception that conservatives just aren't cool and funny or because of the shift in the dominant power structures within our culture and politics why do you think that's changed what did change why is it now all of a sudden it is left wingers it is stephen colbert who've lost all relevance in my estimation really not even a semblance of humor and now if you want to find something funny and even slightly rebellious you have to look to some of the names that we've talked about in this conversation well so i mean if you go to a comedy show are you you watch some of these late night guys um so much of the time they're going for applause like they're they're preaching to a choir that's like cheering them on for what they're saying with affirmation rather than like amusement they should be going for amusement but they're going for affirmations so it's like i think that's one of the issues is that is that comedians um uh you you mentioned i think you use the word a megaphone you know they become mouthpieces for uh for politicians uh and and uh and progressive uh uh progressive movements and ideas and so instead of poking holes at the popular narrative like the comedian should be doing they're promoting it and that's not funny you know like people want to hear it challenged they want to hear the popular narrative challenge they also by the way want to laugh at themselves you know this idea so many people um you know the left has made it very popular for people to want safe spaces and to be so offended by jokes and you know look at will smith charging the stage to slap somebody who made a joke about his wife you know it used to be that people could like actually sit there and take a joke and the comedians would go and pick on people in the audience and you'd laugh at yourself that's a healthy exercise believe it or not there are still a lot of people who aren't so emotionally damaged and fragile that they can't take a joke and they understand you know they really enjoy comedy shows and going there and even laughing at themselves and hearing inappropriate jokes i'm not talking about like gross inappropriate sexual content or something i'm just talking about like inappropriate in the sense that someone's the butt of the joke someone's being made fun of and and stereotypes are being advanced in these jokes because they're funny they're rooted in the truth it's a healthy thing there's nothing wrong with it it's not coming from a place of hate you know comedians need to go back to simply saying is this funny when they're writing a joke is it funny um instead they're asking themselves all kinds of questions about whether or not it's advancing a narrative they want to advance and are they going to offend somebody that's going to try to connect last thing so where do you go if it's fertile ground but you need a platform we talked about the fact that most of comedy is somewhat irrelevant and that would include for example uh sketch comedy that would include for example saturday night live where do you go with the bee where is where is the fertile ground plus the platform for you to have cultural relevance but also real entrepreneurial business opportunity well right now there's nowhere to go beyond the main platforms i mean there are there are alternatives there are great functional alternatives out there parlor gap getter you know you name it there's other there's other platforms you don't get the same reach though they are echo chambers um you know if you want cultural relevance if you want to be engaged you know we have we have people like joe rogan and elon musk interacting with our tweets when we're on twitter if we're not on twitter we don't get that kind of interaction from people like that you're sidelined you're you're marginalized you're removed from those discussions this is where this is the public square of the modern age facebook twitter youtube um you know so the fight is to stay on these platforms i think that the fight needs to be to say you look you know ultimately whether we have a right to be on them right now we should we should um let's let's talk about what should be the case and then work our way towards that goal because ultimately yeah we won't have a platform we won't be relevant if we do get de-platformed all the way across the board on these things um you know it'll be a fight to come back um it'll require a legal change it'll require the law being changed or the courts weighing in on this uh to give us access back to these platforms because listen to this i mean like the left is not going to leave these platforms for some free speech alternative like i said it's not hate speech they have a problem with they just hate speech so they're not going to leave for a free speech alternative they're going to stay on these platforms they need to be forced basically to tolerate the fact that other people have opinions other than their own and they're allowed that's fascinating that is a fascinating thing you said here at the end because i think for many it is go create parallel systems go create parallel social media platforms i'm i'm in my head thinking go create an alternative saturday night live seth and go find your platform that will host you and behind a subscription paywall and on a hosting service that won't censor you go find your audience but i do think you make i don't know if that yeah you know like this whole idea of a parallel economy where we're all existing in our own little worlds you know the conservatives have their credit cards and the liberals have their credit cards i mean is that really what we want is that how it should be um you know maybe it's what ends up happening um and it has to happen but i don't know you make a good point about people this is a united states of america and at the very minimum you're supposed to be forced to tolerate the existence of other people's voices and that's worth fighting for on the platforms that exist today instead of having to create new ones um i wish you the best of luck yeah we're going to force people to do anything if we're going to force people to do anything let's force them to acknowledge the fact that freedom is real and it's real really good all right seth best of luck man the country needs um the country needs the babylon be in this comedy so i hope we can find it all right thanks thanks seth i really appreciate it