Twitter on Tuesday reinstated the satirical website The Babylon Bee, telling the site it had made a “mistake” in suspending the account with more than 638,000 followers.
The website learned its account had been suspended, allegedly due to an algorithm that flagged it as spam or spreading misinformation, said Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon said.
Some Bee editors shared that news with followers on their accounts and posted screenshots of the announced suspension.
Fans of the conservative Christian humor site that likes to call itself “fake news you can trust” flooded Twitter with complaints. When the issue began trending, Twitter sent an email apologizing for what it said was an internal error.
The Bee was not the only conservative account to be caught Tuesday in Twitter’s alleged spam algorithm.
Richard Grenell, the former acting director of national intelligence under President Trump, announced the “TeamTrumpOnTour” account had also been suspended.
CBS News cited a Twitter spokesman as saying that account had been “mistakenly caught in a spam filter” and reinstated.
There was no direct communication between Twitter and The Bee, according to Mr. Dillon.
“There’s nobody to really call over there, and we find it is more effective to get the media swinging into action and get the word out,” he said. “But the explanation doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.”
The Bee published a post on Tuesday in its Tech section headlined, “Twitter apologizes after intern accidentally sets coffee on ’destroy all conservatives’ button.”
The Bee had never had an issue with Twitter before, although the satire site did have a run-in with Facebook during the 2018 midterms when its jokes started to get flagged as false. Babylon Bee fans have also delighted over the years when Snopes.com has taken up one of the site’s humorous posts and “fact-checked” it.
In August 2019, Snopes cited a study that showed “too many people” think The Babylon Bee is real, although after The Bee’s founder, Adam Ford, accused Snopes of deliberately smearing The Bee, Snopes adopted a “labeled satire” rating.
Mr. Dillon, who bought The Bee in 2018 from Mr. Ford, stopped short of accusing Twitter of deliberately targeting it, although he repeatedly questioned Twitter’s explanation.
The suspension came at a time when many conservatives have complained that social media companies unfairly target their posts, suggesting that political bias among the largely liberal staff at the social media companies has triggered efforts to squelch conservative opinion.
“Can I say it’s nefarious? I don’t know,” Mr. Dillon said. “But it is interesting that an account as large as ours kicked off a spam algorithm.”
In his letter to subscribers, Mr. Dillon said “we share the concerns of others who’ve rightly observed that these ’mistakes’ tend to work in one direction.”
The suspension will not count as a strike against The Bee’s account because Twitter acknowledged its error and apologized, according to Mr. Dillon.
“I don’t think this counts against our reputation, although I’m not so sure it helps Twitter’s reputation,” he said.
• James Varney can be reached at jvarney@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.