Elon Musk, who describes himself as a free speech absolutist, has taken charge of Twitter. Since he made the formal bid to buy the social media platform, many banned and suspended accounts have been reaching out in the hope of being reinstated. One such account is Babylon Bee, Christian-conservative satirical news site.
Babylon Bee is run by CEO Seth Dillion who once said the platform was launched because "there was this massive void on the right for comedy that wasn't cheesy." Since he bought it from founder Adam Ford in 2018, it has become one of the most popular conservative sites. At one point, it had 25 million readers.
Run by US-based Christian conservatives, the site often targets the left and the Democratic party. Babylon Bee has stirred trouble for publishing parody articles that are mistaken for legitimate news reports. In 2019, The Conversation published research that found Americans frequently mistook satirical articles from Babylon Bee as real news. The site says it is being unfairly targeted when its content is rated as false or fake news.
Its Twitter account was suspended in March 2022 for tweeting: "The Babylon Bee's Man of the Year is Rachel Levine". This was a reference to the US Assistant Health Secretary who identifies as a trans woman. Twitter considers misgendering a violation of its hateful conduct policy and suspended the account. CEO Dhillion tweeted in response that the truth is not hate speech.
Elon Musk had earlier appeared in a lengthy podcast with the satire news site. A month after the suspension, Dhillon claimed that Elon Musk reached out to Babylon Bee asking if the site was suspended for their post and mused that he might need to buy Twitter.
Musk had earlier criticised Twitter for banning accounts. However, after the takeover, he said Twitter will not become a "free-for-all hellscape. He added that country-specific laws on hate speech will apply to Twitter. On Wednesday, he tweeted that banned accounts will not be reinstated until the platform has "a clear process."