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>Babylon Bee being suspended was one of the dumber things the previous Twitter rules had done. It's a satire site, it's right leaning, nothing in the piece they

by slg 4y ago

>Babylon Bee being suspended was one of the dumber things the previous Twitter rules had done. It's a satire site, it's right leaning, nothing in the piece they said was hateful or even an unpopular view. Twitter banned the Babylon Bee for targeting a random and rather anonymous bureaucrat that likely isn't among the 1000 most powerful people in government in the US for the sole purpose that she is trans. This targeting by the Babylon Bee and other conservative media has led to her getting death threats. Being a satire site doesn't mean we can laugh off all their behavior as a joke. Their behavior was a part of a harassment campaign against someone who is largely a private citizen in this instance. Stopping that doesn't seem like a mistake to me.

partiallypro 4y ago
The piece satirized the confusion between sex and gender. It has only been very, very recently that we have gone from "gender is a social construct" to "sex is a social construct." It's still a highly debated topic and well within the public sphere of debate. Also, this person was a public official and was in the news from general news outlets (named Woman of the Year) which puts them well within the public realm of ridicule, even if you or I don't agree with it. If the piece had advocated physical harm that would be much much different.
- mbesto 4y ago
  > It has only been very, very recently that we have gone from "gender is a social construct" to "sex is a social construct." What? Since when is sex a social construct?
  - jl6 4y ago
    Some people believe sex is a spectrum, or that it can be changed, but it’s super-fringe and mostly reflects ignorance of the difference between sex and gender rather than being a serious philosophical position.
    - searealist 4y ago
      It may be fringe in the sense that people don't state what they actually believe out of fear, but it is not fringe on official policies and the direction they are heading. If you don't agree with the statement "Trans women are women", and all the conclusions that leads to, ie. trans women in sports, then you risk being cancelled.
    - howinteresting 4y ago
      "Sex is a spectrum" is hard scientific truth. Unlike computers, biology doesn't work in binaries. Intersex people exist and are surprisingly common.
      - jl6 4y ago
        “Sex is a spectrum” is nonsense: https://areomagazine.com/2022/01/05/race-is-a-spectrum-sex-is-pretty-damn-binary/ https://areomagazine.com/2022/01/05/race-is-a-spectrum-sex-i...
        howinteresting 4y ago
        Binary means 0 and 1. It does not mean 0, 1, or 2 1.7% (or even 0.018%) of the time. Of course, the word "binary" is a social construct, and "spectrum" is a social construct as well. However I would expect that in a forum focused on computers, binary generally means 0 or 1 with no other values possible even 0.0000001% of the time. "Some men choose to identify as women." Really? This is not a serious statement that engages with the science behind gender transition.
      - the_doctah 4y ago
        Allow me to introduce you to the X and Y chromosomes.
        howinteresting 4y ago
        Allow me to introduce you to Klinefelter syndrome and the difference between genotype and phenotype.
  - thelopa 4y ago
    I think they’re being glib, but sex absolutely is a social construct. What exactly constitutes THE properties of the female and male sex is defined by society more than biology. For example, people who have androgen insensitivity syndrome develop perfectly normal looking “female” bodies, but their genetic sex is “male”. People generally still consider those individuals to be “female”. If you want to get down to it, all words are socially defined. They usually attempt to describe or capture reoccurring details about the observable world, but nature (especially biology) has too much variety and weird exceptions for any simple linguistic model to perfectly match the physical world. That’s doubly true for a linguistic model used in everyday life as opposed to scientific discourse. That’s not to say that “sex isn’t real” or some absurd position like that. There is a real phenomenon in biology where genetic and phenotypical variance tends to follow a limited set of patterns. Biologists call those patterns “sex”. But, the idea that “sex” as we use it in normal day-to-day life is a rigidly defined system based on hard biological facts is laughably false. When was the last time you insisted on seeing someone’s genetic karyotype test results? When was the last time you asked someone to drop their pants so you could examine their genitalia and determine their sex? The phrase “sex is a social construct” is technically true in the same way that “chairs are a social construct” is true. The word describes a fuzzy subset of the set of all things, and what we consider in or out of the set is largely based on what we think should belong to it, and that is absolutely influenced by societal expectations. Where do chairs end and tables begin? Where does the female sex end? Once you get to that point, the phrase almost has no meaning. If all word definitions are social constructs, then that’s table stakes and it doesn’t make sense to call out a specific word as having that property. Surely the phrase “is a social construct” must mean something more than “is like any other word”. Indeed, the meaning of that phrase is larger than what it literally says. There is a socially defined meaning that is attached to it. That phrase implies the word in question “is arbitrarily defined (more than most words)” and “is up for interpretation (more than most words)”. If you agree with me this far, then the right way to frame this discussion is “should we pin ‘sex’ as it is used in every day life to specific physical properties or should we allow it to be more porous?”. This isn’t as straightforward as it might seem. If we pin it, for example, to genetic karyotype, then we need to stop using it in contexts where the genetics of the person are unknown and must admit the existence of several additional sexes (e.g. X, XXY) AND recognize it’s no longer useful for describing the phenomenon of what a person looks like or how their body works. If we make it porous, then we will endlessly debate about whether boundary cases fall into one bucket or the other and possibly hurt some feelings along the way. The fun thing is that we get to pick what words mean, and we get to pick what we do with “sex”. Language is, after all, a social construct.
  - howinteresting 4y ago
    All language is a social construct. We recognize patterns in the real world and assign words to them, but patterns in complex systems like human biology have all kinds of exceptions. Social construct doesn't mean fake, though. It's real, and it describes a real thing, but is a simplified model of it. The fight is over which model is better.
- slg 4y ago
  >It has only been very, very recently that we have gone from... Would you have said the same thing about ridiculing someone for being openly gay in government 30 years ago, being Catholic in government 60 years ago, or being Black in government 80 years ago?
  - partiallypro 4y ago
    No, because those aren't even remotely similar things. It wouldn't be a "hate crime" to call a Catholic a Protestant, or a Gay person a Straight person or a Black person a white person. It would be a hateful to deny them rights or to call for abuse. In this instance the "hate crime" is merely saying someone's biological sex is x, even if they say they are y. However, If I called a non-trans woman a man or a non-trans man a woman, that's not a hate crime. So, the whole idea is fairly inconsistent. I still think it's very much up for debate, unlike the instances you listed. I have trans friends, and while I can't speak for them, I don't believe they think the debate is as settled on some of these issues, especially in regard to "misgendering" being a hate crime. Hell, I've misgendered one of my non-binary friends constantly by accident and we're still friends. I'm not banned and haven't been charged with a hate crime. Would I want someone intentionally misgendering them just to get to them? No, I think that's cruel, and I'd defend my friend; but I don't think that person should automatically lose their account or be arrested (which has happened outside the US.) There's an important distinction there and it's an important debate.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - ajross 4y ago
      > In this instance the "hate crime" is merely saying someone's biological sex is x, even if they say they are y. That's mischaracterizing what was said. Here's the actual article: https://babylonbee.com/news/the-babylon-bees-man-of-the-year-is-rachel-levine https://babylonbee.com/news/the-babylon-bees-man-of-the-year... This is ridicule, quite clearly. I won't get into the "is it or is it not a hate crime" bit, but this isn't "merely" stating anything. The term "biological sex" doesn't even appear in the article. The point the reader is supposed to take from this article is quite clearly not "mere" information about Rachel Levine's gender and/or "biological sex". It's that Rachel Levine's presented gender was very funny to the authors and that we should laugh at her for it. > Would I want someone intentionally misgendering them just to get to them? No, I think that's cruel Seems like you're putting an awful lot of weight on the distinction between "hate" and "cruel" to me. What about here on HN? Do you think it's OK for users here to be "cruel" to others, or should dang ban them? Because HN bans people for being cruel, probably every day. Why is Twitter different?
- freemrkt8 4y ago
  There is no right to zero consequences for speaking freely. I say give users the moderation power and let aggregate voting dictate content that remains visible. No one wants public control of democracy though. What these guys want is a business friendly soapbox.
  - partiallypro 4y ago
    Where did I claim there was? You can philosophically believe that free speech (and also know that the 1st Amendment does not apply to private companies, but that the "right" to it is a general philosophy outside of government) should exist while holding the position that you can be held accountable for some things. The question is how much a public forum should allow or not, especially one that has advertisers but is also an important forum for our democracy. That's very important and just saying everything under the sun is hate speech is not a good debate starter, especially when it's unevenly applied, and the rules are written by one viewpoint. I think the "downvote" system which does eventually hide comments (until you request them) is a feature that already exists in beta. I think that's better than the "shadow banning" and suspensions in some instances. Obviously, you still can't tolerate some things, such as calls for violence, rioting, etc. Moderation is very difficult, but I err on the side of more openness than locking things down and stifling speech and debate.
    - freemrkt8 4y ago
- squidbeak 4y ago
  Even if none of those things were true, satire and pisstaking shouldn't ever be banned.
- andsoitis 4y ago
  > It has only been very, very recently that we have gone from "gender is a social construct" to "sex is a social construct." I don’t think I’ve seen anyone say that sex is a social construct. Gender yes. And that gender and sex are orthogonal. And that gender is a spectrum but sex in humans is binary. Maybe I missed the evolution of the conversation but I don’t think I’ve seen any volume of argument that sex is a social construct. I’m open to be convinced.
  - rayiner 4y ago
    Orthogonal means uncorrelated. Sex and gender are in reality highly, though not perfectly, correlated.
    - andsoitis 4y ago
      Concur. What’s a better word/phrase?
      - rayiner 4y ago
        I’d say “not coextensive.” Unfortunately no single word that means exactly that.
    - zajio1am 4y ago
      I would say 'orthogonal' is used for conceptually independent, not causally independent nor statistically independent (uncorrelated). So i would say that sex and gender are conceptually independent, although in reality statistically highly correlated.
      - rayiner 4y ago
        I think the word you're looking for is "distinct."
  - partiallypro 4y ago
    There are many pieces now that proclaim biological sex (not gender) is a social construct. There are pieces in Forbes, Psychology Today, Professor curriculum, etc that are now saying this. I would say it was fringe if it weren't for the fact that it's been elevated by major publications. When I was younger "gender is a social construct" mostly meant that if you were a man you were allowed to enjoy feminine things and if you were a woman, you could be a tomboy, etc. It also applied to trans individuals. However, that has shifted heavily over the last few years to be something very different and has gone so far as to go fully to the extent that sex (not gender) at birth is up for debate (even outside of Turner Syndrome or Intersex births.)
hexis 4y ago
This is the random and anonymous person, right? One of USA Today's 2022 Women of the Year? https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/opinion/2022/03/13/rachel-levine-honoree-usa-today-women-of-the-year/6600134001/ https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/opinion/2022/03/13/rachel-...
- slg 4y ago
  That list looks pretty "random and anonymous" to me. How many people on that list do you think an average person would recognize? I can't imagine it is more than 2 out of the 11 award recipients and many won't know a single one?
- themitigating 4y ago
  Are they known to the public is what's important
  - concinds 4y ago
    Levine was very prominent among conservative media, not due to being trans, but due to being a prominent part of Biden's Covid response alongside Fauci. It wasn't a random targeting.
    - the_doctah 4y ago
      And when SNL satirizes a political figure, absolutely no one refers to it as "targeting"
      - themitigating 4y ago
        A political figure is a politician, this person is not
        the_doctah 4y ago
        and yet that changes nothing
xyzzyz 4y ago
Babylon Bee was not first to “target” Levine. Washington Post, for example, has run an article on Levine before Bee, also for the sole purpose of Levine being trans: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/10/19/levine-transgender-four-star-admiral-public-health-service/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/10/19/levine-tran... If WaPo can bring out “random bureaucrats” to public attention for sole reason of being trans, why can’t Bee do the same?
- slg 4y ago
  Giving an award to a Black person has slightly different connotations when it is done at a NAACP meeting compared to a Klan meeting.
  - solveit 4y ago
    But I absolutely don't want Twitter to decide which organisations are like the NAACP and which are like the Klan. This is regardless of who runs Twitter.
    - freejazz 4y ago
      Well, good luck having a readable twitter then
      - ravel-bar-foo 4y ago
        I don't think the problem is whether Twitter is readable. The problem is whether it is advertisable for Twitter: whether advertisers will complain about being placed next to a tweet.
        freejazz 4y ago
        Who are they going to advertise to if its not readable?
      - the_doctah 4y ago
        I'd rather read what people really think than what they are allowed to think.
Beltalowda 4y ago
She's involved in politics at a fairly high level; that's not "a private citizen" or "just a bureaucrat". Furthermore, making a few jokes is neither "harassment" nor "a campaign"; by that standard Twitter should ban a hell of a lot of folk. That people can't be jokes about folks merely because other people are also excessively mean-spirited about them is one of the more baffling ideas of the modern American left. The real problem, however, is that you don't need to dig very far to see people engage in all sorts of behaviour that's not exactly in accordance with the Twitter rules, ranging from stuff like "just fucking deport the Christians already!!" to "would be a real shame if their face got smashed in with a brick wink wink" and that ... doesn't get moderated. I've reported a bunch of posts like that: always "no action needed, doesn't violate our community terms". I think a lot of people would have significantly less trouble with Babylon Bee's ban if Twitter didn't let the platform be such a quagmire of nastiness, and then occasionally cherry-pick an example.
haberman 4y ago
> Their behavior was a part of a harassment campaign against someone who is largely a private citizen in this instance. What you call a "harassment campaign" happens constantly on Twitter, driven by Twitter's own site and algorithms. Twitter frequently has a "main character" of the day, driven by the "What's Trending" sidebar on the home page, as well as quote Tweets by people with thousands or millions of followers that encourages and incentivizes the dragging of people who have little power. If this is a bannable offense, Twitter should ban itself.
the_doctah 4y ago
>likely isn't among the 1000 most powerful people in government Why does that matter? >has led to her getting death threats OK, punish the people who did the illegal thing. Imagine having personal responsibility! >Being a satire site doesn't mean we can laugh off all their behavior as a joke Yes, yes that's exactly what it means. >Their behavior was a part of a harassment campaign against someone who is largely a private citizen in this instance No, one article is not a harassment campaign.
kyleblarson 4y ago
Yet the Ayatollah can tweet at will. Nothing to see here.
paganel 4y ago
We should be allowed to satirize almost everything that is part of our society, so to speak, satire that avoids the hot societal topics isn't really satire (see SNL). The trans discussion is really a hot topic inside the US, for better of for worse, so a satirical website talking about it is how things should be.

by slg 4y ago

partiallypro 4y ago

The piece satirized the confusion between sex and gender. It has only been very, very recently that we have gone from "gender is a social construct" to "sex is a social construct." It's still a highly debated topic and well within the public sphere of debate. Also, this person was a public official and was in the news from general news outlets (named Woman of the Year) which puts them well within the public realm of ridicule, even if you or I don't agree with it. If the piece had advocated physical harm that would be much much different.

mbesto 4y ago
> It has only been very, very recently that we have gone from "gender is a social construct" to "sex is a social construct." What? Since when is sex a social construct?
- jl6 4y ago
  Some people believe sex is a spectrum, or that it can be changed, but it’s super-fringe and mostly reflects ignorance of the difference between sex and gender rather than being a serious philosophical position.
  - searealist 4y ago
    It may be fringe in the sense that people don't state what they actually believe out of fear, but it is not fringe on official policies and the direction they are heading. If you don't agree with the statement "Trans women are women", and all the conclusions that leads to, ie. trans women in sports, then you risk being cancelled.
  - howinteresting 4y ago
    "Sex is a spectrum" is hard scientific truth. Unlike computers, biology doesn't work in binaries. Intersex people exist and are surprisingly common.
    - jl6 4y ago
      “Sex is a spectrum” is nonsense: https://areomagazine.com/2022/01/05/race-is-a-spectrum-sex-is-pretty-damn-binary/ https://areomagazine.com/2022/01/05/race-is-a-spectrum-sex-i...
      - howinteresting 4y ago
        Binary means 0 and 1. It does not mean 0, 1, or 2 1.7% (or even 0.018%) of the time. Of course, the word "binary" is a social construct, and "spectrum" is a social construct as well. However I would expect that in a forum focused on computers, binary generally means 0 or 1 with no other values possible even 0.0000001% of the time. "Some men choose to identify as women." Really? This is not a serious statement that engages with the science behind gender transition.
    - the_doctah 4y ago
      Allow me to introduce you to the X and Y chromosomes.
      - howinteresting 4y ago
        Allow me to introduce you to Klinefelter syndrome and the difference between genotype and phenotype.
- thelopa 4y ago
  I think they’re being glib, but sex absolutely is a social construct. What exactly constitutes THE properties of the female and male sex is defined by society more than biology. For example, people who have androgen insensitivity syndrome develop perfectly normal looking “female” bodies, but their genetic sex is “male”. People generally still consider those individuals to be “female”. If you want to get down to it, all words are socially defined. They usually attempt to describe or capture reoccurring details about the observable world, but nature (especially biology) has too much variety and weird exceptions for any simple linguistic model to perfectly match the physical world. That’s doubly true for a linguistic model used in everyday life as opposed to scientific discourse. That’s not to say that “sex isn’t real” or some absurd position like that. There is a real phenomenon in biology where genetic and phenotypical variance tends to follow a limited set of patterns. Biologists call those patterns “sex”. But, the idea that “sex” as we use it in normal day-to-day life is a rigidly defined system based on hard biological facts is laughably false. When was the last time you insisted on seeing someone’s genetic karyotype test results? When was the last time you asked someone to drop their pants so you could examine their genitalia and determine their sex? The phrase “sex is a social construct” is technically true in the same way that “chairs are a social construct” is true. The word describes a fuzzy subset of the set of all things, and what we consider in or out of the set is largely based on what we think should belong to it, and that is absolutely influenced by societal expectations. Where do chairs end and tables begin? Where does the female sex end? Once you get to that point, the phrase almost has no meaning. If all word definitions are social constructs, then that’s table stakes and it doesn’t make sense to call out a specific word as having that property. Surely the phrase “is a social construct” must mean something more than “is like any other word”. Indeed, the meaning of that phrase is larger than what it literally says. There is a socially defined meaning that is attached to it. That phrase implies the word in question “is arbitrarily defined (more than most words)” and “is up for interpretation (more than most words)”. If you agree with me this far, then the right way to frame this discussion is “should we pin ‘sex’ as it is used in every day life to specific physical properties or should we allow it to be more porous?”. This isn’t as straightforward as it might seem. If we pin it, for example, to genetic karyotype, then we need to stop using it in contexts where the genetics of the person are unknown and must admit the existence of several additional sexes (e.g. X, XXY) AND recognize it’s no longer useful for describing the phenomenon of what a person looks like or how their body works. If we make it porous, then we will endlessly debate about whether boundary cases fall into one bucket or the other and possibly hurt some feelings along the way. The fun thing is that we get to pick what words mean, and we get to pick what we do with “sex”. Language is, after all, a social construct.
- howinteresting 4y ago
  All language is a social construct. We recognize patterns in the real world and assign words to them, but patterns in complex systems like human biology have all kinds of exceptions. Social construct doesn't mean fake, though. It's real, and it describes a real thing, but is a simplified model of it. The fight is over which model is better.
slg 4y ago
>It has only been very, very recently that we have gone from... Would you have said the same thing about ridiculing someone for being openly gay in government 30 years ago, being Catholic in government 60 years ago, or being Black in government 80 years ago?
- partiallypro 4y ago
  No, because those aren't even remotely similar things. It wouldn't be a "hate crime" to call a Catholic a Protestant, or a Gay person a Straight person or a Black person a white person. It would be a hateful to deny them rights or to call for abuse. In this instance the "hate crime" is merely saying someone's biological sex is x, even if they say they are y. However, If I called a non-trans woman a man or a non-trans man a woman, that's not a hate crime. So, the whole idea is fairly inconsistent. I still think it's very much up for debate, unlike the instances you listed. I have trans friends, and while I can't speak for them, I don't believe they think the debate is as settled on some of these issues, especially in regard to "misgendering" being a hate crime. Hell, I've misgendered one of my non-binary friends constantly by accident and we're still friends. I'm not banned and haven't been charged with a hate crime. Would I want someone intentionally misgendering them just to get to them? No, I think that's cruel, and I'd defend my friend; but I don't think that person should automatically lose their account or be arrested (which has happened outside the US.) There's an important distinction there and it's an important debate.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - ajross 4y ago
    > In this instance the "hate crime" is merely saying someone's biological sex is x, even if they say they are y. That's mischaracterizing what was said. Here's the actual article: https://babylonbee.com/news/the-babylon-bees-man-of-the-year-is-rachel-levine https://babylonbee.com/news/the-babylon-bees-man-of-the-year... This is ridicule, quite clearly. I won't get into the "is it or is it not a hate crime" bit, but this isn't "merely" stating anything. The term "biological sex" doesn't even appear in the article. The point the reader is supposed to take from this article is quite clearly not "mere" information about Rachel Levine's gender and/or "biological sex". It's that Rachel Levine's presented gender was very funny to the authors and that we should laugh at her for it. > Would I want someone intentionally misgendering them just to get to them? No, I think that's cruel Seems like you're putting an awful lot of weight on the distinction between "hate" and "cruel" to me. What about here on HN? Do you think it's OK for users here to be "cruel" to others, or should dang ban them? Because HN bans people for being cruel, probably every day. Why is Twitter different?
freemrkt8 4y ago
There is no right to zero consequences for speaking freely. I say give users the moderation power and let aggregate voting dictate content that remains visible. No one wants public control of democracy though. What these guys want is a business friendly soapbox.
- partiallypro 4y ago
  Where did I claim there was? You can philosophically believe that free speech (and also know that the 1st Amendment does not apply to private companies, but that the "right" to it is a general philosophy outside of government) should exist while holding the position that you can be held accountable for some things. The question is how much a public forum should allow or not, especially one that has advertisers but is also an important forum for our democracy. That's very important and just saying everything under the sun is hate speech is not a good debate starter, especially when it's unevenly applied, and the rules are written by one viewpoint. I think the "downvote" system which does eventually hide comments (until you request them) is a feature that already exists in beta. I think that's better than the "shadow banning" and suspensions in some instances. Obviously, you still can't tolerate some things, such as calls for violence, rioting, etc. Moderation is very difficult, but I err on the side of more openness than locking things down and stifling speech and debate.
  - freemrkt8 4y ago
squidbeak 4y ago
Even if none of those things were true, satire and pisstaking shouldn't ever be banned.
andsoitis 4y ago
> It has only been very, very recently that we have gone from "gender is a social construct" to "sex is a social construct." I don’t think I’ve seen anyone say that sex is a social construct. Gender yes. And that gender and sex are orthogonal. And that gender is a spectrum but sex in humans is binary. Maybe I missed the evolution of the conversation but I don’t think I’ve seen any volume of argument that sex is a social construct. I’m open to be convinced.
- rayiner 4y ago
  Orthogonal means uncorrelated. Sex and gender are in reality highly, though not perfectly, correlated.
  - andsoitis 4y ago
    Concur. What’s a better word/phrase?
    - rayiner 4y ago
      I’d say “not coextensive.” Unfortunately no single word that means exactly that.
  - zajio1am 4y ago
    I would say 'orthogonal' is used for conceptually independent, not causally independent nor statistically independent (uncorrelated). So i would say that sex and gender are conceptually independent, although in reality statistically highly correlated.
    - rayiner 4y ago
      I think the word you're looking for is "distinct."
- partiallypro 4y ago
  There are many pieces now that proclaim biological sex (not gender) is a social construct. There are pieces in Forbes, Psychology Today, Professor curriculum, etc that are now saying this. I would say it was fringe if it weren't for the fact that it's been elevated by major publications. When I was younger "gender is a social construct" mostly meant that if you were a man you were allowed to enjoy feminine things and if you were a woman, you could be a tomboy, etc. It also applied to trans individuals. However, that has shifted heavily over the last few years to be something very different and has gone so far as to go fully to the extent that sex (not gender) at birth is up for debate (even outside of Turner Syndrome or Intersex births.)

hexis 4y ago

This is the random and anonymous person, right? One of USA Today's 2022 Women of the Year? https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/opinion/2022/03/13/rachel-levine-honoree-usa-today-women-of-the-year/6600134001/ https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/opinion/2022/03/13/rachel-...

slg 4y ago
That list looks pretty "random and anonymous" to me. How many people on that list do you think an average person would recognize? I can't imagine it is more than 2 out of the 11 award recipients and many won't know a single one?
themitigating 4y ago
Are they known to the public is what's important
- concinds 4y ago
  Levine was very prominent among conservative media, not due to being trans, but due to being a prominent part of Biden's Covid response alongside Fauci. It wasn't a random targeting.
  - the_doctah 4y ago
    And when SNL satirizes a political figure, absolutely no one refers to it as "targeting"
    - themitigating 4y ago
      A political figure is a politician, this person is not
      - the_doctah 4y ago
        and yet that changes nothing

xyzzyz 4y ago

Babylon Bee was not first to “target” Levine. Washington Post, for example, has run an article on Levine before Bee, also for the sole purpose of Levine being trans: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/10/19/levine-transgender-four-star-admiral-public-health-service/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/10/19/levine-tran... If WaPo can bring out “random bureaucrats” to public attention for sole reason of being trans, why can’t Bee do the same?

slg 4y ago
Giving an award to a Black person has slightly different connotations when it is done at a NAACP meeting compared to a Klan meeting.
- solveit 4y ago
  But I absolutely don't want Twitter to decide which organisations are like the NAACP and which are like the Klan. This is regardless of who runs Twitter.
  - freejazz 4y ago
    Well, good luck having a readable twitter then
    - ravel-bar-foo 4y ago
      I don't think the problem is whether Twitter is readable. The problem is whether it is advertisable for Twitter: whether advertisers will complain about being placed next to a tweet.
      - freejazz 4y ago
        Who are they going to advertise to if its not readable?
    - the_doctah 4y ago
      I'd rather read what people really think than what they are allowed to think.

Beltalowda 4y ago

She's involved in politics at a fairly high level; that's not "a private citizen" or "just a bureaucrat". Furthermore, making a few jokes is neither "harassment" nor "a campaign"; by that standard Twitter should ban a hell of a lot of folk. That people can't be jokes about folks merely because other people are also excessively mean-spirited about them is one of the more baffling ideas of the modern American left. The real problem, however, is that you don't need to dig very far to see people engage in all sorts of behaviour that's not exactly in accordance with the Twitter rules, ranging from stuff like "just fucking deport the Christians already!!" to "would be a real shame if their face got smashed in with a brick wink wink" and that ... doesn't get moderated. I've reported a bunch of posts like that: always "no action needed, doesn't violate our community terms". I think a lot of people would have significantly less trouble with Babylon Bee's ban if Twitter didn't let the platform be such a quagmire of nastiness, and then occasionally cherry-pick an example.

haberman 4y ago

> Their behavior was a part of a harassment campaign against someone who is largely a private citizen in this instance. What you call a "harassment campaign" happens constantly on Twitter, driven by Twitter's own site and algorithms. Twitter frequently has a "main character" of the day, driven by the "What's Trending" sidebar on the home page, as well as quote Tweets by people with thousands or millions of followers that encourages and incentivizes the dragging of people who have little power. If this is a bannable offense, Twitter should ban itself.

the_doctah 4y ago

>likely isn't among the 1000 most powerful people in government Why does that matter? >has led to her getting death threats OK, punish the people who did the illegal thing. Imagine having personal responsibility! >Being a satire site doesn't mean we can laugh off all their behavior as a joke Yes, yes that's exactly what it means. >Their behavior was a part of a harassment campaign against someone who is largely a private citizen in this instance No, one article is not a harassment campaign.

kyleblarson 4y ago

Yet the Ayatollah can tweet at will. Nothing to see here.

paganel 4y ago

We should be allowed to satirize almost everything that is part of our society, so to speak, satire that avoids the hot societal topics isn't really satire (see SNL). The trans discussion is really a hot topic inside the US, for better of for worse, so a satirical website talking about it is how things should be.