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Fellow American,
This is Seth Dillon, CEO of The Babylon Bee. I recently sent this email to our loyal subscribers, and the response was absolutely overwhelming. As a fellow supporter of free speech, I thought you'd be interested to read it as well.
As you read this brief update on a few of the battles we're fighting as we try to remain a free and independent source of satire in today's media landscape, I hope you'll even consider partnering with us as we fight back against the woke left's attempts to censor and silence us. Here's a quick look at how The Babylon Bee is standing for free speech online -- and how you can help.
Victory Against The New York Times
Just a few weeks ago, we notched a big win against The New York Times. In response to a demand letter from our attorneys, they removed defamatory statements they had made about us and updated the offending article with a correction. The significance of this can't be overstated. If those statements had stayed in print, the social networks (and other vendors we work with) could have used them against us, citing them as cause for terminating our accounts. Instead, there's now a ton of media coverage highlighting the fact that it was The New York Times—not us—that had been trafficking in misinformation.
I gave a big, heartfelt "thank you" to all of our subscribers and supporters who helped make this win possible. We couldn't succeed in these efforts without the prayers, encouragement, and financial support of friends like you who stand with us to defend free speech online.
Facebook and the New Line of Attack
Facebook recently announced they'll be moderating satire to make sure it doesn't "punch down." Anything that punches down—that is, anything that takes aim at protected targets Facebook doesn't want you joking about—doesn't qualify as "true satire." In fact, they've made it clear they'll consider jokes that "punch down" to be hatred disguised as satire. They write: "Indeed, humor can be an effective mode of communicating hateful ideas."
Mere days after this announcement was made, Slate published a piece accusing us of having a "nasty tendency to punch down." This is not a coincidence. Having failed in their effort to lump us in with fake news, the media and Big Tech are looking for new ways to work together to deplatform us. They now hope to discredit us by saying we're spreading hatred—rather than misinformation—under the guise of satire.
But we're not "punching down." We're punching back. Conservatives have been on the ropes in the culture war for a long time. We're in a defensive posture, fighting back against the top-down tyranny of the left's progressive agenda that destroys everything it touches. That agenda is fueled and furthered by all the nation's most powerful people, corporations, and institutions. If that's not punching up, I don't know what is.
More importantly, the left's new prohibition of "punching down" is speech suppression in disguise. It's people in positions of power protecting their interests by telling you what you can and cannot joke about. Comedians who self-censor in deference to that power are themselves a joke.
Here at The Babylon Bee, we are always inviting friends like you to become paid subscribers because with each subscriber we add, we become more "cancel-proof." We'll fight to the end to defend our right to exist on platforms like Facebook, but when their left-wing editors inevitably decide to fully deplatform us, it's our subscribers that will enable us to continue on. I hope you'll consider becoming one today if you haven't already.
The Chumps at Mailchimp
Last month, email marketing platform Mailchimp suspended our email service. They cited "harmful information" as the reason for the suspension, but said it was a mistake and quickly reinstated our account.
For a long time now, Mailchimp has been exercising viewpoint discrimination under the guise of protecting the public from harmful misinformation. We have no interest in staying on a platform that's looking for excuses to censor us by literally scanning the content of our emails. The reversal in this case gives us no confidence that it won't happen again, and perhaps the suspension will be permanent next time. So we're moving on to an email service provider that actually values free expression.
So What's Next?
We're going to keep making jokes on the internet. And we're going to keep punching back—not down—at the left's progressive agenda and their endless efforts to silence us. Will you team up with us in that effort by becoming a subscriber today? It'll be like when they assembled all the Avengers and finally defeated Thanos. Except no one will die and you'll get a free coffee table book.
Seriously. When you become a subscriber, we'll send you your very own hardbound copy of The Sacred Texts of the Babylon Bee, Vol. I, and when they kick us off the internet, you can prove to your grandchildren that you helped protect satire until the very end.
Thank you, and let's keep fighting the good fight.
Seth Dillon CEO
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