One of Facebook’s “fact checkers” flagged a post last week from the Babylon Bee, the leading conservative satirical website, in another incident of leftists deliberately or accidentally mistaking comedy for factual claims.
The video was also censored on the video sharing platform TikTok. While TikTok originated in China, its American branch recruits from the same pool of leftist content moderators that Facebook and Twitter do, who care more about censoring satire of woke causes than the discussion of Tiananmen Square or Hong Kong.
The short video, which can be watched on YouTube, is a mock Mattel ad designed to poke fun at leftists’ claims about gender that fly in the face of reality.
“Men can get pregnant just like women,” says the narrator. “In fact, there’s no definition of women! We literally have no idea what a woman is!”
“Pregnant Ken does all the normal things every birthing person does, like chestfeed, and hide his breasts with chest binders. He rocks baby to sleep with his supple masculine arms.”
“Tell your birthing people to buy you a Pregnant Ken today, because why should women be the only ones who can experience the miracle of getting an abortion?”
In response to the video, Facebook-approved Latin American “fact checker” Cotejo.info flagged the Babylon Bee for “false information,” forcing Facebook users to click through a warning screen before viewing the video, and reducing its spread on the platform.
From Not The Bee:
Of course, The Bee making a video about a toy pushing the transgender ideology on kids is just too far out of bounds. Not because it’s so ridiculous, but because it’s so believable.
Facebook also threatened that, because of this obvious joke, they would further throttle The Bee’s reach on Facebook
It is not the first time the Babylon Bee has been “fact checked” for satire. In 2018, Facebook threatened to suspend the Bee’s page after Snopes fact-checked an article about CNN purchasing a washing machine to “spin the news.” Snopes later “fact checked” a satirical article about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election. Follow him on Twitter @LibertarianBlue.