The Babylon Bee is what happens when a few angry, unfunny, unempathetic right-wingers try and do The Onion-style fake journalism. None of their jokes land, for one because they are just generally unfunny people, but mostly because they routinely punch down with mean-spirited antagonistic opinions.
They’re also apparent fans of Musk himself, as they announced Nov. 18 “We’re back. Let that sink in” echoing Elon Musk’s entrance to Twitter HQ last month.
Babylon Bee had its account suspended after they referred to trans woman Rachel Levine as their pick for “man of the year,” which is an obvious attempt to misgender somebody. All the company had to do to get back on the site was delete the offending tweet, but the company refused. That tweet now remains up on the account.
Twitter policy notes there are rules against repeated content “that degrades someone” and specifically references targeted misgendering or deadnaming transgender individuals.
There’s a lot pointing to the new Twitter CEO’s appreciation of the Bee’s sense of (un)humor. The Washington Post’s Tuesday report noted that mere hours after taking control of Twitter, he told the Trust and Safety team to bring back the Babylon Bee. The site’s CEO Seth Dillon had previously wrote that Musk himself reached out to his company over the ban, even noting these account suspensions as a reason he wanted to buy the company. Musk has shown he is antagonistic to the use of gender pronouns, so it seems Twitter’s own policies about misgendering public figures doesn’t phase him either.