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No Joke: Babylon Bee Sics Lawyers On Snopes Over "Fact Checks"
[Hot Air] Even the satirists at the Babylon Bee have a limit to jokes ‐ and the attempts by Snopes to "fact check" their humor doesn’t qualify. In a message to subscribers yesterday, the Bee declared that Snopes was attempting to exploit its position as a Facebook partner to "deplatform" the conservative satire site. In response, the Babylon Bee has decided to sic their very real and non-humorous attorneys against the urban-legend site to put an end to their harassment:
As you know, fake news‐which is distinguished from satire by its intent to mislead‐was widely considered a serious issue in the last election cycle. As a result, social media networks like Facebook began partnering with fact-checkers to try and limit the distribution of fake news on their platforms. Snopes was one of them. At one point, a piece of ours was rated "false" by Snopes, prompting Facebook to threaten us with limitations and demonetization. We made a stink about this, and after some media attention shed light on the problem, Facebook apologized for their handling of the matter and admitted that satire is not the same as fake news.

We came out on top last time, but this latest smear from Snopes is both dishonest and disconcerting. We have no choice but to take it very seriously. For better or worse, the media, the public, and social networks all look to Snopes for authoritative answers. By lumping us in with fake news and questioning whether we really qualify as satire, Snopes appears to be actively engaged in an effort to discredit and deplatform us. While we wish it wasn’t necessary, we have retained a law firm to represent us in this matter.
Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon confirmed the accuracy of the statement published yesterday to readers in an e-mail to Hot Air this afternoon, so this is no satirical joke. The move follows a long Twitter thread Friday by founder Adam Ford on Snopes’ most recent "ridiculous article," in which they questioned whether poking fun at Georgia state representative Erica Thomas could be considered "satire." What follows on Ford’s tweetstorm is what we’d have called an old-fashioned Fisking in the blogosphere a few years back:
Posted by: Besoeker 2019-07-31
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=546900