Why Was The Babylon Bee Suspended by Twitter? CEO Seth Dillon Reacts to Ban

Satire website The Babylon Bee had been suspended from Twitter, according to the CEO, Seth Dillon.

Dillon took to his personal Twitter account on Sunday evening to explain why the page had been suspended and his reaction to the news.

The page had been temporarily banned for a tweet mocking Dr. Rachel Levine, who identifies as transgender. Levine serves as an admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps.

Dillon posted an image of the message Twitter sent the page and captioned it: "I just received this notice that we've been locked out of our account for 'hateful conduct.'"

The image highlighted that Twitter believes The Babylon Bee had violated its rules against hateful conduct. The Twitter conduct message clarified what it considers hateful conduct.

"You may not promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease," its message stated.

Twitter also highlighted the specific tweet from The Babylon Bee that it considered violated this rule.

"The Babylon Bee's Man of The Year is Rachel Levine," the tweet read. It did not specify when this was tweeted by the satire website.

Dillon followed up this tweet with another one explaining what limitations The Babylon Bee would have on the social media platform while it was suspended.

Dillon noted that it would be restored in 12 hours but this countdown would only occur if the tweet was deleted.

"We're not deleting anything. Truth is not hate speech. If the cost of telling the truth is the loss of our Twitter account, then so be it," Dillon tweeted.

"I've received some messages from people asking how they can help. I can think of a few ways," Dillon said in another tweet.

"1. Never censor yourself. Insist that 2 and 2 make 4 even if Twitter tries to compel you to say otherwise. Make them ban tens of millions of us."

The Babylon Bee CEO also insisted that there were other ways to continue to support the satire website if it was no longer on the social media platform in the future.

"Get on our email list so we have direct contact with you. It's not a perfect solution, email service providers have censored us, too, but at least we own our email list and can take it with us," Dillon explained.

"Become a premium subscriber. If enough of you do that, we won't need traffic from big tech platforms to generate revenue."

The comments section of Dillon's series of tweets saw a mix of condemnation and praise for his stance.

Newsweek has contacted The Babylon Bee and Rachel Levine for comment.