‘Never Too Late’: Babylon Bee CEO Explains Why He’s Optimistic About The First Amendment

The Babylon Bee achieved internet superstardom for its brand of revealing and often hilarious satire from a Christian conservative perspective.

Due in large part to its political leaning, the site has faced mounting efforts to limit its reach, particularly via social media.

With President Donald Trump poised to take office next week for a second term, however, Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon recently affirmed that he believes free speech can once again flourish in the United States.

According to Fox News:

The Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon applauded Meta’s announcement that it was dropping its fact-checkers, calling the move a win for free speech that he only wished had come sooner.

“I think it’s great that Mark Zuckerberg is following in Elon Musk’s lead there,” Dillon told Fox News Digital about Meta’s move to bring a “community notes” feature to Instagram and Facebook instead.

“It’s never too late to do the right thing. But the time for Zuckerberg to take a stand for free speech, in my view, was when the entire internet was de-platforming the sitting president,” Dillon continued, referring to social media platforms that banned Trump in 2021.

“Is it better late than never? Sure. But he had an opportunity there and has not so far recognized his role in that mistake,” he added.

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Zuckerberg’s latest shift toward free speech was generally met with a mix of skepticism and cautious optimism:

Mark Zuckerberg says Meta is now focusing on free speech.

It only took you how many years to realize that banning content for no reason wasn't the best approach? 🤣 pic.twitter.com/4rBscLUocg

— S A H I N (@Sahin_OG) January 7, 2025

Zuckerberg: “Facebook and Instagram will now prioritize free speech”

everyone: pic.twitter.com/YLnqfvuUwv

— 🌸 DigiGal (@DigitalGal_) January 7, 2025

Zuckerberg promised more free speech over on Facebook.

Meanwhile, the page for @ReduxxMag had 11 articles pulled today as "spam," and I wasn't given an option to appeal.

Also, people who share Reduxx articles on Facebook have received suspensions and had their posts removed. pic.twitter.com/WkS8FagUEg

— Genevieve Gluck (@WomenReadWomen) January 15, 2025

According to MSN, the Babylon Bee previously reacted to Zuckerberg’s decision by listing a dozen times its content had been fact-checked on the platform despite its obvious classification as satire:

Just in case you think that fact-checking has been a net-positive for the platform, the Babylon Bee wants to share 12 times the fact-checkers got it wrong regarding their work. You may be thinking to yourself, “Wait, isn’t the Babylon Bee a satire site?”

Yeah, exactly. That’s kind of the problem.

First off, arguably the most infamous of these — where the Bee received a fact-checking ding because Snopes, then a Meta partner (they dropped out of the program in 2019), deemed “CNN Purchases Industrial-Sized Washing Machine To Spin News Before Publication” to be misinformation worthy of censorship and demonetization.

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Next up, another Snopes doozy, a fact-check on “Ocasio-Cortez Appears On ‘The Price Is Right,’ Guesses Everything Is Free,” followed by a USA Today fact-check on “Ninth Circuit Court Overturns Death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.”

Here’s the full list:

In honor of Facebook ending its fact-checking partnerships, here are the funniest fact-checks of Babylon Bee jokes:

A running 🧵: pic.twitter.com/PkMd8hhssR

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) January 8, 2025

This is what Zuckerberg had to say recently about Facebook’s record compared to Elon Musk’s X:

Mark Zuckerberg “𝕏 did it better than us with fact-checking. We took the misinformation critique and put a fact checking program in place, which put in place a system of third party fact checkers that could mark things false. We down ranked those things in the algorithm.” pic.twitter.com/MEWCQ7LmYe

— Tesla Owners Silicon Valley (@teslaownersSV) January 10, 2025